1 month on the road came and went faster than we could believe. We had been so busy with traveling into Bolivia then 2 days in Chile and on to Argentina, that we suddenly realized the big day was upon us! (We've also included a few silly pictures of us.)

We celebrated by having dinner on a Saturday night at La Casona del Molina in Salta and thought about many of the things we've noticed along the way.

1. Traveling brings out the best and the worst in you. Tired, hungry, generally stressed all add up to two cranky people. We've both had to take a step back a few times to remind ourselves that the slower portion of travel was upon us.

2. Toilet paper has become our version of gold. To have a nice clean roll in our backpacks is a piece of mind I never knew I needed. With missing toilet seats, uncertainty over where to actually go, constantly asking how much it costs to use the bathroom, it's really the simplicity of just having a roll that makes the whole process so much better.

3. Sometimes you just need to eat something familiar. While I'm proud to say we've not eaten a true fast food meal, I did finally cave when we were at a Salta mall looking for a better zoom lens and there was a Mickey Dees. I definitely grabbed a fry and it tasted so good. Eating traditional food in each country is great but after 4 weeks on the road, it's nice to find one thing you aren't worried will cause food poisoning.

4. 3 days in a city is enough to understand how most things work. By day 3, these basic things are mostly understood: layout of the city, process of getting a cab/public transportation, where to find a supermarket, bus terminal, ATM, etc. We start to feel like locals after 3 days in one place.

5. Traveling is so different from vacation. Vacation you plan ahead and everything is set for your arrival. Traveling is more like work, with constant planning for the next step, trying to maintain a budget, finding safe places to stay, and still keep in touch with each other and those at home. We've really had to focus on spending days not planning for the next step and just enjoying the moment.

Best Meal: Pacena la Saltena-one of our cheapest meals was also our best. La Paz didn't offer us much to be excited about but the saltenas seriously have us considering a yearly fly in-fly out just for these delicious stuffed dough balls.

Toughest Border Crossing: Chile to Argentina. I would never have guessed Chile to Argentina would be more challenging than Peru to Bolivia but it was. Disorganized and challenging to understand, the step-by-step of Bolivia was quicker and easy as long as your were prepared with the proper paper work. Chile to Argentina was a time-consuming cluster that left even the most kind-hearted Germans in line behind us saying Cambodia was an easier entry.

Best cocktail: Passion de Muna from Belmond Monestario.

Biggest disagreement: 4 weeks of nonstop travel doesn't a trip make according to Brian. However, I have been fine with our pace. When Brian hit the wall, I was still ready to keep rocking. Stopping in Salta for 5 days helped to even us both and prepared us for our next month.

Things we miss: We've talked about this a lot over the last week.

-We miss our family and friends and Nashville. Lindsay misses snuggling on Nashboy a lot.

-We mostly miss food. We miss a good Greek salad, white queso and chips and Brian's homemade margs.

-Lindsay misses using a good Reidel wine glass and enjoying it from her own couch.

-Missing out on babies-Lindsay's best friend Sarah just had a baby girl, Sadie and we have many other friends who've just given birth or are about too.

-Brian misses good BBQ and real craft beer-none of this so-called craft beer.

-Having private space-public parks and community space are great, but it would be nice to have your own sofa or back porch to relax on.

-Consistently solid data and wifi-We have data and texting everywhere we go, but sometimes it's so slow we want to throw our phones out the bus window.

-We miss the opportunity to go to church on Sundays. We keep searching for a Protestant church but South America is mainly Catholic or LDS. Also, every service being in Spanish doesn't help either.

Things we've loved:

-Being able to really talk and listen to one another for the first time in a long time, discussing new dreams and ideas and goals.

-Asking why not when an opportunity presents itself and seeking out new things to try and do.

-Not missing our jobs at all-we miss the people, but not the day-to-day grind.

-Not missing our community commitments-we miss involvement but not feeling the burden to always say yes.

-Slow travel! There is something so freeing in knowing you don't really need to move quickly but can add and subtract days as you feel best.

Things we hate:

-Overnight bus travel-I don't care how nice the bus is, traveling overnight is miserable. Thank goodness most hostels let you check in early.

-Worrying about eating something uncooked, like salad or fruit. We really want to eat these things, but 9/10 times it's just a question mark. If we are staying for several nights in a place, we usually risk it, but if we are moving on quickly, we avoid anything uncooked.

Traveling this way has really opened our eyes to a lot of new things and new attitudes and we've loved our journey so far.

Disclaimer: this post involved descriptions of bodily functions (but what do you expect on a 3-day trek to the desert)

We started our day with an 8 am taxi ride to the center of Uyuni to check in with Red Planet Tours. We wanted to pay in Bolivianos so we went to the ATM and had to do 5 transactions to get enough Bs. Brian's wallet was stuffed. We hustled back to pay and then grabbed a coffee in the town "square" until our tour left at 11 am.

We hit the road with a group in our Land Cruiser of 7 total listening to Funky Town. All our stuff including food had us stuffed to the brim, including the top rack for our bags.

We stopped first at the train cemetery which was the aftermath of a large purchase of trains that couldn't handle the altitude and crashed.

We then headed to the Salt Flats, stopping at a small town just before and learned about how to mine the salt. We finally headed to the Salt Flats and learned about the salts expanding and contracting in the warmth of the day and cool of the night. It was so windy that we could barely stand. We drove further into the flats in hopes of some sun and less wind. We did the traditional perception pictures but most of them were just so-so.

The best part of the tour was supposed to be the place where there is a bit of water on the flat and it reflects the sky. Unfortunately, it was so windy we could only walk out and try not to get our shoes wet. Disappointed, we headed to our salt hotel for the evening and had a meal of soup and then a hodgepodge of hotdogs, meat, fries, hardboiled eggs and of course, we bought some beer. We played cards with the group: 3 Aussies, a family of 3 from Monaco who have been sailing the world for 7 years, an Irish woman and a Peruvian couple. It was a great group of people.

We finally turned in around 10 pm and it was pitched black. Our entire room was made of salt which was so interesting. And yes, Lindsay did lick the wall and it does, in fact, taste like salt.

We had an early morning breakfast at 5:30 in order to make it back to the Salt Flats to see the reflections at sunrise. Brian was really feeling bad so we dropped him off at a bathroom stop on our way there.

This was the part of the tour I was so excited about and I was SO excited we got to go back. It is incredible. The sky and the land literally meet. I was in absolute awe of the reflections of the mountains in the water. We took funny group pictures while our driver went back to check on Brian. When he returned, Brian still wasn't with him. The tour guides were thinking the worst-food poisoning, infection, etc. As we were headed back to the bathroom, here comes Brian, walking down the road, earbuds in, listening to his ipod. Thank goodness he was feeling better because we had a long bumpy road ahead of us to see the Lago Colorado, snow-covered volcanos and the Dali Rocks. We drove a total of 12 hours, stopping along the way to walk a bit, see flamingos and take in the scenery.

We had a final stop at the geysurs before heading to our primative lodging on a lake on the other side of the volcanos.

This lodging was the worst. The bathroom was disgusting with a regular sized toilet bowl divded into two halves, one for pee with a "drain" and the other just a hole. There was also a pail of sand with a scoop for the big hole when you went poop. When we sat down at the table with plastic chairs, apparently someone had put sand in the pee hole and the owner wasn't happy about having to clean it out. We all got a big lecture in spanish.

We had a dinner of soup and pasta with mushrooms and mystery beef and then sat around and chatted while the guides relaxed in the hot springs. We were all just too tired to get changed, shower off and pay for the hot springs, so we relaxed at the table. They turned the generator off at 9:30, so a few of us headed to our dorm style room-6 beds per room- and started getting ready. Others stayed up and drank, getting louder and louder until the generator shut off and they had no choice but to go to bed.

After the restless night's sleep, we got up around 6 am to have breakfast at 6:30 and hit the road by 7 am.

It was snowing when we woke up, so we waited a bit before loading the roofs of the cars.

We hit the road about 7:30 and headed for the Laguna Verge, unfortunately, it was so cloudy we could barely see the mountains and the wind wasn't blowing so the lake was calm and not super green.

We then trekked it across the top of the mountains between Bolivia and Chile. It snowed and was practically a white out. We couldn't believe the change in scenery over the last 48 hours. Absolutely incredible.

We got our national park exit stamp and then drove 10 minutes to the Bolivian customs to get our exit stamp. It was no-nonsense and very easy. We had been given our bus tickets when in Uyuni, so we jumped on the bus and waited for departure.

We made the easy 60 minute drive to the border and after declaring everything and having all our luggage hand-checked, we were clear to get back on the bus to San Pedro.

Surprisingly, it was very comforting to be back in Chile and to know what to expect.

No one can deny that I am a Type-A planner, but I really have no intention of being unprepared at border crossings, especially Bolivia.

I had read crazy stories about everything: being asked for all types of paperwork to simply paying and getting a stamp. We were nervous about being asked for something and not having it, so we prepared for the worst.

The US Embassy states the following:

"To apply for your visa upon your arrival to Bolivia, you must pay the visa fee of $135.00 in cash to immigration authorities in Bolivia. In addition to the $135.00 visa fee, you must present a passport with a validity of not less than 6 months beyond the date of your proposed entry, evidence of a hotel reservation or a letter of invitation in Spanish, proof of economic solvency (credit card, cash, or a current bank statement), and an International Vaccination Certificate for yellow fever. Upon arrival at the airport, you will be given a visa application form which you need to complete. Please be sure to have the address of where you will be staying in Bolivia handy to complete this application."

Needless to say, this information was inconsistent at best. My research also led me to a Bolivian Visa Application

Turns out this was a very good thing to stumble upon, because we needed it.

Here is what we needed for the border crossing for each of us:

1. Passport

2. Visa application

3. 1 color passport photo

4. 1 color copy of passport

5. 360 Bolivianos each (Not crisp $135 CRISP USD we had been protecting for the previous 3 weeks, which was also a savings of roughly half.)

6. Immigration declaration form (provided by Tour Peru on bus) including where we were staying, who was our in-country contact, information about our contacts back at home, home address and where we had traveled our last 30 days

7. Entry form (provided by Tour Peru on bus)

We were not asked to show but were prepared with all of the above plus:

1. $135 CRISP USD each in exact change

2. Copy of our bank balance

3. Copy of our hostel reservation

4. Copy of our onward travel out of Bolivia

5. Yellow card

We are still uncertain if there are differing rules for air entry versus land crossings or if each border is different.

One of the most surprising things was the difference in entry fees. We had never read about not having to pay in USD, but our tour guide insisted we would pay in Bolivianos. We ended up having both prepared just in case we were asked for either.

The guide on the tour made it very clear the process and also kept track of the bus group. The bus let us off at a cambio to exchange soles and dollars into bolivianos. Here it was a mad house but went very quickly with a charge of around 20 soles per transaction.

Once we had changed money, we were pointed to cross the street to the Peruvian immigration office. There are 4 windows, so line up at any window and have your passport and immigration paper ready. They give you your exit stamp and then you proceed to walk up the hill, through the stone arch into Bolivia.

At the top of the hill you will see the Bolivian immigration on your left with a line out the door that gets longer with each tour bus that arrives.

If you know your country must pay a reciprocity fee at the border, send someone to the front the line and check if there is anyone in line for the far left window where you need to pay. For our trip, the tour guide pulled us out of line and walked us right up to the window and said, "Pay here." The visa agent was so bored he was playing games on his phone.

We handed over our paperwork as mentioned above, got our visa sticker in our passports and then were transferred to another window to have our declaration papers collected.

Once everyone is through immigration, the bus pulls through the gates and you pile back on the bus. Your luggage never leaves the bus for examination and the bus is locked while the group goes through the process.

Be mindful to be prepared. We did leave 2 girls at the border because they didn't have their paperwork in order and did not receive entry into Bolivia. The guide provided them with instructions, but this is not a situation you want to be in this border town.

Once you arrive in Copacabana (the closest town on Lake Titicaca), the guides will unload your luggage and point you to another connecting bus to take you into La Paz. Peruvian bus companies aren't allowed to operate in Bolivia, so you have to switch there to a local company. Our bus left an hour later, so we left our luggage (locked of course) at the bus office and walked down to enjoy the waterfront.

Successful entry into Bolivia!