A Look Back at Our Years of Fulltime RVing and Worldschooling {A collection of our 'Year in Review' posts}

 Some of my favorite posts to read are the annual reviews. I decided to make it easy and put all of them here for quick reference. While living in the RV for the first five years, I wrote a recap of the previous year on our nomadiversary in April, but I later switched to calendar year. Click on the year to read.

2014: Began Fulltime RVing. 22 States, 33 state & national parks 

2015: 12 states, Hawaii, Japan, 22 national parks, Began birding, work-camping at a National Wildlife Refuge 

2016: Drive to Alaska for the summer. camp hosting. 6 new states and 3 provinces of Canada (Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta). 13 national parks 

2017: East Coast plus New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Downsized from 37ft to 16ft RV! 13 new states, 37 national park sites, first birding festival. Birding the Everglades.

2018: 2 new states, Established a home base, Road trip to Vegas, hosted exchange students, training trip to Kenya with ITEC, Uganda to visit friends, Birding Colombia 

2019: Five months in Ecuador, visit with Waodani in the Amazon Jungle, Birding Ecuador. Colombia, Trip to Ohio, Tennessee 

2020: The good, bad and ugly year. The Keys

2021: Florida Keys. Charleston, South Carolina. Ohio

2022: Four month RV roadtrip out West. Our 50th state together! North Dakota. Minnesota

2023: Three months in South America: Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Tunisia. 

2024: Southeast Asia: A month in Thailand and a month exploring Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan.  Turning Teenagers and flying airplanes.

2025: Two months living in a small town in the Colombian Andes (Vélez). Paragliding, caving, discovering new hobbies: playing the Tiple (a traditional Colombian instrument with 12 strings), and smelting coins. 

Eat, Beach, Sleep, Repeat

Before this trip began, when my children were asked what they were most looking forward to, food was at the top of the list. They have not been disappointed! Ceviche is one of the main dishes here and we enjoy it almost daily. It's raw fish (we prefer tuna if available), onions, sweet potatoes, choclo (huge, white corn kernels) and (small, crunchy toasted kernels) in a citrus or tiger milk juice. It's delicious! 

Other traditional dishes we're enjoying are Lomo Saltado (sauted beef), Causa de Pollo (chicken, mashed potatoes with avocado and tomatoes served in a tight tower), pasta with Huancaina sauce and the Pisco Sour. In Miraflores, an entree typically runs $4-6 but can go up to $12. It would be more inexpensive just outside of this area. 

Salchipapas is popular as in other Latin American places we've been. Fries with basically hot dogs. This one is served pobre style with plantains and a fried egg on top.

While our kids are amazingly adventurous with food, sometimes you just want a burger, and this one was delicious! This burger along with the food featured in the first photo all came from our favorite restaurant in Miraflores, LOV. We ate here probably six times in three weeks. Their ceviche is amazing! This is also where Journey made her international singing debut! We sang, "Lost Boy" together.

Enjoying comida Peruana at Mama Olla. 

We learned that the term "Peruvian" is an English term, not used in Peru. Instead they use Peruano/Peruana for people or items of Peru.

We were in town during Peru's Fiesta de Patrias (celebration of independence) so lots of activities were going on. While enjoying a art festival in the park, we spied someone eating one of these elephant ear kind of things. It turns out the Torreja Cachanga is a fried bread with a sweet orange-colored topping. We also tried picarones, which look like thin donuts with a honey dipping sauce.

Pretty much as soon as we arrived in Lima, the kids figured out there are quite a few boba places around. We tried four different ones, but Boba Station was our favorite for smoothies. My favorite turned out to be a Taro Oreo Milkshake, with boba! This purple concoction was delicious and made with ice, so it must not be as bad as the ones in the US, right? The kids usually picked different ones, but Asher really liked the regular oreo, and Journey, the Matcha, and both kids liked their strawberry smoothie. 

Our other favorite boba place was Té Burbuja (Bubble Tea). They have great teas, but my favorite was a pineapple, coconut icee drink, with boba of course. It was very close to Spanish class. How convenient!

We also found great ramen at HIRO. 

Being so close to the beach was such a blessing. We took advantage of the opportunity and went there often. So many steps to get there!

While the water is too cold to really enjoy swimming, it's a big destination for surfing. New to surfing? No problem. A line of tents shade surfing instructors just waiting to take you out to ride the waves, and they even provide wetsuits.

Asher loved looking thru the rocks for sea glass. Journey enjoyed looking for unique colored rocks.

It cracks me up that when I ask my child to take a photo, their little finger still shows up in the frame. Some day soon, this won't happen anymore, and I'll miss it. 

In the photo above, you'll see a pier with a restaurant. Peruvian Pelicans and the extremely elegant Inca Tern like to perch on the pier. From there I was able to get pretty close to this incredible life bird. The bright red bill and feet plus white "mustache" is so striking!

Looking out over the water, I spotted another lifer, a Peruvian Booby, hunting right over some surfers!

While scanning the rocks for these striking Sally Lightfoot Crabs, I spotted another lifer, Blackish Oystercatchers, feeding just below me! 

This pier is great. I later realized Red-legged Cormorants like to hang out of the rocks jutting out into the Pacific. Too far for a good shot though.

Penguins, Boobies and... Wolves?

If you want to see penguins in Peru, you'll likely be told you must take a boat from Paracas, a three hour drive south, but I'll tell you a little secret, they can be found year around in and near Lima. Sightings of one or two are reported pretty regularly from the beaches near Miraflores, however I was not able to spot one. There are no pelagics out of Lima anymore, the ocean is very rough and one of my friends who was likely on the very last one ten years ago said the waves were so large, people were getting sick, passing out and one person even broke a leg! 

I did some research and found a small fishing village just an hour south of Lima with lots of promise and tons of character. Pucusana.

It's important to arrive early, often by 11am the water becomes too rough and dangerous to be out. We arrived at 8am and quickly found a fisherman who agreed to take us out to look for birds and do some fishing. 90 minutes for 100 soles ($25 USD).  The group of men we met, said all the penguins are gone for the winter, but I hoped to prove them wrong. And yes, July is winter in Peru. More on this later.

We climbed into the boat and drove thru the bay, first heading towards a tiny channel with white water crashing between the rocks. Just when we thought we may not make it thru this adventure, the fisherman turned to go the other way around the island. Whew, he was just giving us a tour of the bay first. This area is mostly low-income, however there are some fancy places along the water here, mostly used as vacation homes or Airbnbs. How fun would it be to stay in the castle!

Right away I saw a Red-legged Cormorant swimming thru the water. A bird I'd only seen once before, just a few days ago but at an incredible distance. Seeing one now up close was thrilling! I also got my first close look at a Guanay Cormorant.

Once out of the bay, we encountered the waves and suddenly the boat was listing dramatically from side to side. Now I'm no boat captain, but I'm pretty sure it helps to head into the waves instead of sideways. Luckily, we made it to the back side of the island where the "wolves" congregate. Ok, not actual wolves, these are Lobos Marinos, South American Sea Lions. But lobo translates to wolf, which really confused me earlier when reading the news about wolves on the beach! 

And then we saw the birds! A single Red-legged amongst a large group of Guanay Cormorants huddled together. I scanned thru hundreds of Peruvian Boobies hoping for just one Blue-footed Booby. I scanned as best I could between the waves and the distance, but didn't see one. I snapped photos to check later before moving on.

Then I saw them, two Humboldt Penguins side by side at the edge of the cliff!

When looking thru my photos, I saw one looked like he had hearts for eyes! I then realized while most mature birds are indistinguishable, penguins have unique facial and body markings so it's easy to identify different individuals.

My first PENGUINS- a super memorable lifer!

Now it was time to fish. As we made our way to the fishing spot, something among the rock face caught my eye. A single Peruvian Booby, but wait... just under him were two Blue-footed Boobies! Wow!

Aside from the bright blue feet, they have solid dark wings and a dirty-looking neck, while the Peruvian Boobies have a white head and neck (as seen above).

I LOVE this photo, but I do wish it was in focus. Between the distance and the listing of the boat, it was extremely challenging just to keep the bird in the frame. I have lots of photos of just heads or feet. Haha! Here's a three photo sequence of the penguins to give you an idea of just how rough it was!

 To my delight, we dropped anchor and fished right there with the Boobies, plus a Red-legged Cormorant and tons of Inca Terns were just above us. Asher caught a fish on his very first cast!

I fished with my line in one hand and camera in the other and still managed to catch two fish plus a few great shots. 

Back on shore we walked the main road, lined with restaurants to reach the park. There is a small inlet that water crashes thru. 

There is a viewpoint on top of the mountain above the park, so we climbed up to check it out. It's much steeper than I expected.

Lunch was fresh ceviche overlooking the inlet. Afterwards we walked around the village and came across a sea lion begging a vendor for food. Dejected, he crossed the road and fought another sea lion for the fish carcass and won. I wish I captured the fight on video!

It was so weird to see them in the street, like the dogs. 

While watching them, we noticed something going on in the water nearby. Some men were tossing food from the dock to some ENOURMOUS sea lions below, and the birds were going crazy above them hoping for a piece. I was shocked to learn male South American Sea Lions can grow over 9ft long and weigh over 700lbs! These two were probably around that size!

Tuk-tuks are a common sight here. 

As I mentioned, July is winter here in Peru, or more accurately, dry season, as temperatures are lower, but not by a lot. The main difference is rain, which there is very little of ever in this area. Lima is actually the second driest capital in the world, after Kairo. Thanks to the cold ocean air and the Andes mountains stripping moisture leaving this coastal region a desert. A view of hills (lomas) looking towards the Andes, on our way back to Lima.

This was such a fun and memorable day trip that we all really enjoyed!