We’re Back Baby!

Well it’s 5 years and a PhD later but Nikki and I decided to revive our blog and our South American trip!

Upon returning to our blog, we realized our last post was about settling into life in Colorado post-COVID and potentially adopting a dog. We are pleased to say we followed through with this and more! We now have two amazing dogs, Naiya and Ollie. We adopted Naiya at the start of COVID and loved her so much that two years later we adopted Ollie. Naiya is a lab mix and has the affectionate nickname of the “golden-girl” both because of her color and personality. Ollie is a black and white beagle/bluetick coonhound mix and is a bit spicier than Nayia, but the spice pays off with passion. Her love of life and dogs can sometimes overpower her good judgement but we love her for it!

In the last 5 years since our (first iteration of the) South American road trip, we moved to Pittsburgh, PA for Nikki’s PhD program at Carnegie Mellon and loved the city so much that we bought a house there. I can’t say we are “yinzers” yet, but we are well on our way. Nikki officially completed her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy in May 2024, having done some awesome research in Rwanda, Alaska and the US. Due to the demanding nature of the PhD program and Nikki’s never-ending sense of adventure, Nikki approached me with the “not-so-crazy idea” of finishing our South American trip once she completed her PhD. After talking through the logistics of what it would all look like, I agreed that we should make it work to travel back to South America and scratch the itch of our unfinished trip.

This time, the trip planning was going to look a little different than it did last time. I was working a job that I loved and we had a few more strings attached to us (dogs and house included). Luckily for us, we have so many people around us that love us and our crazy antics and encouraged us to make the trip work. With a tinge of sadness to leave my work team, I quit my job and we found both house and dog sitters for the entirety of the trip. With these boxes ticked, the possibility of embarking on this trip greatly increased. Nikki took over the undertaking of planning the shipping logistics for our truck and drove our truck to a port in New Jersey in September. We had a bit of a panic when the US shipping strike happened right as we were supposed to ship out, but thankfully negotiations postponed delays until January and our truck arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay in early November. Nikki and I drove our dogs to Colorado to stay with split time with our parents for the first 6 weeks and then we hopped on a flight to go meet our truck!

We are so excited to be back in the southern hemisphere and to be continuing our dream trip that was cut short by COVID. We know that COVID was a hard time for everyone and everyone went through their own individual struggles. If this blog can do anything, we want it to reignite peoples’ passions that may have been dulled during the pandemic and to give people a push to live life how they want to. We are hoping to update the blog every week or two and hope everyone enjoys keeping up with our travels.

We love you all and thank you for your support.

Nikki & Colter (Ritsch in Adventure)