I'll give you some Final Thoughts if you will, a la Jerry Springer.
- Bathrooms in South America suck. You have to pay, they rarely have toilet seats, no toilet paper, sometimes they flush, no soap, and sometimes a sink. Fun fun fun. Oh and you can't flush anything ever.
- There are very few cars that aren't taxis or buses. Taxis drive around and honk at every person walking down the street to see if they want a taxi. So 25 taxis on a road at any given time, and maybe 20-50 people walking make for a lot of honking.
- It's really really really cold when the sun goes down, especially at the higher altitudes. Hostels don't have heating, normally have a huge open area in the middle where they chose not /couldn't afford to put a roof over, and showers are normally cold, so all that mixed with drinking lots of cold beer makes me COLD. I would sit in my hostel drinking with every piece of clothing I owned on. (But I would never sacrifice the beer for tea or something... no drinking is too important.)
- People are generally friendly. If I asked them a question, they would tell me the answer even if they didn't know it. So I did a lot of walking back and forth sometimes.
- Bus companies, on the other hand, sometimes not so friendly. They generally blatantly lied to my face, so unless I was going on a more expensive bus from a very well known tourist company, I came to expect the opposite of what I was told.
- Beer is cheap.
- Food is also very cheap, but not that great. In Mancora, Peru, the greatest place on earth, the food was incredible, fresh seafood, delicious Mexican (I know, kind of weird) and all cheap and accompanied by even cheaper beer. Other than that, a great meal was rare.
- Vendors and taxi drivers are very persistent. It's sometimes hard to say no to vendors if you're actually looking to buy something and they are trying to sell you something more. Sometimes it all happened so quickly that I'd end up with two of something or a drink as well or a calculator or a bathroom scale when all I wanted was a snickers bar. Taxi drivers were easy to say no to. I definitely told off my fare share of drivers when they'd ask me if I wanted a taxi as I was getting off a bus after a LONG night. They would say "come on, how come you don't want a taxi" and then I'd swear at them. Ooops.
- Every town and city seems to have some kind of attraction. It's strange. You can see everything in South America. I saw cars decorated with flowers be blessed by a priest and 36 man-made-out-of-reed islands floating on lake titicaca.
(And people STILL live on these islands!) - Men hiss at you instead of whistling at you. And lots and lots of hissing occurs. Arequipa was the worst, though it may have been because I wore a tank top during the day there instead of two sweaters and a scarf.
