Peru

I lived in Arequipa in 2012, a white stone city surrounded by volcanoes, and it's still one of my favorite places I've ever called home. Some of my best meals had no names. A taco eaten standing on a sidewalk, ceviche at lunch, a stadium after the game had cleared out and gone quiet. From there I took the trips everyone takes: Colca Canyon to watch condors and, eventually, Cusco.

Cusco's altitude flattened me for two days. Then I rode PeruRail through the Sacred Valley to Aguas Calientes and went up to Machu Picchu, which looks exactly like the photos and still knocks the air out of you. The terraces, the clouds sitting on Huayna Picchu, a lone tree on the ridge. In the Andes I watched an old man walk up a slope I could barely crawl, and women in woven shawls cross the plaza like the altitude was nothing. Peru is the real thing.