The tiny Peruvian town of Huacachina is the ultimate desert oasis. The picturesque lagoon is ringed with perfect palms and backed by soaring, razor-edged dunes. Beyond playing desert fantasy, Huacachina is also the starting point for one of Peru’s most famous adventures: a heart-racing dune buggy and sandboarding odyssey that will literally stop your heart. Normally, we prefer to enjoy our dunes on foot, but buggy rides are just THE THING to do here.

So during our two-day stay, we spent one afternoon exploring the vast dune sea strapped in the back of a speeding dune buggy. The ride totally got our adrenaline pumping, but also scared the hell out of us. Some of the dunes we tackled were so steep, it seemed Continue…

ContemporaryNomad.com is now live on Instagram. Ever since we arrived in Peru, we have been uploading shots of our daily adventures to our new account. It’s a great way to follow our daily activities, and it allows us to document some of our adventures live. Pretty cool. It’s also a great way for friends and fellow nomads to check out our current location should anyone want to get together for a beer or, perhaps, jaguar tracking in the Amazon.

You don’t have to sign up to view the pics, but if you do have an account, don’t forget to follow us, like our photos, and leave tons of comments. We love to hear from everybody.

At last, after months of pyramid-hopping, we have made it to Mexico’s queen of pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun. At 71.2 m, it is the highest pyramid in Mexico and completely dominates the archaeological site of Teotihuacan outside of Mexico City. It is absolutely massive!

As we approached the hulking structure with its monstrous base, we kept oohing and ahhing. Rather than immediately running up the 248 steps to the top, we headed straight for the Continue…

Mexico City is huge, overwhelming, chaotic, loud, totally insane and absolutely spectacular. The entire city feels like an edgy work of art done by some artist who is destined to be completely misunderstood for life. Perhaps that’s why until our visit, I completely misunderstood one of North America’s greatest destinations.

Yes, it’s polluted and, at times, dangerous. But it is arguably the culturally richest place in the Americas. Mexico City is literally built on the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. One of the oldest colonial cities in the new world, the inhabitants of Mexico City were strolling past Spanish Baroque while the first colonial Americans were patching the holes in their drafty log cabins with mud. Some cities would be content to rest on their historical laurels, but Mexico City is a constantly Continue…

Yay, thanks to our followers and USA TODAY readers, we have been selected one of the 10 Best Travel Blogger Couples. Congratulations to all the other winners as well as all the nominees. If you are visiting from USA TODAY, we welcome you to our blog and our social media pages:

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We’ve been nominated as one of USA Today’s best travel blogging couples. Readers are asked to vote for their favorite couple and the top ten will be revealed after voting closes on August 6, 2014. It is already a great honor to be nominated, but we sure would love to be in the top 10. So if you have a few minutes to spare, please head over to the voting page and vote for us. If you need some convincing why we deserve to be on the list, here are a few of our accomplishments Continue…