One of my goals for this gap year was to read the right books at the right moments. Whenever I travel, I promise myself I’ll read the classic tome of my destination, but rarely do I really get farther than buying and lugging it along. This time is different. I’ve read Darwin in the Galapagos,…

Argentina and Chile lie, spooning each other, with the great Andes mountains between them. We’ve crossed these mountains twice by bus – in 8 hour stretches, climbing as high as 4800 meters before descending. We can easily tell the vicuña from the llamas, and we are learning to enjoy blaring dubbed movies on the bus….

After Halloween in the jungle, I’ll admit I was a skeptic about Thanksgiving on a ranch. The whole extended family flew all the way to Buenos Aires and we weren’t even going to try to get them some turkey? Instead we spent our non-traditional holiday on a typical Argentinian Estancia, horseback riding, watching traditional gaucho…

It was an early morning clinic in the Belén area of Iquitos. Women, most of them with children in tow, trudged up the wooden stairs of the stilted home where our clinic was located for the day. There were two exam rooms for the cervical screening, and I set up a Dermatology consult table on the…

Every year, more than 300,000 women worldwide die from cervical cancer. Over 85% of those deaths occur in developing nations. In fact, cervical cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths for women in low and middle income countries. Perhaps the most unsettling factor: Human papillomavirus (HPV), the group of viruses that cause cervical…

Surviving the Wilderness (Manu Jungle) Day 1: mosquito bites: 0 (v. g.) suitcases: 1, bottles of DEVACURL 4 (excellent), number of spiders in bed: 0 3 am: why the heck am I awake 7 am: morning sunrise over Andes mountains, and only 10 hours of travel to go~ very good progress 9 am: you call…

It’s awesome to say that you’ve been to a ancient wonder of the world so I was super excited. For those who don’t know, Machu Picchu is an amazing ancient Inca city of ruins, which is on top of a mountain. Machu Pichu means old mountain in Quechua, the Inca language. The Inca temples are…

Maybe it’s that this town is too small, or maybe it’s that we’ve been here too long, but everyone is starting to look pretty familiar. When we walk in the market, our patients greet us and introduce their families to us. We know the local “collectivo” driver, who races his white van up and down…

This was the week I had been both dreading and anticipating.  Andrew was heading back to the US for a whirlwind week of seeing patients in DC and NYC, and I was staying in Ecuador with the kids. You would think that after spending no less than 1,800 continuous hours together, we would be ripe…

Hour 1: “Still cannot believe we fit everything in the back of the pick-up truck” -Gail Hour 2: “are we there yet?” -Julia Hour 3: “Mimi get off of me, you’re the worst” -Lena  Hour 4: “I can’t see the road- we are driving through a cloud” -Andrew Hour 5: everyone (except our fantastic chauffeur…