The Way We Love: Tripping Into Purpose in South America

The Way We Love: Tripping into Purpose in South America exists for the most basic of reasons. Andrea Nicole Aylard, who hails from Edmonton, Alberta, has a story to tell. Starting out as a personal travel journal, The Way We Love helped Andrea cope with the stress of being alone in Argentina. Incapable of speaking fluent Spanish at the time, she hoped to eventually see the humour in her predicament. However, when she finally began to realize how six months in South America would seriously affect her life, she decided to share her journal with friends and family to show them how she had changed, and why. Feeling like a stranger in her own skin, she wonders if the differences between the Now Andrea and Past Andrea aren?t as glaringly obvious to others as she thinks they are, but she still believes she owes everyone an explanation in regards to what happened in South America.

Andrea is a true traveler. She has stayed in many a grungy hostel, survived on peanut butter, and spent months bathing in a bucket. It was no surprise, therefore, that she jumped at the chance to participate in an exchange semester as part of her international management and accounting degree. She chose to go to Argentina because she was learning Spanish, but mostly for the tango and the steak. She realistically knew next-to-nothing about the country. A month before her university classes started in Cordoba, she and her friend Dauna-Rae visited Buenos Aires, Mendoza and Iguacu in Argentina before travelling through Valparaiso, Vina del Mar, Santiago, and Arica in Chile, La Paz and Copacabana in Bolivia, and Punta del Este and Montevideo in Uruguay. Following this whirlwind backpacking adventure, Andrea went on to spend five months in school, and as soon as classes ended, she was left with three weeks to do as she pleased.

Andrea invites her readers to witness the slow and unintentional transformation she experienced during her time in South America, which profoundly influenced the core of her being in the most obvious and discreet of ways. Events made it impossible to lead a comfortable life while others suffered, which meant she could never return to the way things were. Biased, satirical, and highly entertaining, her book is about travel and self-discovery.