See how diverse landscapes, community Minga service, and a new relationship with food quietly transform young travelers over 10 weeks in South America.
Traveling to Peru, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands is an experience that will no doubt lend itself to personal growth. This region of South America is exceptionally diverse in both landscape and culture, and vastly different from what someone who has never traveled outside of the United States will have ever been exposed to. This was the situation I was in, prior to traveling to South America for 10 weeks with Pacific Discovery. Many of the experiences I had on this journey resonate as some of my most vivid and profound, shining as a series of unique memories I could not have gathered anywhere else.
The region is a powerful place for personal growth for a myriad of reasons that would be impossible to list in their entirety, but I want to highlight a few mediums for transformation offered here in hopes of demonstrating the kind of nuance involved in the power of experiences like those offered by Pacific Discovery and the regions they travel to. Many of the greatest effects of an adventure like this one are not easily named or described. By the end of this post I hope to shift your focus toward these subtle, intangible forces of change by starting with a broad perspective and zooming into what’s happening between the lines.
Peru, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands is an enormous chunk of land to try to encapsulate. These two countries put together are roughly the same size as the entire west coast of the United States, including Nevada, Idaho, and nearly half of Utah and Arizona. For myself, that fact was mind-blowing, as I consider the western half of the US as some of the most expansive and diverse landscapes I can think of. The same degree of variation that exists between the High Desert of Southern California and the old-growth rainforests of the Pacific Northwest can be found in this section of the Andean Region of South America, yet settled and civilized in entirely different ways. The stark contrast between the subtropical highlands of Peru’s Sacred Valley, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Galapagos Islands offers a unique opportunity– To see who we are as our environment changes around us.
Everywhere we go holds a mirror for us. In a way, we are simply a synthesis of our environments, whether they be geographical, social, mental, or –especially relevant in today’s world– digital. These mirrors offer us insights about ourselves: How can we maintain our composure in the harsh remoteness of the Andes mountains? What happens to our ability to care for ourselves when we don’t have the same access to resources and comfort that we’re used to? How can we opt to appreciate the beauty of intense biological diversity when we’re surrounded by mosquitoes, spiders, and unidentified reptiles? What happens when we no longer have cell service or wifi?
As our environments change, so do the mirrors we’re exposed to. What is especially important and useful in our personal development is becoming familiar with the bridges between these environments. How can we bring the same relaxed easefulness with us that comes so naturally on the white sands of San Cristobal Island as we travel by river into the depths of the Amazon? Or, vice-versa, how do we bring the same focused alertness we found searching for rare wildlife with us as we leave the jungle? Both of these pieces exist inside us at all times. As we travel through environments that highlight these parts of us, our ability to create the internal environments that give us access to these traits grows.
For example, we get to directly experience the beautiful moments that occur spending time with strangers when we don’t have access to the digital environments that constantly beg to monetize our attention. The more environments that help us practice this, mindfully tuning in to our surroundings ceases to feel so difficult. Through our experience of this land, we are subtly guided toward breadth and flexibility.
These bridges, the parts that remain consistent as our environments change, help us to know who we truly are. As we move into different stages of our life, significant transitions give us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Moving from high school to college, we have an opportunity to be a version of ourselves that’s free from the assumptions and projections of our previous social circles. As we decide which parts of us to carry over the bridge and how to nurture the traits highlighted by our new mirrors, travel poses the opportunity to practice this skill with a high number of repetitions. This region of South America is especially potent, but not entirely due to the incredible diversity found in its landscapes.
Of course, diversity of landscape leads to diversity in ways of life. There is a high degree of value here as well. Someone traveling to this region for the first time will be exposed to ways of life highly different to their own. It’s important for a young person to receive exposure to lifestyles different from those they’re used to in their home country. The lifestyles found in this region, in many cases, lead to a higher degree of happiness and fulfillment. Additionally, fulfillment is often achieved through a set of values that for the most part are not dependent on money, material excess, or privilege.
Stripping away the comforts of first-world youth, we begin to see the true roots of fulfilment and happiness. Of course there is no simple answer to this, but it becomes clearer that deep social and familial relationships, communal interdependence, simple and meaningful work, and a closer relationship to our food are all parts of this equation that are often overlooked in the stereotypical rubric for success in America.
Through homestays and service, students on a Pacific Discovery program will experience this firsthand. One of our service projects in Ecuador involved clearing brush and debris from a large stairway on a path many children walked every day on their way to school. The stairway had a mural whose former glory was restored as a product of our work. The task was relatively straightforward and certainly laborious, yet the impact was readily visible and enjoyed by many every day. Students were stoked by the before and after photos, feeling proud and invigorated by having completed a task that would be insurmountable without a community coming together to complete it.
It’s inspiring to see the outcomes that become possible with a community coming together over a few days to achieve a common goal. The mural restoration was just one example of collaboration toward a common goal, and stacking these wins over the course of 10 weeks had a profound impact on the group’s trust in one another and willingness to do hard work together. This sort of work - known as Minga in Quechua - is a core facet of the cultures of this region, yet I cannot easily think of examples of this in the culture I grew up in, despite the higher degree of privilege and more than sufficient access to resources.
One final aspect of the transformative power of this region I will highlight here is the relationship with food that is so vastly different from what most of us are brought up into. Food is sourced locally and in-season. Freshly made fruit juice is common at every meal. Ingredients are simple. Processing is limited and seen as for the most part unnecessary. Meals are built to nourish first and taste delicious second. Nothing should go to waste. Sustainability is executed without being leveraged as a profit buzz-word.
The advice given by fitness and health influencers is exhibited organically here and shown to be the default in a culture with a good relationship with food: A diet should consist primarily of a high variety of clean, whole foods. The effects of this style of cooking and eating can be felt in a matter of weeks. After a period of adjustment, gastrointestinal issues tend to lessen or disappear entirely. People have more energy, skin is healthier, and minds are clearer. There is a level of intentionality here that can have an outsized impact on our lives.
Of course, this is a beautiful ideal that we should all aspire to, but the most important impact of a relationship with food like this one is sitting beneath the surface: it is a fundamental relationship with consumption, not just with food, and the intentionality can be expanded into more areas of our life. How we eat is the root of how we consume, but it’s no secret that we consume in a number of different ways. We consume content and information, we consume interaction, we consume substances, time, and resources. If we focus first on our relationship with food and eating, by dialing this in we will then have a template for how we consume in other ways.
This is of extreme importance living in a paradoxical society where we idolize those with a perfect body and lifestyle who achieve success through hard work, yet we are constantly bombarded by advertisements and media meant to increase our craving, persuade us to continue consuming, and seek convenience above all else. By finding a simple template to consume healthily, we have a way to cut through the noise that we practice multiple times each day. It is a way to build healthy habits surrounding one of our most basic needs, and have it expand beyond habit into lifestyle and wellbeing. In the case of media content, similar rules can be applied: Support local, limit processing, focus on nourishment, avoid creating waste, consume slowly and not in excess, etc. Metaphorically, we learn to value our fruits and veggies. Building this habit will inevitably lead to transformation, and by spending time in this region of South America, the seeds of transformation will be planted and nurtured.
Seeds of Transformation
Of course, this is a cursory glance into the world of ways in which Peru and Ecuador are potent places for personal growth. The full spectrum here could only be understood through direct experience. However, it has been my intention to highlight not only the most obvious ways traveling to this region will promote transformation.Through the diversity of landscapes, alternative lifestyles, and healthier relationships with food, it is clear that there is deep nuance to how these experiences help us grow.
Through spending 10 weeks in South America with Pacific Discovery, students will be supported in their growth in these ways and systematically brought into experiences that carry immense potency for personal development in such a pivotal stage of a young person’s life.
Posted by Doreen Mesman on April 08, 2026
