My partner and I are South Africans who were looking for an adventure and a break from our lives working in an office in Cape Town. When we first started looking at options to start our “adventure” we had a few requirements. First it was essential we travel to a place where we would be able to learn the local language relatively easily. Second, we needed to earn money, we did not have the resources to travel for months on end with no income. This is the story of how teaching English went from an adventure to a life, starting in Peru and ending in Argentina.
We started considering the idea of teaching English as a foreign language because we are both native speakers and we always enjoyed working with people, something we were deprived of in our cubicles at the time. When considering where we might go to teach English and keeping in mind the local language we settled on Latin America because Spanish might not be easy, but at least the alphabet was familiar and many words have cognates in English, reducing the difficulty greatly. Once we made up our minds about working in Latin America we started to research where on the continent exactly. The first place that came to mind when thinking of “Adventure” was obviously “Peru” the country of mystery and spirituality. Peru is a country willed with the mysterious, places like Machu Picchu and Saqsaywaman, not only mysterious, but also spiritual and awe-inspiring. This was when we encountered the Maximo Nivel institute. Maximo Nivel offered a one month intensive TEFL certification on-site and teaching positions to those who prove themselves capable during the TEFL course in the center of Peruvian culture, Cusco.
For our final second requirement to earn a salary, Maximo Nivel offers a salary sufficient for life in Latin America. We had many long weekends and public holidays to take trips and enough money to pay for our trips. The salary is paid in US Dollars (Something we appreciated a lot being South African) and is paid every 15 days approximately, making it easy to budget for our expenses and adventures. Earning a salary was the biggest requirement for us before going abroad. Having met all our expectations, we packed our bags and bought our tickets for Cusco Peru.
We arrived in Cusco after 3 days of traveling and were immediately met at the airport in this strange place by a friendly man from Maximo Nivel with a giant yellow smiley face on a pole to get our attention. We were taken from the airport to our accommodation with a Peruvian family to help us settle into our new surroundings for our first month. Pilar our host mother was the sweetest woman, who we had a lot of laughs with, and me being an avid football fan bonded with her over the 2019 Copa America tournament which we watched together supporting Peru until they narrowly missed out in the final vs Brazil. Along with Pilar and her black labrador “Nacho” we also met another fellow traveler and English teacher also living in Pilar’s house from the United States, who was proficient in Spanish, something I am very thankful for until this day.
We enjoyed our lives in Cusco, traveling to different places, learning Spanish, and taking classes offered to English teachers at Maximo Nivel for free. As our Spanish improved and we became more comfortable in Cusco we started making lasting connections with fellow teachers, students and the people of Cusco the “adventure” quickly turned into our everyday life. We learnt to salsa dance, make ceviche and how to adapt to a new culture. The Peruvian people will always have a special place in our hearts, their generosity, kindness and open heartedness really made it impossible not to fall in love with the culture and the people of Peru.
After about 9 months of our time in Cusco the world faced a great challenge, COVID-19. At first we feared what would become of us in this foreign country away from our people and without work, as the institute was forced to close and classes were halted. We would not need to be anxious for long as Maximo Nivel quickly went online. We could continue working and earning an income without going into the institute and working from the safety of our apartment in San Blas. The addition of Maximo Online was a blessing in disguise, because after the worst of the pandemic had passed and borders started to open up again, we started to think “what’s next”.
Argentina had always been a place we wanted to visit and experience. With our Spanish at a very respectable level and our confidence in ourselves at an all-time high after adapting in this strange place we embarked on a new adventure. We made the move from Cusco down to Buenos Aires to start our new lives here, now working for the thriving online Maximo Nivel institute we were free to travel as we wanted without the uncertainty of where our income would come from. In Argentina I was able to experience them being crowned champions of the world in the 2022 FIFA world cup. Had it not been for Maximo Nivel online we would not have been able to travel with such confidence. Argentina has been very good to us, and we have decided to stay here for the long term, enjoying the food, the culture and of course going to the football every other weekend with my Argentinian friends.
Our journey went from looking for a short adventure to deciding to make Latin America our home. We have made friends from almost every country on the continent and are now near fluent in the language after spending 4 years on the continent. We are heading back to South Africa for the first time since we left in 2019 for our wedding. Our friends here would have to watch the ceremony on a video link, but we are excited to see our loved ones. After the wedding we will be returning to Argentina to continue our lives here as husband and wife. The journey has been surprising and without its challenges, but now our lives are an adventure and our own “happily ever after”.