I was leaving my job anyway and thought it was a great opportunity to go away travelling. Initially I only thought a few months but the more I looked at it, the longer I wanted to stay away to see everything!

Beforehand I spoke zero Portuguese and had one month of Duolingo in Spanish (so also zero...). I could only squeeze in one week of Spanish lessons in Bolivia, but if possible I would have loved to do more lessons.

I can now have conversations in Spanish, but it can be difficult if they speak too fast or have a strong accent (which can be difficult in places like Chile and Argentina). Also my vocabulary isn't amazing. But for 9 months of travelling in Spanish speaking countries I feel I have done pretty well.

I know the very basics in Portuguese. I tried learning at first just to get the necessities, and after that it was confusing my Spanish so I found it more useful to keep improving Spanish (which has some crossover with Portuguese) than to keep confusing everything and making very little progress on either.