Happiness, as Ross Wehner and Renée del Gaudio discovered, is an open road, a borrowed jeep, and an entire country to explore. They spent ten months—and eight flat tires—zigzagging across the Andes to find the best travel experiences Peru has to offer.

A highlight of Ross and Renée’s research was kayaking across Lake Titicaca at dawn, with the orange orb of the sun popping over sapphire waters and lighting up a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. They climbed in the Cordillera Blanca, built a balsa raft in the Manu jungle, hiked the Inka Trail, and searched for lost cities in the Chachapoyas cloud forest.

Ross is founder of World Leadership School, an organization that helps young people learn to lead on global issues. Before that, he worked for seven years as a journalist in Peru and other Latin American countries. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Ski, and other publications, and has also worked as a wilderness educator for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Ross holds a master’s degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of Virginia.

As an architect, Renée has long considered Machu Picchu to be the world’s finest example of architecture integrating with the landscape. She runs her own architecture practice, Renée del Gaudio Architecture, focused on sustainable, modern design. Her designs have been published in Dwell and House Beautiful, which ranked her as one of the Top 25 Next Wave Designers in America. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Renée and Ross live in Denver, Colorado and have two children, Sebastian and Francesca.