Avoiding acts of God
Although a potentially cruel and selfish thought, I'm glad the hurricanes and earthquakes are getting themselves out of the way before I arrive in the Americas!
But seriously, the Peruvian earthquake was devastating, and it will be interesting/sad to see the effects of this which I'm sure will still be evident in places when I'm there around December.
The plan for me is to basically start in Mexico (Cancun of all places, ugh) and from there travel around the Yucatan and down Central America to Costa Rica. I have a flight from Costa Rica to Lima, Peru at the start of December, so from there I'll be cruising around the South America countries - Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina...maybe a bit of Brazil. Then it's off to Italia for some indefinite time.