A personalised map of South America

A friend wanted a memento of his daughter's travels around South America, marking events and places personal to her, so he asked me to create a personalised map relating to her trip. It was an ongoing process, as we worked out how it was going to work, so to begin with, I started off by doing the outline of South America...

Then, it was decided that rather than doing the whole continent, I'd only fill in the countries that the daughter had actually visited, so I went back, and outlined the countries. I also got information on the things that the daughter had been up to, and I started working out which of those I could recreate recognisably in a tiny stylised way, and began placing them in pencil around the map in the appropriate places.

Once the main items were in place, as I waited for more information on Brazil activities, I began to darken the country borders to make them clearer when the doodles were in, and began doodling in the edges. I really quite liked it at this point, with just touches of filigree at various random places.

Once I had the final bits of information, I got going on the filling in. So, 8 hours of work later, this is the final map, incorporating llamas, quad bikes, cycling, wineries, lots of drinking, Gay Pride, many credit and debit card losses, a capybara, a boat ride, Machu Picchu, a bungee jump, a piranha, a inter-peak cable basket, lots of hiking, a sloth, an anaconda, a cockroach, a phone in a drink, a waterfall, and the staple of travellers everywhere, table tennis.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and hopefully the recipient will be too :D