He believed love didn’t exist.

She believed love came with an expiration date.

A linguist from Argentina and a physicist from Silicon Valley moved to Munich on the same day in 1986 and began an unlikely romance with an agreement: careers first, commitment last. When he had to leave Germany, their agreement began to fall apart. He couldn’t stay, and she wouldn’t move with him. A friend who had lost everything suggested a third way: put on a backpack, go somewhere far away, and find your path there.

During an epic yearlong journey from Cairo to Cape Town on twenty dollars a day, they moved through pre-digital Africa, where everything had a spirit, and all that they’d believed began to unravel.