Beyond the Galaxy: UHECR results from the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array

The beginning of the 21st century has brought much progress into the field of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays particularly through the completion of the Pierre Auger Observatory first and the Telescope Array later on. The success of these detectors follows from their hybrid character combining the advantages of the fluorescence technique for energy determination with the larger exposure provided by an array of particle detectors. In this article we review the important contributions made by both experiments concerning the spectrum, anisotropy searches and composition studies. We discuss how these measurements have contributed to progress in the field, partially solving long standing puzzles, and how they have also led to new challenges that are likely to constitute the driving force of the field in the immediate future. (paper)