Ai Ya Begorra

A little late for January 1st and a little early for the Year of the Golden Rabbit. Oh well, that's the result of two kids. Here is the new year's card tht will have to do double duty. img=... read more

So after all the wandering around, how do you let people know that you're back and ready to settle down with the mortgage and kids (those are the real ball and chain) like an adult? Well, since it's the holidays, we could send out one of the cliched holidaylogs into letters. But there is too much to say. How do we compress 8 months of blog entries into 8 1/2 by 11? By our fantastic pictures, of course. What we have left after the Peruvians and Hong Kongnese have had their ways with our cameras. So, this year you will be getting a "Look at our new house and new kids" card. See, mom, we're all grown up and you can stop being ashamed of us! We've even given you offspring to spoil rotten! Just don't ... read more

In case you weren't keeping track, in the 7 1/2 months we've been on the road, we went to (in order of preference): 1 Argentina 1 New Zealand (yes joint number 1's) 3 Vietnam 4 Singapore 5 Ecuador 6 Australia 7 Brazil 8 Hong Kong 9 Brazil 10 Chile 11 Malaysia 12 Uruguay (not a slight really) FAVORITE NATURAL WONDERS 1. Torres del Paine National Park in Chile 2. Iguazu Falls in Argentina/Brazil 3. Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand 3. Milford and Doubtful Sound in New Zealand 4. Galapagos Islands in Ecuador 6. Great Barrier Reef in Australia 7. Pantanal in Brazil 8. Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina 9. Whitehaven Beach in Australia 10. Noosa Heads in Australia 11. Halong Bay FAVORITE C... read more

Now that we are finishing up our seventh month on the road, quite a few people have been asking us whether we are still having fun. The answer is an unqualified YES. In fact, we have reached a whole new level of fun. We are now having so much fun, it hurts. For example, we were in Bariloche, which is kind of like Argentina's version of Aspen or Vale, when it began to snow. Being an L.A. girl, I was mesmerized by the swirls of snowflakes and raced outside with the other city folk to marvel at the flurries. I've skied before, but most of the time, the ski resorts in So. Cal. manufacture snow. It doesn't really fall out of the sky. So I'm staring up at the sky like Chicken Little when a little ... read more

When we first started this trip, we fully expected to lose things. Most importantly, we wanted to lose our too-structured, over-stressed, over-worked lives. But we also knew that we would lose the occasional jacket, ipod or sunglasses. The thing that we did not want to lose by any means were those things that could not be replaced, like our memories and our pictures. Which it why I was so upset when we lost our camera in Macau and thus, all our New Zealand and Australia pictures. And then this website went offline and we nearly lost all our blog entries. Thankfully, we didn´t. Mostly due to the hard work of my friend, Wayne, who managed to recover the entries from the ether. Anyway, this is a long way of explaining that this is going to be ... read more

Argentina has proved to be our undoing...of the pants, that is. It's eat, shop, snack, siesta, eat, avoid stepping on dog shit, eat, sleep. Every day, all day. Yeah, it's been tough. Which is why we are finding it so hard to leave the country. We´ve already spent a month here, most of it in Buenos Aires where we rented a kick-ass apartment, complete with a jacuzzi tub, wi-fi, flat screen, and cable (for about $40 a night!). It´s so nice not to have to pack and unpack every other day. It´s also nice to be able to cook what I want (veggies and anything with spice) and have the option of staying home and doing nothing when the weather is bad. It even snowed once. Yeah, it was snowing in July in Buenos Aires, the ... read more

So, after all of these blogs, you're probably thinking, "Peter and Dinh are having the worst time in South America. Their camera gets stolen, they get fish guts sprayed all over them, Dinh nearly dies climbing some mountain in Peru, they can't afford heat, etc." Nothing could be further from the truth. We are having the time of our lives. We just like to whine and complain. Alot. Besides which, it makes for better blog entries. Who wants to read about two lucky people travelling around for months having the time of their lives? Where's the drama and/or comedy in that? But even we could not find much to complain about once we crossed the Andes and entered the promised land--Argentina! Seriously, we heart Argentina. (Am I gushing?) Our first stop in the holy land ... read more

So we sped through Chile. It was cold and Peter was too cheap to get us a room with heat. Also, it was really expensive relative to the other S. American countries we had visited. But mostly, we left Chile because Peter nearly beat the shit out of some guy in Valparaiso and I wanted to get out of the country before he completely lost it. In Peter's defense, the guy was a dirtbag. Keep in mind that Chile is supposed to be the safest country in S. America. We were innocently walking along in Valparaiso, a pretty bohemian coastal town in Chile about 2 hours north of Santiago. It actually reminded us of Venice, especially since the much wealthier and tidier neighboring city, Vina del Mar, reminded us so much of Santa Monica. It was ... read more

The Photos We Should Have Posted Before South America By Ai Ya Begorra June 17th 2007 Dinh and PeterHere's a much edited group of photos from our time in Ecuador and Peru. ... read more