Bolivia has been good to us. We took a 9 hr. train that might or might not have derailed for a minute from Uyuni to Oruro to connect with a bus to La Paz, at 3,600 meters is the highest capital in the world. La Paz is an incredible city. It is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, if Jackson Hole had 10,000,000 dirty little people and no toilet paper. The city sprawls itself to fit inside a bowl formed by snowy mountains. We strolled around the city two days; admiring architecture, visiting museums (one agricultural and one cultural/folklore), and shopping the black market. [View Full Entry]

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In Bolivia now. There was a fork in the road: one way, paved and painted and pointing towards Argentina-- the other, a wide expanse of desert with numerous tire tracks going in one somewhat general direction...Bolivia! Here, the mountains are tall, the people are short and the gap between modern and antiquated is wide. The past three days we´ve been bouncing over jagged rocks, careening across deserts and gliding over the world´s largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni. All in a Toyota Land Cruiser circa 1986, whose mechanical woes added an extra flavor to the trip. The rear axel started popping [View Full Entry]

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After 28 hours and 3 buses we arrived in the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. It´s only rained here like twice in 400 years or something. It really is a vast, gourgeous wasteland. A conformity of giant sandy dunes and deep red canyons. No life is here because no life could or would want to live here. It´s only beautiful. The area around it is called the Valley of the Moon because they say there is no geology in Earth so similar to that of the moon as the Atacama desert. NASA used to keep a base here for experiments. Very bleak [View Full Entry]

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After stopping in Valdivia, Chile and finding sea lions, and then, a quiet fishing pier to sip our box wine, we continued on to the capital (10 more hours in the bus). We spent 3 days in Santiago... the 30th and 31st of December, and then the 1st of January. The city rests at the foothills of the Andes range, which can be seen from the city. ¨There´s something kind of great about being smack in the middle of a metropolis and then looking up and seeing, to your surprise, the second-highest mountain range in the world just a few kilometers [View Full Entry]

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we´ve had requests to know who got what for Christmas: Emma got Graham: an Argentine military issued fork and knife set for eating meat. Graham got Gordo: a camping cup which he had to secretly give to him without the girls knowing because he needed it for Torres del Paine. Gordo feigned surprise upon reaching into his stocking. Gordo got Elise: chocolate from Bariloche and a symbol of friendship for the four of us Elise got Emma: a Casio watch with a pink rim so she would stop asking what time it was. Off in 30 minutes for a bus to [View Full Entry]

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It has been a few days since we last found the time to throw some words up here. We took a 32 hour bus ride from Chile to Bariloche, Argentina. It sounds bad but we played spades (girls: 578, boys: -77), ate lots of salami, bread, cheese and apple sandwiches, and did loooots of sleeping. The highlight came at a gas station where a baby guanaco (llama look alike) had wandered into the parking lot and was garnering much attention. Christmas Eve found us with a rental car once we reached Bariloche and a cabin right across from a beach on [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile on the 18th realizing a bus leaves to Torres Del Paine (another place tied with 2,000 others as the ¨8th Wonder of the World¨) only 30 minutes later. We made the decision to rush and make the bus, which was a difficult decision knowing whatever was in our packs at the time we boarded would be all we would have access to for the next 4-5 days. So we bought noodles, soups, bread, cheese, beans, beans, and honey at the nearby Chino market and visited three ATMS that did not deposit Chilean Pesos so we [View Full Entry]

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El Calafate. Probably the most expensive place we will be the whole trip. And probably the coolest glacier (do i mean cold) in the whole wide world. We have managed to get a cute little two bedroom house at Los Pinos for 40 usd a night equipped with a well-stocked kitchen, too comfortable beds and a laundromat around the corner. Our first day here, after a big homemade breakfast, we got hooked on the idea of buying a car, even leaving a note on the windshield of this bright yellow miniature 1970s mail-like truck. All of this curiosity and asking everybody [View Full Entry]

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It´s hard to get too excited about Ushuia when you read about it in the guide books. ¨A place to go just so you can say you have been to the southernmost city in the world.´´ or ¨´the gateway to Antartica¨ Oh, but the contrary! Thanks to the boys we had a wonderful campsite out of town (El fin del Faro del Playa Larga) in the greenest of greens underneath the gnarledest of trees on the side of the ocean, seeming as if to sail out would be sure proof that the world is indeed flat! The first day we were [View Full Entry]

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¨The secret is to be silent, look North, toward immense America, and decode what the wind tells you. Galloping, shouts of the Indian raider cutting throats, gunshots, brandy festivities. The dew. The inevitable calm. Cries of captive women sounding like orgasms. Later, allow yourself to become possessed. Reincarnate in the ferocity of the Indian Guaicaiperu Listen to the lemanjä, to Ochum, to Obatalä. Take in the mysticism and idealism of the murals of Mexico and then switch, adapting them to the current commercialism, codes in this senseless global village--Armani-Dolce and Gabbana-m [View Full Entry]

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