So sorry about the delay, friends. Here is the last Chile entry of our trip. Better late than never... My parents have raved about Chile for almost a decade. For years they shared stories about the friendly people, seafood, and the ever-popular... pisco sours. They first fell in love with the country when they started their Rotaplast International volunteer surgeries in South America operating in Valdivia. They are part of the reason Trevor and I knew we had to spend time in Chile during our Latin adventure, and after years of hearing about all that we were missing, meeting them there [View Full Entry]

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After 88 long-distance buses, we decided to enjoy Chile's coastal cordillera by boat. The Navimag is an industrial ferry carting cars and livestock beneath the deck, so it´s more a freight ferry than a cruise ship. But it´s also equipped with beds and a bar for a beautiful ride through the channel from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt full of sights unseen from the roads. We decided it would be a great way to continue our Patagonia exploration and also recover after hiking 90 miles in 7 days through Torres del Paine. We boarded the boat with 200 other people from [View Full Entry]

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Chile´s world-renowned national park is famous for weeks worth of hiking through amazing natural wonders, including its namesake granite towers that transcend into the sky, and one of the biggest ice fields on Earth. Naturally, we wanted to see it all, but we only had a week. No matter. We set off to cover 90 miles of trail in seven days. Sure, we had done nothing but drink malbec wine and eat grass-fed steak you can cut with a spoon since hiking to Machu Picchu. But pain, shmain, we say. We kicked of the trek with nearly a marathon of 24 [View Full Entry]

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After a late arrival in El Calafate (2am) and no plans we set up camp in a B&B´s backyard. We ended up there for three nights with a bunch of other folks from around the world. We got up late and used the day to do our errands and check out the town, which is very touristy. We spent that evening hanging out with a big group from around the world in the backyard. First we jammed and sang some crunchy tunes, passed the Mate around and then spent the rest of the night defending the U.S. against a handful of [View Full Entry]

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...the beginning of everything. We completed our adventure from the tippy-top of Latin America in Mexico to the very bottom of the continent when we rolled into Ushuaia, the world´s southernmost city. We got in after midnight and it was still twilight. It´s light here until all hours, which was lucky for us since we hadn´t yet found a bed yet. The fridged waters full of sailboats, cruise ships and a cluster of naval ships with mountain backdrop of snowy peaks makes Ushuaia an interesting mountain-maritime mixture. And it seems much of the rest of the globe is here with us [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to our first guest blog ever! Mitch is a professional, so please don´t expect writing like this to continue in the future when we return to blogging. We had so much fun with my Mom and Mitch for two weeks. They brought us the much-needed love and cheer that comes with Christmas. But I will let Mitch tell you all about it... LETTER FROM ARGENTINA By Mitchell Schechter For us, Argentina is a place where it grows late early. Part of that is the time difference, which was 3 hours ahead of NY and 5 in advance of CO throughout [View Full Entry]

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We are used to wild and crazy, white Christmases. We usually brave an annual mini-roadtrip on icy roads to see both our families at two to three houses before a snowy celebration full of skiing, sledding and ice skating. This is the first time we haven´t been with our families for Christmas so we weren´t sure what we would do in summer by ourselves. Luckily, our amiga Mercedes invited us to her family´s house for an authentic Argentine Christmas with her padres and all but one of four siblings home for the holidays. We met Mercedes in Sevilla, Spain six years [View Full Entry]

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Well, maybe a few butts... We discovered Sir Mixalot´s inspiration at Mar del Plata - and it wasn´t pretty. The thong is all the rage in the beach town south of Buenos Aires, so butts abound. And beach etiquette makes for full back views. Instead of getting their bronze on sprawled across towels, Argentines stand in small groups chatting with their feet in the chilly Pacific with their backsides facing the crowd. Our friends, Tristen and James, were nice enough to invite us to their timeshare in Mar del Plata. The Andersons also left their jobs in their home state of [View Full Entry]

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A meat wave is moving steadily south across Argentina. My junior year in college I experimented for a month with a then unheard of all meat diet (before old Atkins stole my idea). After eating only animal flesh for 3 weeks, I promptly diagnosed myself with meat exhaustion and called the whole thing off. Upon first glance, one might think that this sort of diet is unsustainable and take my first failed attempt as proof of this. But looking back, I attribute the failure to the quality of the meat (ie meatloaf, corn dogs, chuck steak, cattle drive chili) available to [View Full Entry]

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We took a quick jaunt to Uruguay to see what some call the ¨Miami of South America¨. The south beaches that we saw are cool and breezy, the mall is the place to be, and the people are addicted to matte. There was actually nothing gay about it if you don´t count the guy crooning in fish-nets and heels on the streets of Montevideo, so we finally stopped the silliness and pronounced the country´s name correctly. We traveled in style on our usual double-decker bus so we had a great view of the houses from around the world on the way. [View Full Entry]

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