So, no new pics this time. After finding ourselves very lucky throughout this trip in the midst of hearing many stories of other people who were robbed or lost valuable items, it finally happened to us. Our camera was stolen yesterday sometime while traveling from the bus terminal to our hostel (the crowded subway was the most likely place). We had about 1000 pictures (maybe more). Alas. We did, thankfully, put the pictures from the first 4 weeks in Buenos Aires onto my computer. And I guess it really paid off to put the pictures onto this blog througout the rest [View Full Entry]

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We spent two days on the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls: one day we explored the jungle in the Iguazu Falls Park and the other day was spent actually seeing all of the falls. The jungle: It was awesome! I am convinced that some time in my future I need to spend more time exploring jungles, and wish we had more time on this trip to see the Amazon... alas... We got to the park relatively early in the morning, for the best chance of seeing some wildlife. This part of Iguazu is apparently rarely explored (most people just come for [View Full Entry]

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Hola Amigos! So, we spent several days in Mendoza and now are back in the big city. Buenos Aires feels like home after all that travel! In Mendoza, we spent one entire day doing a "wine and bikes" tour, where we rented bikes and rode around checking out various wineries, olive oil factories, a vodka factory, and chocolate and liquor factory. It was a beautiful, sunny day... perfect for relaxing out in the vineyards with some wine (or vodka...). And unlike wine tours in the states, here they give pretty extensive tours of the vineyards and factories, so we learned lots [View Full Entry]

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Being chased by snow: Since leaving Buenos Aires we have, for the most part, been very lucky weather-wise. In Ushuaia, we backpacked for four days and on the last day woke up to snow dusting the mountains that we had climbed the day before. In Chalten, we did another 4 day backpacking trip, had sun the whole time until it poured rain on our last day. We talked with some people who were in Chalten less than a week after we left and they said there was shin-deep snow and they closed several of the higher-up trails that we had taken. [View Full Entry]

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Bariloche: An alpine resort town set on the beautiful Lake Nahuel Huapi, in the midst of the Andes with forests all around. This is the hub for amazing trekking and other outdoor adventures, and to top it off it is the chocolate capital of Argentina, has cool architecture and has some really great pubs! This is our favorite Argentine destination since leaving Buenos Aires and we´re happy to be able to spend almost another week here! Our Update: We spent another 3 nights/4 days trekking through the mountains and had a great time! This was probably the most challenging trekking we [View Full Entry]

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OK, here are all of the pics I promised from our adventures in El Chalten! A little background on Chalten: it is in southern Patagonia and is home of the Fitz Ray Masiff, a rugged mountain that on many lists of the hardest mountains in the world to climb... the area and mountains are notorious for high winds and big storms that can be very unpredictable. So, basically we got really lucky with the weather the first few days and took advantage of it by doing lots of backpacking. Then the last day a storm blew in and it poured rain [View Full Entry]

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Hola! I dont have much time to write because unfortunately internet is very expensive here (one satellite connection for the town) and there is no plug in to be able to post pictures, but we wanted to send out a quick update. We will be leaving here tonight at 11:30 PM to head up to Bariloche via a 33 hour bus trip, (yikes!)... Bariloche is sky resort town on a lake and is much bigger than the 600 population El Chalten where we are now, so I will be able to write a longer blog there and post some pictures... and [View Full Entry]

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We are in El Calafate now, a small town in the southern patagonia area (but north of where we were last, in Ushuaia). This town is where people come to see the Perito Moreno Glacier, a massive block of ice that is know for being one of few glaciers that is actually advancing and not receding (global warming for ya). It moves outward at about 7 feet per day and is over 200 feet high! I guess that every so often it advances to the land and creates a dam of water behind it and when the pressure is great enough [View Full Entry]

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We made it to the end of the world, well the southernmost city in the world that is! Guess I should update about the end of our time in Buenos Aires, since it´s been a while since I´ve posted. It was quite sad to leave the city and our school where we got to know a lot of our teachers and the locals at the school. We learned quite a bit of Spanish in just 4 weeks... the owner of our apartment who checked us out of our room just before we left remarked to me "you´ve learned so much", I [View Full Entry]

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For easter weekend, we wanted to get out of the city, but were told that it's one of the busiest travel weekends of the year around here. To investigate for ourselves, we (collaborating with a classmate) went down to the major bus terminal which sends busses out to all ends of the country and beyond and, very last minute (i.e. a few hours before the busses left) tried to book a trip out to Iguazu to see the falls for the 3 day weekend. After spending over an hour at the bus station comparing prices, we were able to find cheap [View Full Entry]

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