Hello all, We had a good time in Valdivia, Chile. We stayed in a "haunted house". Okay, it wasn´t really haunted, but it sure looked that way from the outside. Ryan dug it from the minute he laid eyes on it. Ana´s opinion was different. To her it looked ancient from the outside and was dark and in slight disrepair inside. The house was built in 1903 and became unlevel during the huge earthquake of 1960. Ana did warm up to the place once the cat, Josefina, napped on her lap through an entire movie. Plus, the room was large and [View Full Entry]

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Hola everyone, Ryan here. Do you like our new home? I think it will do for a while. Notice that there are a lot pictures that we have added to the old emails (blogs). I´ve had free high speed Internet access at our guesthouse for the last few days, so I spent way too much time putting this page together. Though technology-wise, it is incredibly easy. The only problem I foresee is that we often can´t do pictures as quickly as blogs. So if you are reading this blog the same day I´ve written it, you probably won´t see any pictures. [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, We arrived in Puerto Montt, Chile this morning and are now in Castro on the island of Chiloe'. We will be in the Lakes Region (Chile and Argentina) for a week and a half or two weeks. How was Navimag? It was the best cruise of the PataGOnia! Then again, it was the only cruise of the Patagonia. One of the cruise directors, Zilda, was very energetic and always emphasizing that everything was the best of the PataGOnia. The Navimag cruise was very interesting. For those of you that have been on real cruises, it was nothing like that. [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, We completed our five days of trekking in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine yesterday and returned to Puerto Natales safe and sound late last night. A few additions to our last email: El Calafate, Argentina is named after the calafate berry. It is a purplish-black berry similar in appearance to a blueberry, but darker. It grows on bushes in Patagonia. The taste is akin to a mix of blueberry and black grapes. Mild, not too sweet, slightly astringent. We had calafate flavored icecream in the town of El Calafate. Also, they make chirimoya (cherimoya) flavoured yogurt and i [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, We left Ushaia on the 20th. Travelled north to Rio Gallegos. On the way there, we crossed into and out of Chile. This meant four border crossing stations (out of Argentina, into Chile, out of Chile, and back into Argentina) and four passport stamps in one day! Rio Gallegos is not a real touristy town. We wanted to keep moving, so we only stayed the night and moved on to El Calafate. We stayed in El Calafate a couple nights. The second day, we visited the Perito Moreno Glacier in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Until recently (approximately fifteen to [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone, Ryan here. We´re still here in Ushuaia, Argentina. It´s a beautiful town on the Beagle Channel with large mountains rising steeply behind the it. We´ve been having a wonderful time. Friday, Ana and I went on to see Magellanic Penguins. There is a colony on an island in the channel where they congregate each summer to lay their eggs and molt. We signed up for a tour to the island with two other Americans, Mark and Troy, who we met at our hotel. We took a 1.5 hour minibus ride to the famous Estancia Harberton, where we had afternoon [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, We´re writing to let you all know that after approximately thirty-six hours of travel and layovers, we´ve finally reached the first stop on our long trip. Our flight from LAX left about 11pm PT and landed in San Jose, Costa Rica ¨6:40 am CT. We met Florencio, a retired Costa Rican banker. He told us all about his family and grandkids and his work. His sister and nieces were making a typical breakfast for him consisting of gallo pinto (rice and black beans), maduros (fried plantains), eggs, and empanadas. We had breakfast at the airport. We did not have [View Full Entry]

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