We're still here

Sorry about the lack of updates. We've been so busy running around South America that we never seem to have the time for communicating with the outside world. The past couple of weeks have been quite an adventure. We've seen some of the largest waterfalls in the world, kayaked on a pristine mountain lake, caught and ate trout, watched a protest get broken up by the national gaurd in Chile, eaten a lot of empenadas, walked a few hundred miles and spent an extraordinary amount off time in buses.

I´ll start with the waterfalls. We went to the Iguazu Falls at the beginning of the month. You might not have heard f them but you've probably seen pictures without knowing it. The falls are truly one of the great wonders of the world. I''ve never seen Niagra, but I can't imagine them comparing to what we saw - probably around 100 individual waterfalls, from a trickle down a cliff, to a torrent of millions of liters know as the Devil´s Throat. The sheer volume was dwarfing and mesmerizing to watch. It was impossible to look away. We even took a boat ride into the botton of one of the falls and have a video of the experience which we'll add to the blog later. The falls are situated around the broder between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina near the confluence of two major rivers. The area is a subtropical rainforest home to a huge variety of flora and fauna. We saw Coatis (a mix between raccoon and cat), large and small lizards, but missed much of the most exotic animals such as toucans, pachybaras, giant parrots and tapirs. We'll just have to come back some day. While in Iguazu we met up with Mark and Les from Dallas who kept us entertained for most of our stay. Mark's story of driving to Mexico was priceless and should be made into a movie.

Next we were off to San Martin de los Andes situated in the Lake District of Argentina in the northern reaches of Patagonia. To get there we flew back to Buenos Aires, then took a 15 hour overnight bus ride to Neuquen. This ride took us through the Pampas, which is probably the most boring scenery I can imagine, so it was a good thing it was at night. We were able to sleep most of the way. There was one stop for dinner in the middle of nowhere Argentina, where they forced eveyone on the buss to sit together and served a vile piece of steak that tasted like it had been cooking for days. No one said a word to each other for pretty much the whole meal. The next morning we arrived in Neuquen expecting to stay the night to break up the trip. The city was not particularly attractive and the bus station was miles from any hotel, so we decided to finish up the trip to San Martin which was another 6 hours. Along the way we passed the location of the largest dinosaur ever found. The had a life size model by the road that I got a picture of and it was quite a site. Once we got into the mountins and away from the Pampas the ride was quite beautiful. We saw Gauchos (Argentine cowboys), llamas, lots of sheep and cattle, a series of beautiful mountain rivers and a 10,000 foot mountain, which at the time seemed quite large.

San Martin de los Andes is an incredible mountain town, that would not be out of place in Northern California. The architecture was mostly Swiss chalet in appearance. The city is situated in a small valley surrounded by low mountains and sits alongside a large mountain lake. There are hiking trails throughout the area and access to white water rafting, kayaking, canoeing, camping and most any other outdoor activity you can think of. It was a mountain paradise. We kayaked around the lake for one morning and then took a ferry to a small village on the lake where we hhad lunch and walked around. The next day we took an all day tour of the area alog a route called the 7 Lakes route (Ruta de Siete Lagos) where we saw considerably more than 7 lakes, and countless rivers. It was beautiful but exhausting. San Martin was an idyllic town and if anyone comes down to this part of Argentina I would highly recommend it over Bariloche, which we found large, not that attractive and incredibly windy.

San Martin was our last stop in Argentina. We took a bus through a gravel road mountain pass into Chile. Strangely enough we had beautiful weather the entire trip until that day when it rained as though Argentina was sad to see us leave. We had to catch a 6AM bus to go to Chile so we were a bit sad and groggy, ourselves. But I'll save Chile for another time. The highlights so far have been Sarah out shining me as a fisherman, arriving in Santiago the day after Pinochet died, seeing Neruda's collection of shells and wandering around the streets of Valparaiso. Until then, take care.