Merry Christmas!!

Hello!

It´s been a little while since the last post and our trip is going well. We missed all our family and friends at Christmas and hope everyone is having a good holiday. Now we´re in Buenos Aires, it´s a comfotable 80 degrees, sunny, and does not feel like the Christmas season. We celebrated on Christmas eve at a party at hostel, with probably the most Americans we´ve seen on our entire trip who are generally visiting here on 2 or 3 week long trips. After eating chorizo and steak, we had a midnight toast on the rooftop patio and watched all the random fireworks being lit off in the neighborhoods. On Christmas day we walked around the city and then had dinner at an all you can eat parilla or grill which had good chorizo and pork, but the steak was nowhere near as good as the amazing steak we had in Salta, Argentina.

Before venturing to Buenos Aires we did a couple of hikes near Ushuaia. The weather during our hikes was pretty good. The first hike we did to a lake was mostly through bog with ankle deep and sometimes knee-high mud. We were rewarded at the the end though as we had the lake to ourselves that evening, which we camped at. Our second hike was in Tierra del Fuego (Earth of Fire) national park. It´s a gorgeous park that is heavily touristed, but at our campsite there was plenty of wildlife, lots of rabbits, ducks, and Justin even saw a lost sea lion that had made it from the sea into the river near our campsite.

When leaving Ushuaia we said bye to our traveling friends Kitty and Trevor who we will not see againon this trip, and wished them a good time on their Christmas Antarctica cruise. Our flight to Buenos Aires was fairly easy except for the hour and half long delay that, in typical Argentine fashion, was not acknowledged by anyone. We got into Buenos Aires late, crashed at a hostel for the night, and took a ferry to Uruguay the next day.

In Uruguay we visited two cities, Colonia and Motevideo. Uruguay is very similar to Argentina in terms of quality of life, and the people are very laid back. Colonia is a gorgeous little town and we were both shocked that it was not more touristed. Check out the pictures at sunset. Next we went to Montevideo, the capital city. Ther we hung out on the beach, stumbled upon a free reggae/spanish pop show, and explored the city with another backpacker, Irish Dave, an almost infamous backpaker because of his Fabio hair, friendly demeanor, and his claim to fame of having a purchased a ticket on the Anarctica cruise boat that sunk the week before he was supposed to get on it.

Back in Buenos Aires we saw a great drum concert, La Bomba del Tiempo. A bunch of the best Argentinean drummers play every week for $3 in BA. We´ve wandered a bunch of the city, hung out on the rooftop of our hostel, and made plans for our trip through Colombia, where we are headed tomorrow. We´ve heard its safe as long as your are sticking to the touristy places, which we are, and we´ve heard great things about it from other travelers so we are looking forward to flying there tomorrow. Happy New Year to everyone!

Jess

From the bottom of the world (almost)

Hello!

We´re now in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. It´s a very touristy city, many cruise ships and ships to Antarctica land here. But the scenery is very nice and we´re planning to check it out in a a couple overnight hikes in the next week. We were originally planning on a big hike in a very remote area, but we´ve heard that there´s a good amount of snow that obscures the trail even though it is the beginning of summer.
Before we got here we hiked the Fitz Roy area and saw two of mountaineering´s greatest challenges, Cerro Torro and Fitz Roy. It was pleasant hiking, we had decent weather but it cloudy at times so we did not actually see the top of Cerro Torre. But it was a good 3 day hike through a nice area. Tourism is really starting to boom in this area, which can be slightly annoying as everything was very overpriced.
After a total of 28 hours of buses (not all at one time) we made it to Ushuaia from Fitz Roy. 5 of those hours were spent waiting in a bus to cross a ferry, and the winds were too bad for the bus to cross. But we finally made it. Down here the weather is quite unpredictable. Yesterday we went for a short hike up to a glacier just outside of town. The day started nicely, but once we made our way up to the top via a muddy, snowy trail it was cold, windy and snowing. We were so cold that we did not walk the final 300 yards to the glacier as it did not look as interesting as the ones we have seen recently.
So we are going to go on a couple overnight trips in the Tierra del Fuego park before flying to Buenos Aires on the 17th. Well be there and in Uruguay until the 27th when we fly to Colombia. We´ll be meeting up with our friend Dan for the last part of the trip as well.

New pics are up under pictures 2. Hope everyone is doing well!

Jess

Busy Trekking

El Calafate, Argentina

Hello everyone! Sorry we havent been able to make a entry lately we´ve been off in the woods and in boats for the last week and half. The NAVIMAG ferry was great. We had amazing weather so we got to see the whole coast line coming down. Usually the ferry has some rainy days and it turn into a booze cruise but we lucked out and were able to see a whole bunch of Chile which is virtually imposible to get to. Since there isnt anything to do really on the boat you get to meet a whole bunch of people, see the sights and catch up on some reading. The only catch was the good weather brought a stiff head wind which caused us to get into port 8 hours late, but well worth it.

The boat drops you at Puerto Natales which is nothing special but is home to one of the best hostels we have been to yet, Erratic Rock. The owner american Bill is extremely knowledgable about the park Torres del Paine which was our reason for going to Puerto Natales and helped us out getting our Thanksgiving dinner together, cause we were scrambling. Its wasnt anything over the top but it had the essentials so it still qualified.

The next day we headed out to the park, Torres del Paine, to do a 6 day backpack route know as the W. Usually is take a day shorter but we´re cheap so we skipped the ferry and opted to hike into the park from the bus stop.

Torres del Paine is amazing park with the most erratic weather condition in Patagonia. Its has a huge glacier on one side which effects the weather and mountain range that changes stuff coming in off the coast. All and all we never really got poured on and our tent never blew away (even though the first night i thought it would). The views were amazing and i wish we had more time because there is another trek that is know as the circut which is a full 8 to 10 trek around the whole park. I´d definitely suggest it to anyone going.

Now were back in Argentina in El Calafate. This morning we saw a glacier an hour outside town which was quite amazing because it carved off a bunch of pieces. Tomorrow were off to trek around Mt Fitz Roy for 4 days or so. We´ll sort it all out when we get to the park tomorrow. Don´t expect to hear from us much in the next week or so cause internet is slow and expensive in this part of Argentina.

Hope everyone is doing we´ll and we hope to hear from you soon.

Justin

PS no pictures this time. internet is super expensive... We´ll try to post them in Ushuaia