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