Honeymoon, day 1

We've arrived!

Just wanted to write a quick note to say all's well. The flights were nice, Taca has plenty of leg room and nice meals on board. We met with our travel agent, Paola, who couldn't possibly be any nicer. She came with her (French) husband and they were our taxi to the hotel, after checking in we went out for drinks together and spent a few hours with a beer in our hand. For dinner we went to a very local cozy friendly typical restaurant - Argentine Steak and Grillhouse :-) It was impossible to find a "typical" place, but easy to find - american, indian, italian, argentinian and arabic places, but not local :-)

Tomorrow we're going to try to go to the 0 deg parallel where we can be in both south and north hemispheres at the same time and a visit to the Old Town. Monday we leave for the Amazon Rainforest. Quito hotel, Hotel Quito, is very nice.....they even have a casino inside :-)

We're having a great time and love you and miss you,

Talia and Vadim

P.S. Check back these old posts, I´ll try to add pics from the road!!

Back in USA

Hello there,

I've had a lot of questions on whether or not I'm back...I AM, I AM! Vadim made it back safely on Jan 2nd, and I came back with my family on Jan 6th. We had a great New Year's celebration in Rio and another trip to Salvador.

We have a LOT of pictures to comb through, so it'll be a little longer before we can put up any - stay tuned!

Big thanks to everyone who followed my adventures here. I look forward to seeing all of you and sharing stories of the past few months.

-Talia

Happy New Year

Hello everybody,

We want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. It happens 3 hrs (for east coasters) and 6 hrs (for west coasters) early for us and we'll be thinking about you all!

The last week and a half has been a wirl-wind and we'll have to catch you up on everything when we get back. We spent 4 days in Buenos Aires, then traveled to Iguazu falls at the intersection of Argetine, Brazilian and Paraguay borders, and then made our way to Rio. We also made a pit stop in Uruguay for 1 day.

We've enjoyed 2-1/2 beautiful days in Rio and the area arround it, but right now it is raining :-( in Rio. We, along with other 2 million people expected on our beach, hope it clears up for the hour-long fireworks show tonight.

We're all coming back (at different times) in the next week and we can't wait to see everyone again!

Feliz Ano Novo!!

We are cool

So now we´re finally going to be “popular” and cool.

This was on Yahoo homepage:

Top Cities for New Years Eve 2006 (International)
1. Cancun, Mexico

2. Paris, France

3. Dubai, United Arab Emirates

4. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ( <==== )

5. London, United Kingdom

And now there were....two!!

Howdy all!!

I (Vadim) have joined Talia in Argentina!! The flight in was ok. I was seated to a heavy-set person on the long leg from DC to BA, so that was a little uncomfy, but I slept (thank you drugs) most of the way. Landing was very very turbulent as we were breaking through the clouds and the two kids in front of me decided to revisit their breakfast, consumed only 1hr prior. *visual*

The weather has been very warm. Humidity in BA is very high, close to 90. But we left yesterday and are right now we are in Mendoza, west of BA. We flew here last night and went wine tasting today. Tomorrow we´re taking a driving tour of the area and may do some hikes. very beautiful area of the country.

One big thing that i guess i have to get used to here -- e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is SUPER slow. everyone just takes their sweet time. ordering food, wine tasting, the taxi drivers. but i guess that´s just the pace of life.

we´ll be here in mendoza till wednesday when we go back to BA. there we will be for about 4,5 days. todd and stevie get in in a few days as well. after that we´ll go to Cordoba and Iguazu falls and then on to Rio.

I saw that Chargers won on Sunday, so all is well in the world =)

Buenos Dias!

And now there is one...

Hi all,

After Torres Del Paine we exchanged Mana (my roomate in Buenos Aires) for Marie (the French girl). Then, once we have reached Bariloche, Anjay, Marie and Fred have left. So now there is me... I leave Bariloche on Saturday to pick Vadim up on Sunday.

The cruise was good ... not great. We got poor weather so most of the scenery was hidden by clouds. The people were really nice and I´m now hanging around some Irish folks that we met on the boat. The biggest problem was that the boat was a freight boat as well and they were hauling cows. You can imagine the smell. The people on the bottom floor were woken up by moo-ing. On the whole it was beautiful and a very relaxing 3 days after loads of trekking.

Our stop on the bus was in Puerto Eden (see photo). It is the home of the last 8 indigenous people and it is an island with 'streets' of wooden platforms since it is always so wet, the ground is constantly swampy. It was nice to get off the boat and stretch our legs. The town was very .... quaint.

We instantly hopped on a bus for Bariloche and have been here for 2 days. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. It is the lake district of Argentina and everywhere is surrounded by brilliant blue lakes with snow capped mountains and load of wildflowers. No picture can do it justice.... but I did try.

I miss you all and I am looking forward to seeing my family here in South America!!

Puerto Eden








Bariloche




Bouldering in Torres Del Paine.

Some photos

Here are some new pictures. Sorry for the rather small size, but internet is really slow and I can't upload anything bigger.

1. Me and mana eating part of a glacier.



2. Mt. Fitz Roy with clouds



3. Talia with a guancho... from the llama family



4. Torrers del paine with clouds. Hard to tell the difference but fitz roy is just one peak ... Torres has 3.

Torres Del Paine

After El Chalten we headed over to Torres Del Paine in Chile. The border crossing was ridiculous and took forever... but I have another stamp in my passport. After we did a bus tour around the whole area and got a great feeling for the huge park.

Here also the water has so many different colors and there is a lookout point where you can see the towers with 2 different lakes, one that is blue and one that is green. After a long bus ride and still recovering from our 12 hour hike, we took it easy and stayed the night in the Refrugio.

We all got a great night sleep and woke up early to do the Torres hike. It was amazing!!!!!!!!! I was talking with Marie, the french girl from BA that has joined us for the trip, she speaks 3 different languages and she was saying she doesn´t know the words to describe the Torres. I said if she didn´t have the words in any of those languages, then I definitely don´t have it in English.

The greatest part of the trail was the change to landscapes. It went from an uphill dirt road to flaky rocks to a jungle to a rock scramble. Finally it makes the 4 hour hike worthwhile since you get a fantastic view of the amazing 3 towers that the park is named after.

Now we are in Pt. Natales a little port city waiting to board the Navimag. Will be on Navimag for 4 days then head over to Bariloche.

Miss you all.

The blues

It has been a very fast 2 weeks and I haven´t had access to internet being down here in Patagonia. It feels like I have been in a bubble since I haven´t had access to internet and in most places there isn´t even electricity. The most incredible thing that i have noticed is how many colors of blue there are in water. We have seen the blue sea in Ushuaia that is more like a silver cloudy blue and then the blue in El Calafate that is a turquise cloudy blue. Other parts of El Chalten have a cobalt blue from the melted glaciers to the emerald blue and greens in Torres del Paine. Each lake and stream has its own color blue or green and often one body of water will have different colors that are very distinct. The horrible part is that photos never capture that incredible richness of color and so it will have to stay as a memory.


We started out in Ushuaia... the end of the world. This is partically false advertisement since the actual end of the world or southern most tip is a little place called Port Williams but Ushuaia is very very far south. We walked along the coast and saw the most beatiful combination of snow capped mountains and sea. The next day we took a boat to walk around the many islands and see the famed lighthouse at the end of the earth. Ushuaia started as a prison city (like Australia) and so all of the infrastructure was built by convicts.


After waiting 6 hours in the airport for a delayed flight, we finally made it to El Calafate and after a lazy day of sorting stuff out and riding bikes we had an awsome meal of Patagonian lamb prepared 3 different ways. The next day we woke up early and bundeled up for our ride to see Perito Moreno, the most photographed glacier in the world. It is one of the only glaciers that is still expanding by 2 meters per day although of course it is also shrinking by 2 meters due to melting. While we were there we saw huge hunks of ice fall from the glacier. They cause a small tidal wave when they fall ... it is incredible to watch. The glacier has 3 different levels to it and each is a different color which causes the water to have different colors. The base is a deep blue due to how compressed the ice is. These glaciers are all from the original Patagonian ice fields (so really really old). Then the next layer is like a light blue. Then the top layer is white but when it melts it creates a green milky color that is increbile. The next day we went and saw 3 more glaciers on a boat.


Instead of going a typical bus tour, we all rented a car and drove to El Chalten, the home of trekking and Mt. Fitz Roy. Silly us thought that there would be a gas station in between El Chalten and El Calafate and so we started off our trip with half a tank of gas. 70 KM into this dirt road (and seeing nothing) we started getting nervous so we had to turn around since there were NO gas stations and we would have surely run out of gas. But all is well when you have gas so we continued on our journey and arrived safe an sound in El Chalten. That afternoon we went on a short hike to see Mt. Fitz Roy. The mountains are so differnt here.. They are jagged and just come up from the ground. The next day we went ice trekking. It was a total of 12 hours of pure hiking. I have no clue how much ground we covered but it was insane. Due to my uncontrolable fear of falling off cliffs and places like that... I actually didn´t go onto the glacier to do the walking. The tour company totally ignored us, the weather was horrible and there was NO system of getting help if someone got hurt. So ... I did the 12 hours of hiking but didn´t get to walk across the glacier using crampons. I didn´t feel comfortable so i didn´t go. The hike was guiling and on the way back the guides just left us.. it took us another 2 hours to get back to the hostel. We were exhausted and sore but it was beautiful.

On the road again

Everything is well and I am now in Torres del Paine, Chile. We left on a bus yesterday morning from El Calafate and will be in Torres until Thursday and then we go on the cruise until the following Monday. There is a very good chance that we will not have access to email till then.

We had a great time in Patagonia and I will give you all the details later.