Hello Again!



We would like to apologize for the delay in posting anything for so long and we would like to thank all those who have been checking.  We will try and get you up to date to now.  We are in Uruguay and are starting to make our way to Brazil our final stop in South America, time is flying by... craziness!



We have been taking it 'easy' after Machu Picchu.  We left Cusco and spent a couple more days in Peru before making our way into Chile.  I feel bad for all the Chileans out there who are going to be disapointed that we did not give it more of a chance, but in travelling you have to make choices and Chile kind of got cut out.  We were only going to give it a couple days at first, but because of buses  we got stuck in a small town in the north of Chile called San Pedro de Atacama for a whole four days.  It was nice though, the town was quite picturesque and was laid back.  The area was very dry, being situated right by the Atacama desert, one of the driest places in the world.  We did the usual and rented some bikes and took a self guided tour of the area that included Valle de la Luna.  We got to cook our own meal for the first time in a months which was actually pretty exciting.  You never know how much you miss oatmeal or veggie stir fry until you go over a month without  it.

After the four days in Chile we headed into northwestern Argentina.  Again with the lack of pictures you can understand that we were not getting up to much.  Took a bus to Salta and then the back roads through the small towns of Cachi and Cafayate.  Cafayate had some nice vineyards that we visited and sampled.   Went on a bike trip to these amazing amphitheatre rock formations. Some areas felt like we were in Fraggle Rock...anyone remember that cartoon show?  Sedimentary rocks galore!  My brother Aaron (the geologist in the family) would have loved it.   After Cafayate we headed to the city of Mendoza.

Mendoza was great! It was the first city we visited that we could actually see ourselves staying a while.  Beautiful city, with so many trees that the city was basically in complete shade, tons of nice plazas, a huge park the size of stanley park, and vineyeards throughout the outskirts. Mendoza had a horrible earthquake in the 1800´s and as a result the city was rebuilt with huge streets and sidewalks. One benenfit is that it allows bars and restaurants to spill out onto all the extremely wide sidewalks. Gotta love it! There was also a pretty decent nightlife which is always nice.

Since we purchaced and drank so much wine in Cafayette, we weren´t dying to visit many vineyards even though Mendosa produces 70% of Argentina´s wine . We did however bike to a liquor and chocolate factory and an olive oil processing plant and had many tasty samples. Spent a nice few days there.  The lack of pictures has more to do with us being unphotographer like in cities.  After Mendoza it was off to a quick stop in Patagonia...