Vina del Mar, last week in Chile

This is Abby (Amy's step sister). In an excerpt from her blog, she sums up our stay in Vina better than I ever could... so here it is. We were there for 5 days before she arrived but they were basically the same.

My awesome visit to Viña and Valpo with Amy, Kate and Courtney: A Poem

If you´re wanting to go to Viña del Mar,
Just take a bus, you don't need a car.
I did it just now, it was just so easy,
Cause there were three girls, waiting for me!

We made a fresh lunch in the hostel room,
Experienced travelers, they knew what to consume.´
Off to the beach, in the sun we did bake,*
And FIVE TIMES felt the shudder of a fuerte earthquake!

At Amy's host fam´s, we ate completos,*
And laughed at dirty jokes, it was first rate-o.
Then to El Huevo to dance on one of five floors,
Reggae, salsa, metal, hip-hop, the choice it is yours!

I got scammed by a taxista, but I learned my lesson,
Don't trust a "discount" he calls a "Christmas present"!
At Amy's pal Pietro's house, we ate homemade lasagna.
Nothin´ cures a hangover like comida Italiana!

A few hours later I was so sad to go,
And say goodbye to these friends I had just come to know.
Now they're back in the States, more adventures in store,
I thank them for a weekend that has now become lore!

*With layers and layers of sunscreen, moms!
**A hotdog like you have never seen, with fresh avocado, tomato, pebre and fresh bread!

Salar de Uyuni

Part of the geysers where the water is about 100C


Where the salar is dry, hexagonal shapes form from the wind.

Crossing the Salar with ¨el espejismo¨ or reflection in the thin layer of water. Makes the drivers become somewhat disoriented sometimes.

Flamingos at Lago Verde

After leaving Argentina, we headed to Valdivia, a quiet port town with a cool fish market and some nice museums. It rained a couple of days but we had a beautiful morning in which Cortney decided to run in the Valdivia 5K sponsored by Adidas that weekend. CORRE VALDIVIA!

From Valdivia, we headed to Santiago where we spent a couple days and even got to meet up with Amy´s step sister, Abby, who had just arrived to get her TEFL cert (teaching english) before looking for a job in Argentina teaching English. She is planning to come with us to Viña del Mar in December when we return to Chile.

We flew from Santiago into La Paz where Amy and I, who hadn´t taken medicine like Cortney, immediatly felt the effects of altitude and were rather light headed while visiting the Coca Museum in La Paz. We were planning on spending a few days in La Paz at the beginning of our trip but we decided to delay a true tour of La Paz until the end because of a train we wanted to catch towards southern Bolivia. We spent a night in Oruro, a tiny town where they were having a music festival when we arrived. We took the train the next day to Uyuni, where everyone comes to visit El Salar de Uyuni, otherwise known as the salt flats. We contracted a jeep tour and ended up in a top shape Land Rover with Leonardo, our driver, and Alicia, our cook, as well as a couple from Ireland and a girl from the Netherlands. We spent three days driving and hiking around the Salar and the surrounding areas that looked rather like I would imagine the moon. We stayed in pretty sparse hostels along the way but it was all worth the amazing views of bright white as far as you can see with blue blue skies as well as dips in natural hot springs. We had no rain even though we are just on the edge of the rainy season and beautiful sunny days with everyone in short sleeves.

On the way back from the Salar, we picked up a guy from Vermont, Dave, who is coming with us on our next adventure to Tupiza in Southeast Bolivia. When we got back today we found out there has been a lot of political unrest in Potosi and Sucre, the town towns that were on our itinerary after Tupiza so we are not sure we are going to be going there and we are going to keep our eye on the news. It also seems that bus companies are a great way to judge whether or not it is safe to go to a town. We´ll see how it goes - we may just head back to La Paz and explore northern Bolivia. At the moment we are waiting on our train, which leaves at 11:00pm, so we had to find lots of things to do today, the highlight being a walk out to the train cemetary around sunset where we had fun climbing around on the abandoned train engines and cars while watching the sunset. We are all loving being in Bolivia and enjoying a change of scenery from what we had being seeing before.

Lizards lizards everywhere.

Sunset on the mountains... view from the refugio.




At the refugio Frey next to Cerro Catedral.


I had a lovely time working at the hostel and met lots of people from all across the world, but after a week of emptying out trash bins and being awoken at 6:00 to help make omlettes for breakfast, I was ready to move on. The girls, Amy and Cortney, had a great time in the park, doing the same trail that Mark, LP, and I did and they arrived back healthy and happy. After finally leaving Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine, we headed north to the island of Chiloe off the coast of Chile. We had been told that it rained 370 days out of the year on Chiloe (no, not a mistype) and so we were expecting the worst. What we ended up with was rain as we drove in and then 3 very lovely days among the hilly, somewhat bizarre, island. The island basically looked like what I would picture Ireland looking like. Hilly with flowers coming out the wazoo and very very green from all the drizzly rain they get. So, we found a cute place to stay which got us out of the blustery wind and then promptly decided that we were going to do an overnight camping trip into Chiloe National Park. After consulting with CONAF (which is now my archnemisis - also the Chilean National Park Service) they informed us that all the trails were open and marked and that the campsite/refugio at Cole Cole Beach was a lovely place to stay. After purchasing food and getting dropped off at the entrance, we promptly got lost on the ¨educational trail.¨ We finally figured it out and got pointed in the right direction towards the Pacific beach. We walked along the beach for about 2 hours before reaching a large river of water. After contemplating it for about 20 minutes, we took off our shoes, and forged across - freezing our feet off. After warming up we started hiking up the hill only to look back and see a brige about a half mile back. Thanks for the trail markers, CONAF. Eventually we ended up in this mountain mans backyard with a bared teeth dog running at us. Fun times. He pointed us in the ¨right¨ direction and after walking on that trail for about 30 minutes following up about 7 hours of hiking, we decided to camp in the middle of a horse field. Ah camping with the smell of horse poo all around. Lovely. Fortunatly, we woke up to a nice clear day and descended through the 40 degree rainforest full of flocks of parrots (WEIRD!) back to the beach where we were met with gale force winds and sand being peppered into our faces. We pushed through and finished our hike finding both of the bridges we missed the first time and getting back to the hostel with a breath of relief. We spent the next day visiting churches around the island. There are 150 churches built by Spanish missionaries.

Leaving Chiloe, we headed to Bariloche, where LP did her Spanish studying. The city is fairly nice, but it is extremely touristy and freaked Amy and I out a bit. This prompted our decision to fly to La Paz, Bolivia, next week. While in Bariloche, we took advantage of the lovely lake district scenery and did an AWESOME hike up to Cerro Catedral, a mountain nearby that is a ski resort in the winter (June, July, August). After 5 hours of sunny, gorgeous hiking, we arrived at the refugio Frey and watched a beautiful sunset on the jagged peaks that were barely a stones throw away. Later in the summer, the place will be crawling with climbers, but for us, there were just 15 people staying at the refugio with us including a really friendly couple and their 11 year old son from Crested Butte, Colorado. Hiking back down the next day was equally gorgeous and we stopped for about an hour for lunch to enjoy the sun on our first hiking in shorts day. Also, as an aside, we probably saw 30 lizards scurrying around on the ground. It was a very exciting day for lizard spotting.

Today is our last day in Argentina and we are headed to Chile to see some lake district towns there before heading to Santiago to catch our flight to La Paz on Nov. 20.

Torres del Paine - Improvised

Lago en Torres del Paine




Los Torres




Crossing the bridge on the way out of the park... very skinny.

THE MAN at the hostel, Rustyn, also my new boss.

-I spent the last week in Patagonia bliss - also known as Torres del Paine National Park. We arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile, from El Calafate, Argentina, where we visited the glaciar, and immediatly found our hostel, Erratic Rock, and settled in. Unfortunatly, we also sent Cortney to the hospital because she could barely talk. She hadn`t told us anything about her sore throat that she had had for the last 6 days until we noticed she was sounding worse and worse. Turns out she had an infected case of strep throat (we think it was strep throat... still a bit of dispute over the tranlation of the diagnosos). Anyway, Cortney had to spend the next 3 days in the hospital getting injections of antibiotics. This put a bit of a kink in our immediate plans. My friend, Mark, from Ecuador, flew down just for the week to hike with us in Torres del Paine and Lucy Page was under a time crunch as well, so Mark, LP, and I left Amy and Cortney at the hospital and headed into the park. We decided to do the ¨W¨ route plus a little extra in 5 days of hiking - 4 nights of camping. We had some long days, but the entire route was absolutely gorgeous, depite some spitty rain/ice we got the first and last day. The views of bright blue glacial lakes and the torres crowning the park were incredible. For the three days inbetween the snowy rain, we had gorgeous partly cloudy skies and when the sun popped out, it warmed things up quite a bit. The hiking itself was a bit scrambly in parts, but the trails were pretty well maintained and the refugios at the campsites were always good places to warm up. Anyway, after finishing the W, we came back to Puerto Natales and were reunited with Amy and Cortney, who were both feeling much better (Amy got strep throat as well). I saw Mark off at the airport yesterday morning and LP headed back to Buenos Aires on her way back to the states. This morning, Amy and Cortney headed off into the park to do the W as well since they were both finally in good enough health to do it. I decided to stay behind because of my hurting knee - it never really recovered before I hiked on it. Luckily for me, the hostel we were staying at offered me free room and board to help out - they already have two other interns, but they needed a Spanish speaker because the Spanish speaking co-owner of the hostel is gone for the week... worked out well for me. So, I am here in Natales earning my keep for the next week and saving a whole bunch of money. YAY! We will decide what is next when Cortney and Amy come out of the park on Saturday.

In other life of Kate news, I have accepted my position as an Environmental Awareness Educator for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. I start my training on Feb. 26!!!! I am being innundated with forms to fill out and information to read at the moment, so it is probably lucky I have a week here at the hostel with free access to internet to get everything done before we head back into the backcountry - or at least the less internet ready country.

I should probably be emptying trash cans or translating the names of outdoor gear into Spanish right now so this it for now. I will add more pictures whenever LP and Mark send them to me as I did not take my camera into the park.

El Calafate

Glaciar Perrito Moreno


View from Glaciar

In crampons and climbing harness, hiking on Perrito Moreno

We arrived fresh off a 19 hour bus ride to El Calafate from Ushuaia at 1am, took a taxi to our hostel, America del Sur, and went straight to bed. Even though we had all slept all day on the bus, we still slept all the way through the night until 9am the next day.

El Calafate is a somewhat bizarre little town. It seems that people really only come here to see the glaciar, Perrito Moreno, and then they leave. The town is about the size of Estes Park, CO and has about the same layout - lots of outdoor stores, restaurants, tourist agencies, and hostels. We explored the city the first day and then booked our tour for the next day from the hostel. We decided to go for the ¨BIG ICE¨tour. We hopped on the bus at 7am, drove about 1.5 hours and arrived at the lookout point for Perrito Moreno glaciar. It was incredible!!! I wasn`t sure what to expect, but it was almost as good as Iguazu Falls. I had never seen a glaciar before and my guess is that not many can top this one. Within the first 10 minutes of looking at it, we saw a HUGE chunk break off, accompanied by a crunching noise, and watched it sink into the icy water below. The glaciar is nestled between two sizeable mountains on either side and reminded me of the glacial valleys of the Andes in Ecuador, except with an actual glaciar still inside! We then crossed the water in front of the glaciar, met our guides, and started hiking. We were a group of 20, but eventually split into two groups for the ice trekking. After about an hour we reached the ice, put on our climbing harnesses and crampons, had a lesson in walking with crampons, and started out across the ice. The guide told us that they can´t take the same route every day because the ice is constantly changing but somehow he always knew where the crevasses would be and he carved them out for us to jump over. In some places, water collects on the top of the glaciar and it was an incredible crystal blue color that I have never seen before. Also, there are glacial rivers that find weak spot in the ice and carve their way through. They have found rivers running through the ice that can be as long at 8km. The glaciar, from one end to the other is 30km. HUGE!!! We could only walk on one part of it because it becomes too craggy to walk on without knowing how to ice climb on either end of the glaciar. There was about 5 inches of snow on the glaciar as well, which was somewhat unusual, but it had been snowing for the 3 days previous to our tour. We were the lucky ones who got the first blue sky day in a long time. At one point, we were looking down into a huge sink hole that was bright blue and all of a sudden, one of our guides, from New Zealand, jumped down into it and started climbing down using his ice ax and crampons - not roped into anything. Crazy people.

Lucy Page and Cortney decided to go horseback riding today, Saturday, but Amy and I chose to stay behind to save a bit of money. Also, I twisted my knee a bit on the glaciar because I turned around too fast and my crampons were still pointing one direction and my knee went the other. It is just a bit swollen, so I am hoping that it will be fine by Monday when we start our trek in Torres del Paine. Tomorrow we take the bus to Puerto Natales and then on Monday we will be in the backcountry for about a week - so it might be awhile before another post.

We are all relatively healthy (a couple of colds are going around) and all very happy. In other news, I received my Peace Corps post in the Spanish speaking Caribbean as an Environmental Education representative. I will be working with NGO`s, local schools, and eco-tourism agencies to evaluate the effectivness of environmental ed curriculum and develop youth leadership programs. Very exciting!! I leave in late February.

I can feel the presence of the lizard.

Adventures in Anthropology




Ushuaia Lighthouse










Hiking to Chile








Boat in the harbor at Ushuaia.



Comorants we saw on our boat trip






We have arrived in Tierra del Fuego after saying farewell to the Villafañe family and hopping on our flight. There are hardly words to describe this place. It`s beauty is overwhelming and the idea of being at the tip of the continent is strange to comprehend. It is one of those places that makes you forget about all the other beautiful things you have seen and makes you think that this MUST be it - that it doesn`t get any better than this. Today we took a boat tour of the Beagle Channel and saw sea lions and commorants and had what we calculated to be a 354 degree view of the Andes Mtns. I learned today that the Andes Mtn. range just falls into the sea here in Ushuaia, the southern most port town in the continent and they reappear occasionally as islands before they officially reappear in Antarctica. WHOA!










We ended up spending a week in Ushuaia. Lucy Page and I went skiing on the second to last day of ski season at the southernmost ski resort in the world. The skiing was awesome in the morning, nicely groomed which allowed us to race down the mountain at breakneck speeds. We were joined for the day by Mikkel, our new Danish friend (who ended up coming with us to El Calafate), and another girl from Holland whose name I couldn`t pronounce then and don`t remember now. One day we decided to go hiking to find a glaciar that was only 7km outside the town... we ended up horribly lost wandering around on cross country skiing trails and then in the middle of a peat bog. And yes, you do sink in peat bogs - but only up to your calves. The next day we decided to take a taxi to the entrance of the glaciar, like the rest of the tourists, and found it very easily. You couldn`t see the glaciar itself because it was covered in snow, but we hiked up it for about 45 minutes and then slid down on our butts all the way to the bottom. We spend a couple of days just hanging out in the city - one day was the birthday of Ushuaia so we got to watch a huge parade downtown and eat choripans on the sidewalk. Choripan is an amazing invention of the Argentines including chorizo (spicy sausage, bread, mustard, and spices). The Argentines are obsessed with two things, Choripan and Mate, which is an herb tea that they drink ALL THE TIME. I think it tastes mildly like horse poo - but Cortney and Lucy Page have grabbed on to the trend and are enjoying it wholeheartedly.

On out last day in Ushuaia, we went to the Parque Nacional del Tierra del Fuego and went on a great hike next to a lake where we eventually ran smack into the Chilean border. The only thing there was a pyramid made out of steel but the book said that if you crossed over the border illegally, there were Chilean border guards hiding in the hills. We didn`t really want to test out our luck and see what they would do to us, so we just turned around. Good thing we had that info though because the park map said nothing about it. I wouldn`t really want to have a Chilean dude dressed in combat boots running at me with a machete.

We made some great friends at our hostel, Freestyle, in the week that we were there. Rasta Max got us free passes to a club one night and Emilio taught us some good card games. Also, we made friends with an Israeli named Omri who played about 20 games of Backgammon (Shish Pish) with Amy and informed us that it was the national game of Israel. You learn new things every day.

Buenos Aires

Sometime last week, we arrived in Buenos Aires to rain and dark skies and I felt perfectly at home. I said in the taxi that I could certainly see myself living in Buenos Aires sometime and Amy was amazed since the weather was so nasty that I could say that. The feeling, however, did not subside over the next week. We spent our first two nights in the trendy trendy shi shi district of Palermo - where we went out for a lovely dinner for Cortney´s birthday.

Then - on Wednesday, we met up with Cortney´s host mom´s family. Cortney studied abroad in France but her host mom happened to be Argentinian. Sr. Villafañe picked us up from our hostel at 10am in the car and drove us to their lovely little house above a vegetable store where we spent the next week wrapped up in family time. We saw so much of Buenos Aires - we went to each neighborhood, visiting the parks in Palermo including the Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, and Botannical Garden. Then, in Recoleta we visited a museum dedicated to Evita Peron, a beloved actress and political figure, and saw an incredible cemetary full of gorgeous tombs built like houses complete with Italian sculpture. El Centro houses the main pedestrian streets, la Casa Rosada (presidential palace), and theatre district. We saw an indy Argentinian film called ¨Soñar no cuesta nada¨ (It costs nothing to dream) which was really great. We went to San Telmo and La Recoleta on the weekend for two great artisan markets and also visited the MALBA (Museo de arte latinoamericana de Buenos Aires). On Saturday night we went to the Night of the Museums where buses were free and museums were open until 2am. Saw some great artwork and dancing before heading home to wake up early the next day to go with the Villafañe family to see La Boca, the working class district of Buenos Aires that is full of colorful houses and tango in the streets. We had a party with the Villafañe family to celebrate Cortney`s birthday and also the birthday of on of their eight daughters on Sunday afternoon and felt like we were just another part of the family. I almost forgot to mention and we went out with the daughter whose birthday it was during the week to a stripper/trannie/dance club where we got dinner, watched the show, and then danced our little hearts out. To say the least, it was an interesting experience. All of our Spanish skills improved to have people speaking to us all the time and their hospitality was uncomparable.

SO CLOSE!

I haven´t fallen off the face of the earth... but I´m close. Yesterday we flew from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. I´m looking out the window of our hostel right now and huge flakes of snow are falling. We´re still thinking about camping at some point since the weather is supposed to take a bit of a turn soon. We´ll see...

Being in BA with the Villafane family was wonderful and I will write much much more about our time in Buenos Aires when I don´t have a clock ticking down my seconds left on the computer.

Amy and LP have blogs too!

Just thought I would share Amy and LP`s blog addresses with those of you who might like to compare our writing and observation skills... or just see what they are up to. : )

http://amyinsouthamerica.blogspot.com
http://lpinargentina.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Final days in Brazil

Capitan Zanahoria (Captain Carrot) goes to the museum... but we were looking at him in a museum - mind boggling, I know.


On the beach in Florianopolis




We bought these vegetables and fruits for $2!!! Cortney was excited about it.


We are now in Uruguay. This means that we are no longer in Brazil. And no longer speaking in really pained Portuguese... but missing the bright sun and 88 degree beach days.

Lesson #1: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ACCEPT SEATS NEAR THE BATHROOM ON 11 HOUR BUS RIDES. THIS IS A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH.

Before we left Brazil, we went to a little city called Florianopolis, or for us Brazil saavy travelers, Floripa. We ended up renting an apartment for $7 a night per person with our own beds, kitchen, bathroom, and tiny little sitting area. We stocked up on food to cook in the apartment and settled down to four days of saving money. The saving money plan broke down a bit, however, when we decided to go out to dinner in a little neighborhood close to ours, jumped off the bus in the pouring rain, ran to the nearest restaurant, and ran into FRANK AKERS. WHOA. There are some of you who do not know Frank, but for those of you who do, you might also know that we went to school at UNC together and that I knew he was thinking about coming to live in Rio de Janeiro way back in May but hadn`t made up his mind. You might also know that we didn`t keep in touch about it and that running into him in a random restaurant in the middle of nowhere Brazil was crazy! I think he`s planning to stay in Floripa for a month with the friend he is traveling with and try to find a job doing something. The last plan I heard after we had sipped lots of caipirinhas and found our way home around 3am was that they were going to be hotel maids.

So, we spent four quiet days with gloomy weather hiking around our little beach town in Floripa. We found some awesome rock formations down by the water to scramble around on and Cortney did a bit of bouldering. We also took a walk on the beach where we saw migrating whales from the shore. We later learned they were Southern Right Whales making the swim down to Antarctica and that they were in calving season. They were probably fifty feet from the shore... near some surfers who had completely forgotten about surfing. We saw about 15 and who knows how many more there were. They kept surfacing to breath and a few of them looked like they had flipped over and were slowly moving through the water playing with their tails and fins in the waves. They were HUGE and so close to shore. Other highlights include being followed around by yet another stray dog... we named this one Stinky... and also saving a seahorse and a blowfish from certain death stranded on the sand.

After Floripa, we decided to head to Uruguay but this was not as easy as it might sound. Showing up at the bus station with no idea of the schedule seems like the wrong thing to do now since all the buses had already left for Uruguay until the following Tuesday (we were there on Sunday). However, a nice attendent squeezed us onto a bus to Porto Alegre where we spent a night since buses for Montevideo didn`t leave until the next day. Since our bus didn`t leave until 8:30pm we explored Porto Alegre for the day and it turned out to be one of the best days so far. We stored our bags at the bus station and walked to an abandoned train station about 15 blocks away where they now house modern art exhibits. We wandered around alone for a bit but were eventually found by a very cute guy who was a volunteering art student and he offered to help explain the exhibits - modern art is usually beyond me. My favorite included a series of 100 or so pictures about the life of Captain Carrot. I`ll try to post a picture of him on here. Apparently the artist`s son created the story and then the artists took a series of photos with a little carrot shaped man doing his daily activities. Hard to explain in print I guess.

We finally arrived in Montevideo early this morning and found a hostel with no trouble, took showers, and then explored the city a bit. It is a really beautiful city. It reminds me of Quito - but it is much calmer and more laid back as far as I can tell. Amy and I are very excited to be conversing a more fluently than in Portuguese and Cortney is putting up with our constant pressure for her to be practicing her Spanish.

Cataratas do Iguacu

16.5 hours on a bus to Iguazu Falls. Full of screaming babies and a rather chubby bus driver who decided to sit next to me and also decided that the most comfortable place to rest his elbow would be directly between my ribs. We arrived at 7am, rather delirious, to our hostel... out in the middle of nowhere with birds chirping and rain falling. We rested that day and woke the next to head to the Argentinian side of the falls. I was so happy to get to Argentina and launch into Spanish. It was incredible how comfortable Argentina felt just because I could communicate the things that I needed instead of trying to speak really broken Portuguese that probably sounds like Chinese to the Brazilian people anyway.

The falls were indescribable. So I really won´t try but I will say that they completely lived up to our expectations. I am going to post a couple of pictures but they don´t come anywhere close to expressing the scale of the falls. There are at least three sections to the falls so the pictures only show one section at a time and they are all massive and thunderous. We had a fantastic day... went on a boat ride that took us up under the spray of a HUGE waterfall that looked like it could have taken our boat, crumpled it up, and thrown it out to the Atlantic ocean. We did lots of hiking and checking out the different views of the falls. Today we are going to see the Brazilian side of the falls where you are supposed to get a nice panoramic view but not get up at close as the Argentinian side.

The trip is going great. We decided to speed up our exit of Brazil by a couple of days and skip a train ride we were planning on taking. Several people said it wasn´t worth the expensive tourist price. So, tomorrow we are headed to Florianopolis, a popular Brazilian tourist destination, to check out the beaches and atmosphere there. Another LONG bus ride!

Love to you all!

We are the only Americans in Brazil

We spent two glorious days in Rio de Janeiro... soaking up sun on famous Ipanema Beach and exploring the city. We moved on rather quickly though to get to Ilha Grande, and island off the coast of Angra dois Reis, Brazil. We took a ferry ride for about and hour and a half, got off the ferry, and quickly realized that everyone with a pulse from Rio de Janeiro had come to Ilha Grande the day before. ALL, I repeat, ALL of the hostels were booked. Amy and I left Cortney sitting in front of a hostel with our new friend, Bert, who gave her ice water and tried to talk to her in Portugese (sorry Cortney), in search of a place to stay. After wandering through the streets for awhile, we finally found a campground that would take us for what Amy heard as R20 (about $10) for all three of us. We ran back to get Cortney and quickly set to pitching our tent about 5 inches from the nearest one. After kicking about 2 pounds of sand into our tent while organizing our stuff (just so we could exfoliate during the night), we went to pay and discovered it would really be R20 per person. We grumbled and groaned a bit and then paid up. We left the campsite and went directly to the Hosteling Int´l Hostel which would be R20 for our own room, bathroom, and breakfast. We booked that for the next night. The island was beautiful at first glance, with a beach just 2 blocks from our campsite, boats floating in the harbor, and forested hills behind us. The one major highlight of camping was listening to drunk Portugese teenagers singing love songs at the top of their lungs and being accompanied by a guitar until they went to the bars at 11 and then listening to them return at 4am.

The next day we got up early and headed off into the woods. After climbing for about 45 minutes, we began to descend to a beach, a beautiful beach, which we passed. Another climb up over a hill and descent to yet another gorgeous beach. Nope, not yet. Two more up and overs and we finally reached Praia do Lopes Mendes (Lopes Mendes Beach) and it took our breath away. Big black rocks to the left with palm trees and misty mountains in the backgroud. Fine, white sand and turquoise water. There were very few people there compared to the other beaches and especially compared to Rio. We planted our stuff on the sand and ran for the water, which was the perfect beach temperature. We spent a few hours there (and ate the nastiest tuna sandwiches I have ever eaten in my life. I don´t think I can eat tuna for a long time... it tasted like cat food - I still maintain that we read the label wrong and it actually was catfood) and then we returned to our hostel. It took us less time to get back... about 3 hours there and 2 hours to get back. We spent our last day on the island at another beach closer to our hostel.

Now we are in Paraty, back on the mainland. It is a cute colonial town. We walked to the fort today and then explored the downtown area, which is completely paved in cobblestones. Excited to see what happens at night here.

I am learning a little bit of Portugese, which I speak very tentatively... as Amy is much better at it. Thank goodness that the Brazilian people are wonderful. So far they have been nothing but friendly. Taxi drivers always wave and give us huge smiles when they drop us off (hopefully this is not because they have just ripped us off) and hotel staff are always really sweet... even though we have no idea how to ask for the things we need. Cortney took a pillow with her to the front desk today and pointed to it and just said "otra?" They always get the general idea.

When does our flight leave again?

We're preparing to leave for our trip. Amy said yesterday that she wishes she could just wrap this week up in a box and keep it forever because this is all about the unknown. We've got one hostel reserved for our first two nights in Brazil... and after that we have no real serious plans aside from two plane tickets.

Here's the tentative plan so that I can look back on this later and laugh.
Week 1: Rio de Janeiro (arriving Sept. 5) and beaches between Rio and Sao Paolo.
Week 2: Catch a bus to Foz de Iguassu (the BIG waterfall), bus towards the coast and take the train from Curitiba to Paranagua, work our way to Florianopolis.
Week 3: S. Brazil through Uruguay
Week 4: Montevideo to Buenos Aires
Week 5: Flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego on Oct 8
Week 6: In and around Tierra del Fuego
Week 7: Tierra del Fuego and then bus to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile by Oct. 19
Week 8: Torres del Paine
Week 9-14: ??? Up through Argentina, a trip to Argentina coast, maybe stopping to see the island of Chiloe in Chile, making our way towards Valparaiso to see Amy's host family. This could also include a trip to Bolivia if budgets/time permits. Flying home on Dec. 18

We've spent the last couple of days running around picking up supplies. I put together a med kit so hopefully we're covered for everything from stomach aches to blisters. We're picking Cortney up this afternoon so she can join us for our last night in the states, tonight. Last thing to do is say bye to our friends and family here. SO EXCITED FOR TOMORROW!