Happy Holidays From Whistler British Columbia!

Hola Amigos!
Well we have made it home safe and sound and it sure is emotional looking back at the blog and all the photos.

We arrived back at Whistler safe and sound and yes there was snow on our front door step.  This certainly was different from the 32 degree weather we left behind in Buenos Aires but we are thrilled to be back in our own place again.  Gary is very excited to be skiing and I can't wait to get in some good turns on the mountain as well.  As you can see from the photo our bags made it back safe and sound and we did have to expand a bit in order to fit all of our treasures from South America.

We have seen many of you already and we just wanted to say Thank You for following our blog.  We have had some wonderful compliments and it has been a great experience writing the blog and getting all of our adventures recorded.  The spanish keyboards are different and it sure can be a challenge sometimes getting the photos to load but we persevered and we are just thrilled with the results.

It is totally impossible to describe our trip but the photos sure do help.  In the spirit of the Holidays I've tried to think of some way to summarize the trip and I'm going to use loosely the 12 Days of Christmas song to tie everything together.  Here goes:

7 Boarder Crossings between Chile and Argentina
(1. Bolivia/San Pedro, 2. San Pedro/Salta, 3. Mendoza/Santiago, 4. Santiago/Bariloche, 5. Bariloche/Puerto Varas, 6. Puerto Natales/El Calafate, 7. Punta Arenas/Ushuaia)

6 Countries
1. Colombia, 2. Equador, 3. Peru, 4. Bolivia, 5. Chile, 6. Argentina

5 Months Travelling
July - December 2012

4 Boat Cruises
1. Galapagos, 2. Cruce de Lagos, 3. Navimag, 4. Australis (our personal favourite)

3 Mountain Adventures
1. WMDR World's Most Dangerous Road, 2. Refugio Frey, 3. Torres del Paine

2 Islands
Galapagos and Easter Island

1 Awesome Loving Husband - still! after all that!

Here is another stat and a link to a map so you can see exactly where we have been.  We traveled a total of 29,268 kms in South America on our trip. It  was a little hard to fit that into a Christmas Carol...
Check out this map with our route.  Gary has detailed all the places we were so you can see our itinerary. It is pretty cool.

 http://www.travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm?user=patbrowne

So now we are home and it is very strange to be able to understand what everyone is saying to us.  We can converse with the locals and make ourselves understood perfectly here in Whistler!  The Dusty's scene is full on and we are enjoying lots of wonderful snow.

We thank you again for following us and we wish you all the best for the New Year 2012!  May all of your dreams come true!

Cheers,
Pat and Gary
Official South American Travellers!

Iguazu Falls and Buenos Aires

Hola Amigos,

As we neared the end of our wonderful South America adventure, we were able to zip up to the very northern part of Argentina and see one of the  most incredible water falls in the world - Iguazu Falls.  You can see them from both the Brazilian and Argentinian sides and they are truly fantastic.  I think they are considered the second most important waterfalls in the world with Victoria Falls in Africa being number one and our very own Niagara Falls in Canada coming in third.

The falls are basically located in the Jungle and there are beautiful butterflies everywhere.  One landed on my arm and stayed for a while and Gary had one land on his backpack.  There are incredible walkways all around the waterfalls so it is really easy to see them from the top and bottom.  The movie the Mission with Robert DeNiro was filmed here back in the eighties and the scenery is simply spectacular.

Swarovski Crystal Tree

After three days in Iguazu we flew to Buenos Aires for the last bit of our trip.  We ended up renting an apartment right downtown and it was wonderful.  We went to visit Eva Peron's grave in the Recoleta Cemetary and we saw a live Tango Dance show as well.  We saw the famous Boca Soccer stadium and then a fun highlight was seeing a real Argentinian Soccer game in the big huge stadium.  We saw River Plate play Rosario and it was quite the scene.  People were singing and waving banners throughout the entire game.  We had to make sure we wore the right colours and sit in the right section of the stadium.

Buenos Aires is a fantastic city and we managed to see the symphony in the beautiful Theatro Colon which is the last great opera house built before modern times.  The sound quality rates the highest in the world and our tickets cost less than a burger lunch at McDonalds.  It was funny watching all the Christmas decorations get put up in the city because it was 32 degrees and sunny and warm while we were there.  It sure didn't feel like the snowy Christmases we have in Canada but it was fun listening to Christmas Carols in Starbucks.
We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we would like to wish you all the Best for the New Year 2012!
We are going to do one last post to wrap up this blog and finish everything up.
Feliz Navidad!
Pat and Gary