Vacation Redux

I had an awesome time in South America although I'm still recovering from a cold...We experienced it all in a matter of two weeks: ice, sleet, snow, winds, humidity, sun, and sand. And, although I'm sad that our vacation is over, at the same time, I'm relieved to be back at home, in my own bed with all the comforts of home.

So, we started out in by flying from SFO to Miami and then from there to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Supposedly the "Paris of South America," but the only similarity that I could find was the plethora of dog poop on the streets. I had such high expectations and I was a bit disappointed with the city.

We spent two days there and then hightailed it to El Calafate (Southern Patagonia). This is where we went glacier hiking (picture below of the glacier). It was an amazing experience and the scenery was straight out of a National Geographic mag.

From here, we took a three-hour bus ride to El Chaltan to hike the Andes Mountains. We spent three days hiking and unfortunately, the weather is known to be very, very inhospitable. So, those three days were spent trekking in the sleet, snow and gale-force winds. Between the cold and the travel, I ended up catching a pretty bad cold which I'm still recovering from.

Our next stop was Iguazu Falls in both Argentina and Brazil. What can I say...it was beautiful, amazing, and very humid. Talk about a change in weather

 
And our final stop, what I feel was the highlight of our vacay was Rio. I had heard so many rumors about how dangerous the city was and how it was unsafe to roam the streets after dark, but we experienced none of that. The city is gorgeous. It has the white beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema and is surrounded by green mountains on which you can see the Christ the Redeemer statue. We had a couple of days to unwind here, before heading back home.

Note: All pics were taken by moi! I guess some of the photography classes are actually paying off. :)