Patagonia

Ushuaia, Argentina

Christi hiding in the elf forrest.

The view looking south over Ushuaia,

Christi really liked this funky lamp.

Seals and birds on our boat trip in the Beagle Channel.  The birds make their nests out of seaweed and poop.

The lighthouse on our boat trip in the Beagle Channel.

Our bus had to stop and let the sheep go around us.  This is what it was like on all sides of the bus for a few minutes.

Torres Del Paine, Chile

About a centimeter on both sides.

Torres Del Paine (towers of pain).  Our legs felt like towers of pain after the hike up here.  But we got lucky because the peaks were covered in clouds all day, then cleared up just about three minutes after we got to this lookout point.

El Calafate, Argentina

Christi hanging out with her sheep friend.  This was one of the hostel pets.  Bahahaha!!

Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 kilometers (3 mi) wide, with an average height of 74 m (240 ft) above the surface of the water and it has an area of 250 sq km (97 sq mi), with a length of 30 km (19 mi). 

This is the view from the boat while approaching.

And this is the view from the boat while closer up.  We´re still pretty far back but you can´t get too close because of the falling ice chunks.

The view from the lookout trail.

A relaivaly small piece falling off.  It´s actually pretty loud when they smack the water.  We also have some nice video of larger chunks coming down.

El Chaltén, Argentina

This is what it looked like as we drove into town in the evening.  We found this photo on the web because the one we took out of the bus was blury.  AND we woke up the next day to clouds and rain that lasted for a few days.

 As you can see it was windy this day (the photo is even at an angle).  It almost blew us off the mountain and Christi had to sit down and brace herself between two rocks to take this.

Still cloudy, so we hiked to this nearby waterfall.

Bariloche, Argentina

Both of these photos were taken from the top of a hill called Cerro Campanario that was west of town.

Journey to the End of the World

That's what they call Ushuaia...El fin del mundo.
It's definitely not the end of the world, but it is the most southern city of a good size. We didn´t manage to get a flight from BA to Ushuaia for the time and price we were hoping for, so we decided to just go for it and take the bus. Believe me it was a looooooong bus ride and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who gets a chance to fly. The bus trip took 50 hours!!  However, it wasn't actually that bad. The buses in Argentina are surprisingly comfortable. The "semi cama" chairs lean back far enough to sleep, they are more or less on time, have a toilet, and serve food. We took the chance to walk around and move a bit on the occasional stops in any bigger city we went through. The view from the bus, for the most part was a whole bunch of nothing other than bushy or grassy, flat land. The distances were mind boggling. The last 12 hours of the stretch were the most annoying because it wasn't very far, but the two boarder crossings took hours... salida Argentina, entrada Chile....crossing the Strait of Magellan....then crossing back into Argentina.  But, we made it and it turned out to be a good adventure with the occasional view of guanacos (small llamas) and rheas (like small ostriches).

Our bus for the 2 days

Exciting view from the bus of the Patagonian plains. The same for a day and a half. We went to sleep as it looked like this. When we woke up the next morning, it still looked the same.

View out front. The wind shield was looking pretty bad after a while.

Crossing the Strait of Magellan

Ushuaia is put in a really nice setting. There are mountains, the Ushuaya bay,  Beagle Channel and a Glacier right behind the town.

More pics later. They will be more exciting, too : ) Gotta catch another bus right now.

Lots of food in Buenos Aires

Chez Juanito

Check out this giant calzone napolitana!

This is the medium calzone, called a tarta.

Grande finale at El 22

 The "El 22" wasYves and Semu's favourite parilla (steak house),  so we went there again for our last night with Sofie and Yves.  They serve huge amounts of everything at this parilla. Sofie asked for a small piece of "milanese" (Schnitzel) and got that big ol' thing.

 The number 22 means "el loco" in Argentina. All numbers from 0 to 100 have a meaning here, originating from the Tango. People use them to interpret their dreams and choose lotto numbers.

A la playa

Playa La Pedrera in Urugay 

Playa la Paloma

We stayed in La Paloma, a beach town in Urugay, for about 5 nights. Our hostel was located right at the beach, which was pretty awesome! And we drank lots of mate, just like the locals. Uruguayans are world champions in mate drinking. Anywhere and anytime you see them, they always carry their thermos tucked under the arm and the mate calabaza in the left hand. Just like the guy below at the beach, early in the morning.

 
Hibiscus flowers

Uruguay

 We scored a really nice and colorful hostel with high ceilings in Montevideo, and it had this great roof top terrace.

The Barbeque Marcado in Montevideo. Carne y mas carne anywhere you look.

Urugayian country side. Looks kinda like anywhere, very green and open, and lots of cows.

Hola Argentina!

Buenos Aires

We started our South America trip off with a nice cerveza and delicious empanadas at a cute little cafe on the roof top with my sister Sofie and her boyfriend Yves.

On our bike tour

Visiting with a giraffe in the middle of a big city.

Dog walker

 

Playing with the street art of BA.

 Hand made bathroom sign

 

Mate

Mountains to Coast

 

You just gotta love living in California!  After the snow got bad, because it had rained on the mountain and turned the slopes into a huge ice field, we just took off and headed back for the coast.  Some days in January seriously felt like it was summer time, Swiss summer temperatures in any case.  Should I call it global warming or just luck?  Anyhow, we did enjoy ourselves at the beach, watching beautiful sunsets, hiking up hills and surfing.

 Reno is only an hour and a half from South Lake Tahoe.  We took a daytrip there, checked out some casinos and unfortunately didn't win any money playing the penny machines.  However, we did see this futuristic bus take off into the air.

 100 miles per gallon for half an hour straight while driving on curvy roads downhill fom Tahoe.

 Beach art in Santa Cruz.

Coffee art in San Luis Obispo.  Mmmmoca!

 Amy and I on Valencia Peak in Montana de Oro.

It wasn't just us who enjoyed the nice, warm weather. The animals got into the spring feeling as well, especially the elephant-seals and the monarch butterflies.

A huge cluster of Monarch Butterflies in Grover Beach.

And yes, they are mating.  But it looks a little like one big butterfly.

 Visiting with an Elephant Seal in San Simeon.

 There are hundreds of Elephant Seals at San Simeon at the moment, all different sizes from newborn babies to the big old bulls.

I can sense a fight coming on...

 Sunset from Hwy 50 on our way back up to South Lake Tahoe.

It finally snowed again a few days ago and we made our way back up into the mountains.  It didn't exactly dump as much as we were hoping for, but the freshly groomed runs in the morning are great fun.  When it gets too busy or tracked up on the slopes, we go for a little hike to find some untracked powder, or we just go home for lunch.

Heavenly

2011...

... started with a New Year's Eve party at our friend Katy's house. Good times, great people!

On our way up from the Central Coast to Lake Tahoe we stopped in good ol' Santa Cruz for a couple nights. 

I still can't get enough of the beautiful sunsets at Westcliff.

Snowboarding at Northstar up in the Lake Tahoe region. 

It hasn't snowed in a while but the snow is dry and the weather cold enough, so the runs are great. We've been trying to hit the slopes early in the morning to get the freshly groomed runs.

On a Sunday it's better to avoid the ski resort crowds.  Instead, we went for a fun snowshoe hike with Amy, Kyle and their friends.