Saturday, November 18, 2006
El Fin
Hola all from Argentina's wine capital, Mendoza!
Hard to believe that in 4 days time our South American adventure will be over - we felt one final blog was in order to wrap up what has been an incredible 10 months!
Highlights - the million dollar question.... Coronas and beaches in Mexico, climbing live volcanos and meeting the amazing people of Guatemala (hola Gladys), speeding on a flying fox through the jungle in Costa Rica, snorkelling in the Bay Islands Honduras, getting engaged in the Andes Peru, boat adventuring in the Amazon Bolivia, living in the worlds highest city for 5 months, skiing in Chile, hiking in Patagonia and right now - tasting wine and eating steaks in gorgeous Argentina! Yes it has indeed been a very tough 10 months...!
We said our farewells to Bolivia - which entailed many a goodbye dinner, afternoon tea and of course party.
Alice saying goobye to our lovely family cook.
Going away party (Halloween).
Great friends we met in La Paz.
Our first host brother, Hector.
We really made some very special friends there - vamos a regresar!!! All our work there ended up going very well - I don't think either of us imagined at the beginning of this year that we would be able to give computer, hiv aids or nutrition classes in Spanish. It was an unbelievable experience! Not to say our Spanish is in any way perfect, we still have our fair share of bloopers but we have improved from the days of Coff telling people that he was sexually excited about everything and me only being able to speak in the first person and therefore telling everyone how nice I am and how lucky they are to meet me...!!!
We spent our last weeks in Bolivia finishing up work and doing treks in several different parts - seeing many a llama, staying in small huts in the middle of nowhere and lapping up the scenery.
We then left Bolivia through the amazing mines in Potosi and the incredible salt flats - these are the highest in the world and are really stunning. You go past the salt flats, past lagunas full of pink flamingos, past sulphur pouring out of the ground and into the Chilean desert - not a bad ride!
Visiting the mines of Potosi (sad, incredibly dangerous, but very interesting - Potosi was the richest city in the world for a number of years).
Beautiful salt flats of Boliva (biggest in the world).
Sunrise on the salt flats.
Crazy photos taken on the salt flats of Bolivia.
Beautiful flamingos in some of the lakes in Southern Bolivia.
Geysers in the Bolivian desert.
Lago Colorado - coloured lake in Southern Bolivia.
So one morning we were on the salt flats heading into Chile's Atacama Desert and the following night we were close to the most southern town in the world, in Chile's south. We did the most beautiful walk in Patagonia, known as the W. It was 5 days through unbelievable scenery - we were walking from 7 in the morning until 8 at night and loving every bit of it.
We did our walk in Torres del Paine national park - and went from seeing beautiful rocks, stunning lagunas, fields of wild flowers, incredible mountain ranges and at the end a huge glacier! We felt it was time to get adventurous and so tried out ice climbing, on the wonderful Glacier Grey.
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.
The torres del Paine (towers of Paine).
Stunning green lakes.
Glacier Grey from a distance.
Glacier Grey up close.
Ice walking on Glacier Grey.
Alice making her way up an ice wall.
Being close to Antarctica makes you want to see some penguins so we ended our trip in Chile by visiting a penguin colony (Coff's favourite animals). They were so gorgeous - but unbelievably uncoordinated, just walking into the water caused a few accidents. It was, needless to say, very fun to see penguins in the wild!
Penguin near Punta Arena in Patagonia (shortly after taking this photo the last penguin face planted into the ground).
So now we are spending our final days in Argentina - eating steaks, drinking wine and marvelling over our amazing year! Yesterday we went on a biking wine tour sampling Argentina's finest wine, plus finest olive oil and chocolate - we were both in heaven! Tomorrow we are off to go white water rafting and today we are going to join in on the salsa festival that is currently taking place here. Mendoza is perfect for ending our adventure.
Wineries by bike (great drunken fun).
While we are both a little sad that it is coming to an end there is so much to look forward to back at home. Get ready everyone!! Coff is home on the 25th of November and I'll be home on the 5th of December, see you all then!
Thanks for all the emails, see you in OZ!
Loads of love
Andrew and Alice xo
We leave you with a picture of Ricky to end the blog (the translation of "ME AMARAS" is "YOU LOVE ME!").
Hard to believe that in 4 days time our South American adventure will be over - we felt one final blog was in order to wrap up what has been an incredible 10 months!
Highlights - the million dollar question.... Coronas and beaches in Mexico, climbing live volcanos and meeting the amazing people of Guatemala (hola Gladys), speeding on a flying fox through the jungle in Costa Rica, snorkelling in the Bay Islands Honduras, getting engaged in the Andes Peru, boat adventuring in the Amazon Bolivia, living in the worlds highest city for 5 months, skiing in Chile, hiking in Patagonia and right now - tasting wine and eating steaks in gorgeous Argentina! Yes it has indeed been a very tough 10 months...!
We said our farewells to Bolivia - which entailed many a goodbye dinner, afternoon tea and of course party.
Alice saying goobye to our lovely family cook.
Going away party (Halloween).
Great friends we met in La Paz.
Our first host brother, Hector.We really made some very special friends there - vamos a regresar!!! All our work there ended up going very well - I don't think either of us imagined at the beginning of this year that we would be able to give computer, hiv aids or nutrition classes in Spanish. It was an unbelievable experience! Not to say our Spanish is in any way perfect, we still have our fair share of bloopers but we have improved from the days of Coff telling people that he was sexually excited about everything and me only being able to speak in the first person and therefore telling everyone how nice I am and how lucky they are to meet me...!!!
We spent our last weeks in Bolivia finishing up work and doing treks in several different parts - seeing many a llama, staying in small huts in the middle of nowhere and lapping up the scenery.
We then left Bolivia through the amazing mines in Potosi and the incredible salt flats - these are the highest in the world and are really stunning. You go past the salt flats, past lagunas full of pink flamingos, past sulphur pouring out of the ground and into the Chilean desert - not a bad ride!
Visiting the mines of Potosi (sad, incredibly dangerous, but very interesting - Potosi was the richest city in the world for a number of years).
Beautiful salt flats of Boliva (biggest in the world).
Sunrise on the salt flats.
Crazy photos taken on the salt flats of Bolivia.
Beautiful flamingos in some of the lakes in Southern Bolivia.
Geysers in the Bolivian desert.
Lago Colorado - coloured lake in Southern Bolivia.We did our walk in Torres del Paine national park - and went from seeing beautiful rocks, stunning lagunas, fields of wild flowers, incredible mountain ranges and at the end a huge glacier! We felt it was time to get adventurous and so tried out ice climbing, on the wonderful Glacier Grey.
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.
The torres del Paine (towers of Paine).
Stunning green lakes.
Glacier Grey from a distance.
Glacier Grey up close.
Ice walking on Glacier Grey.
Alice making her way up an ice wall.
Penguin near Punta Arena in Patagonia (shortly after taking this photo the last penguin face planted into the ground).So now we are spending our final days in Argentina - eating steaks, drinking wine and marvelling over our amazing year! Yesterday we went on a biking wine tour sampling Argentina's finest wine, plus finest olive oil and chocolate - we were both in heaven! Tomorrow we are off to go white water rafting and today we are going to join in on the salsa festival that is currently taking place here. Mendoza is perfect for ending our adventure.
Wineries by bike (great drunken fun).Thanks for all the emails, see you in OZ!
Loads of love
Andrew and Alice xo
We leave you with a picture of Ricky to end the blog (the translation of "ME AMARAS" is "YOU LOVE ME!").# posted by Unknown @ 11:59 am 
