Author: Jane

January 29-31

We arrived late into town after a short bus ride from Rio (yes – 6 hour bus rides are now considered short). We checked into our AirBNB in Paraiso and then asked for recommendations from the doorman for a place to grab a bite to eat. We then immediately ignored his suggestion after finding out that the burger place one block away is called St. Louis and features midwestern burgers. Yes please. We had been looking for a good burger without success for a few weeks now. Plus the picture has Heinz ketchup on the tables. Real ketchup!!! Plus come on… it’s called St. Louis. It did not disappoint.

The diner was decked out in signs from all over the US with a prominently placed Cardinals hat. The burgers were delicious, and Michael was pumped to get some onion rings as well. The only issues is that we wish the burgers were bigger! They were amazing.

After missing out for Thanksgiving, we ordered apple pie for dessert. The pie was not as good as Mom B’s and the whipped cream was not as good as my mom’s, but it was still real apple pie and delicious.

The next morning we went for a run in the park down the street.

It was perfect: big, beautiful, well taken care of, and safe. Plus, at close to sea level and with cooler weather, we both had great runs. There was some art in the part, but my favorite was this statue:

What I like about it is that you can see the obelisk in the distance, but this memorial is to the people who built it. I like that.

We only had about 48 hours in town, and a lot of that time was spent making plans for the next leg of our trip. But we did get in some good beers and we got in some great meals. Besides St. Louis, we also had dinner at Izakaya Issa which is a Japanese restaurant. But the main event was our dinner at D.O.M. Currently considered the 9th best restaurant in the world, DOM has 2 Michelin stars and serves Brazilian cuisine by chef Alex Atala. Atala’s main theme is to showcase food that is often considered food for the working class, alongside food from the Amazon that isn’t as widely consumed. He then puts a contemporary spin on it. It makes for really interesting, complex, delicious food.

We found out about Atala from Netflix’s show Chef’s Table. So if you have an hour to spend – check it out. Atala is a very bizarre mix of outdoorsman, aged punk rocker and chef. It is definitely entertaining.

A few highlights:

Heart of palm fettuccine with mushrooms (Heart of palm is grown in the Amazon – it comes out of a tree, not a can. Who knew?):

Oxtail with yam purée (you can see I like it because of the thumbs up I’m giving in the background):

This ball of amazingness. I don’t remember what it is but it was doughy and cheesy and amazing:

It was an amazing meal and a great way to celebrate the end of our three months on the continent. Afterwards, we picked up our bags and headed to the airport.

I’ve talked a bit about all the planning we did over these two days. We’ve been traveling for three months and we 1. haven’t run out of money yet and 2. aren’t sick of each other yet. So we’re going to move this party to Africa!! We’ll be sending word from Ethiopia soon!

January 25-29

So for anyone keeping track, after Bogotá, we were going to fly down to Leticia and take an boat along the Amazon river to get into Brazil. This didn’t happen as you can see from our stint in Medellín. We ran into some scheduling issues and we’re going to have to do this adventure next time. There are a few things down here in South America that we just weren’t able to make time for – hiking the W, going to the Galápagos, and now visiting the Amazon. We just didn’t want to do the last two items unless we could do them properly, so we’re skipping for now. We don’t want to get into a habit of checking things off the list just to say we’ve done them without really experiencing them.

So after Medellín, we flew to Rio de Janeiro. A few things to remind you all: Rio is hot, Rio has beaches, and people in Brazil speak Portuguese. We were pumped about two of these three things. I kept hearing that Portuguese is so similar to Spanish and we have been doing pretty well with our Spanish at this point. Portuguese is nothing like Spanish – at least not to my pathetically untrained ear. Even when Brazilians try to speak with me in Spanish, I struggle big time. At least por favor is the same… and for the most part if I speak Spanish, they know what I’m saying even if I don’t understand them. So a big thank you to all of South America, but specifically Brazil, in putting up with us tourists who show up to your country without knowing your language. I hope that people in the US are as kind to visitors who don’t speak English.

After taking a nap to recover from our overnight flight, we went out to explore the area. We started by walking on the beach and then headed to Adega Perola where we had a ton of great seafood and our first caipirinhas. The place is set up with a counter that displays all of their fresh fish dishes:

Here were some delicious oysters and you can see that caipirinha (pronounced ky pee REE nyah) which is Brazil’s most popular cocktail – it has rum, sugar and lime in it. But the rum is Brazilian rum which apparently is different that other rum because it is made from fermented juice of sugarcane while most rum is made from molasses. Now you know.

After our meal, we took a gondola up to Sugarloaf mountain which is a great overlook for Christ the Redeemer.

We waited until sunset to try to get a shot that would make Michael instafamous… You can see Christ the Redeemer on the right hand side at the top of the peak.

After getting our fill of this incredible view, we headed to Santa Teresa which is an up and coming bohemian neighborhood to have dinner at Espirito Santa – it was our second choice after we got to the pizza place that was closed for the entire month of January.

Afterwards, we popped over to a really neat bar that had hill side seating, great lights and clever cocktails. I have zero pictures of any of that except for my tiki drink:

And this picture of a cab driving past some street art:

The next day was a beach day! Three things we learned from our beach day:

1. Ipanema which is just next to Cocacabana (where we are staying) is fancier.

2. Even if we are underneath an umbrella, and it is cloudy, we will get sunburnt.

3. We should have had more beach time in the past three months.

I have this picture of the beach, but I don’t remember when we took it – it is super empty and looks dreary… we need to get a few more pictures before leaving town.

We also spent some time in Ipanema’s beer bar (no surprise) which sells Brazilian craft beer. It was surprisingly delicious. Specifically, we had a stout that tasted like a really legit stout from the US. It was called Carvoeira and brewed by Lohn brewery. That night we ate at Amir which is a Lebanese restaurant. Super delicious food – plus we learned that Brazil has more Lebanese descendants (possibly 7 million) than the actual population of Lebanon (about 6 million). The number depends on how you look at it, but I thought that was super interesting regardless.

Saturday we woke up and went for runs along the beach. Mike ran 10 miles and I ran 5. That is a ton for me – and a decent run for Michael. So we grabbed some food and decided we should go for a grueling hike after that. We did a 2 hour hike straight up the 2330 foot Corcovado Mountain to view Christ the Redeemer. Corcovado is Portuguese for “hunchback” which is what the shape of the mountain looks like. The hike was tough! For one thing – it’s the jungle. Super hot and super humid.

Also that incline was tough!

Things were worse than this up hill hike. We had to scramble up some rocks. And look at this – climbing up some boulder with a chain and some “steps” to help:

And then this was towards the end of an uphill stretch that required us to grab onto roots to help us climb up the incline. To summarize, we were drenched in sweat, we were tired from our already taxing runs and we were struggling to get up some pretty tough inclines. That said, it was actually a lot of fun. It only took us an hour and a half (30 minutes sooner than per the internet – eat it!) to get to the top and although everyone else was clean and ready for their selfies, we were really satisfied with our accomplishment.

We bought our tickets to take the final climb up and was warned before buying our tickets that the visibility was bad. We knew it would be hard to see the city, but we weren’t planning on having difficulty seeing a statue that is 98 feet tall and 92 feet wide (outstretched arms).

Ridiculous. We were lucky in all the clouds to get one decent shot and one horrible selfie (note: Jesus looks great… the hike apparently took its toll on us).

Yes. Those are our “good” shots. Oh well! It was a great hike and we really enjoyed a huge meal after we got a few showers out of the way. After dinner, we found out that apparently Carnival has already started! We assumed it didn’t start until Fat Tuesday and what they had going on wasn’t as incredible as you see in the movies yet (no elaborate costumes or parades), but it was definitely the beginning of Carnival!

Mostly it was just a lot of young people standing around with beers wearing tutus and cat ears/halos/veils on their heads. There were also a ton of wonder woman costumes.

They knew Michael was taking their picture:

After we grabbed dinner, we saw that most of the party had moved from the center of Ipanema to the beach, so we headed there too. Same thing – mostly people standing around drinking beers and enjoying the scene.

Some delicious looking street meat:

Some brave people running into the water which had insane waves to navigate.

So us old people went home and let the kids stay out and have their fun. See how much quieter Copacabana Beach was in comparison on our walk home:

Our last full day in town was another beach day – here are the good pictures I wanted earlier in the post:

And a few videos of amazing soccer feats on the beach.

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Sorry the shot is so bad in the first- I was trying to not be the creep on the beach videotaping random people.

And here you have soccer volleyball:

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So that’s it for Rio for now. We had a wonderful time, ate a lot of great food, did a great hike, spent some time on its beautiful beaches and enjoyed mini Carnival. Today we’re off to São Paulo to check out the most populous city in Brazil, the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere per the interwebs.

January 21-24

Warning: this post has a few pictures for kids, but has some adult themes.

There is a Colombian saying “Don’t Give Papaya” that was spray painted all over the neighborhood we were staying in. It is a phrase that basically tells you not to let yourself be taken advantage of. If you leave out your papaya, someone is going to take it. I like this idea. On our trip, many people have told us where, when, how to be safe. Much of it we take to heart. But I think the main theme we try to follow is right in line with this phrase – don’t let yourself be taken advantage of. Don’t leave your phone sitting out, don’t wear flashy jewelry, be careful with your cash. Putting the responsibility on ourselves to stay safe instead of worrying about what others are going to do.

We arrived late to Medellín on Sunday and while I went straight to bed, Michael went out for a walk. We were staying in the trendy neighborhood of Poblado. For a few blocks in every direction the streets are lined with restaurants and clubs and all of those were packed with people partying. This is not our scene, but everyone online said this is the best area to stay, so we were going to give it a go. We soon realized the actual reason why this was not our scene. But first, a few things that we loved about Medellín:

The Botanical Gardens: we took the train from Poblado towards downtown to check out the Jardín Botánico which is a free garden right in downtown. Now, I come from a family that is obsessed with the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, so I was super geeked about this. We had heard great things both online and by friends who had visited. Word to the wise: don’t compare the St. Louis Botanical Gardens to other gardens. You will be disappointed. That being said, it only took me about 30 seconds to get over it and go back to be geeked about the gardens.

Most of our time spent was checking out this really cool lake. It had turtles:

And these cool ducks. It took me too long to get this picture, but the duck in back was in the process of eating a fish that was huge!! It is still in its neck when I finally got my phone out.

And then there was this thing. We couldn’t get any closer:

Super huge iguana, maybe? No way of knowing, but the thing could have been six feet tall from head to tail. It was huge.

Here’s us in the gardens and below is some more super cool street art.

We also spent some time at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art. Some of you may know that this is not typically my thing – modern art. It usually just feels like people trying to find the biggest shock and then calling it art. This rung true, for me, for the first exhibit we saw, but once we got past that, the place was awesome.

My favorite exhibit was a multi-part video project that had over 360 video interviews with random locals in 12 Latin American cities between 2005 and 2008. The questions were about democracy, U.S. interventionalism in the region, and U.S. foreign policy. All of the videos were subtitled in English. I read the above description after having watched the videos for probably 10 or 15 minutes. What was interesting to me is that although the people mentioned the U.S. in their answers, I wouldn’t have thought that the main theme had to do with the U.S.

The history of the U.S. being involved in Latin America is complicated and I don’t pretend to be educated well enough in the topic to speak about it here. I do know that at times the U.S. has helped over throw leaders and gotten involved where we probably should have kept our noses out. That said, of the videos that I watched in this exhibit, most people were ignoring the intervention issues and were more focused on democracy. They cared less about what happened in the past and more about what needs to be changed to improve their future, mostly looking to the U.S. as a guide for how to improve their country.

The statement that hit home most is that in the U.S., every child that is born is born with a future. Every child is born with a future. There are security nets in place to ensure that child will be educated, will be fed, will be housed, no matter who the child is.

I think listening to people talk about foreign policy is really interesting, but it’s been hard to get a real feel here in South America because everyone has been really polite. Super polite. And I think much of that goes back to a (here translated) sign in one of the small towns in Bolivia: Tourism is Existence.

Moving on. A depiction of Medellín and how the artist feels about so many people being in such a small space:

These were flies that were fashioned out of bullets and resin. The artist mentioned that just like flies, war is always present.

This one is just a nice painting that doesn’t make me think too hard.

The top floor had an outdoor garden with a great view of the city:

We also spent a lot of time in Medellín eating. First up, micheladas – they’re not just in Mexico! This one was mango and lemon and lime.

And some delicious sangria.

This is the best dessert I’ve eaten in the past 3 months. This dish is essentially gooey butter cake with a caramel/chocolate topping that is then topped with Oreos. It was magical.

OK – so the city was clean, the food was good and every Colombian was wonderful to us. Now for the problem we had with Medellín: sex tourism. After that first walk around town on Sunday night, the main thing that Michael wanted to report back was how many prostitutes were around.

With a little careful online research I found an article that mentions you can buy Medellín guided tours online that includes underage prostitutes in the package. Also I found out that prostitution is legal in Colombia, but pimping is not. In recent years, with the increase in national attention, Medellín has supposedly begun cracking down on sex tourism. What we saw was not good and didn’t give me much confidence that the crack down is helping. There was a large number of normal looking tourists – couples, backpackers, etc. But the real majority of the people we saw around the Poblado neighborhood were 50-70 year old white men, often by themselves or with 15-25 year old Colombian women. It was awful and it really had overtaken this neighborhood. We spoke with a seemingly normal Irish dude who was in his 50’s that within 2 beers admitted that he was looking for “someone nice to have dinner with”. We saw him walking with a pimp and two 15? 17? year old girls a few hours later. He didn’t make eye contact with us.

Although both of us were upset by the entire thing, Michael could not get past it. He would point out random old white men without any women and accuse them of being creeps. Every white man became a perp in his eyes. Look at those creeps… what a creep… do you see that creep over there?

I know this happens in a lot of cities – it was just shocking how open these jerks were about it. I’m sure some parts of Asia will be shocking to me as well. For now – we’re getting out of dodge and heading to Rio. Sorry for the Debbie Downer post – go back and look at that Oreo gooey butter if you need a pick me up.

January 25-28

We arrived late on Thursday to Bogotá, Colombia, birthplace of our brother-in-law and Shakira. OK – Shakira wasn’t born in Bogotá, but she is Colombian. Since we don’t know Shakira (yet), we went with our other options and spent time with Oscar’s family for a few days. We had a blast. But before we get into that, we had just one night in a hotel in Zona Rosa before meeting up with Juan and Yubely. Zona Rosa is a really chic part of town, with a lot of high end shopping, great restaurants, and Bogotá Brewing Company (BBC). We split our time between the first and the last. I walked away with a great pair of boots and we both walked away with a few extra calories from BBC:

Juan and Yubely met us at the BBC and took us immediately to eat. I had been warned by Michael that they were going to try to feed us nonstop. I was mostly ready.

Steak, plantains, yuca, chicharrónes… and a few cervezas.

We stayed with Juan and Yubely for the rest of our time in Bogotá. Their apartment was incredible – including the view which overlooked the mountains.

We were really spoiled the entire time we were with them and incredibly grateful. After getting settled in, we headed off to dinner at Carlos Vives’s restaurant. Carlos Vives is a multi Grammy winner and sings this song with Shakira:

So his restaurant, Gaira Café, is basically just a huge party that serves great food. We arrived around 8 or 9 on Friday night and there was a huge line outside the restaurant. Yubely just walked up to the door and I don’t know what she said to the doorman, but we walked right in. We definitely did not have reservations. Once in, Yubely walked into the roped off space and claimed a table. The waiter came over and told us that the tables were reserved, but it took only about a minute for the guy to cave. So now we had a table in a prime spot for the show. Yes, show. This restaurant has a huge stage and puts on a show, that is apparently televised, each night.

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This level of entertainment went on for hours. Set changes, people being lowered from the ceiling, costume changes, audience participation… it was incredible. That’s right… a cocodrilo dropping down into the crowd.

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The place is a weird mix of restaurant, night club, and performance space, so besides eating a ton of great Colombian food, we also had bottle service, because of course we did.

The crowd was great, in general. Everyone was dancing all night, with certain songs causing the entire place to jump up to dance and other songs causing the entire building to sing along. There was a great group of ten twenty-something women sitting in front of us. “Sitting”. They danced the entire night – just having a blast with each other. Michael and I did dance some and Juan and Yubely danced (and were really good). But mostly we just enjoyed watching everyone else dance. Towards the end of the evening we started dancing with the women in front of us who just so happened to love Michael. The one woman awkwardly, albeit sweetly, asked my permission to dance with him. I gave the green light. I did, however, put the block on a woman from a different table who asked Michael to dance with her. Yubely thought she was up to no good, and although I couldn’t understand what Yubely was saying about her, I felt a similar vibe, so had no issue putting a hard stop on that.

Here is a famous Brazilian singer who filled in for Shakira on the Bicycle song. I definitely don’t know her name.

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We stayed out way past our bedtime, but had so much fun.

On Saturday, we met up with our buddy, Hector, who we use to play soccer with in Chicago. Hector moved back to Colombia after a few months in Chicago and now lives in Bogotá.

Hector hung out with us for a bit at Juan and Yubely’s apartment and then the five of us went to dinner at Andrés Carne de Res. This restaurant/bar/rumbeadero is about an hour drive outside of the city. When I googled it to double check the spelling, I found this description that works too well not to steal: “Alice-in-Wonderland meets Moulin Rouge… mind-boggling trip of bright lights, theatrical service… a party place like no other”.

Upon arriving, Yubely was not pleased with the table we received, so she told them it was my birthday to get a better table. That landed me with an entire band playing happy birthday, a crown and a sash:

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This also led to an entire evening (and part of the next morning) with the five of us reminding each other how “muy importante” I am.

The next morning we left Juan and Yubely and headed out of the city with Lucy and Tonio – Oscar’s parents – for lunch with Jorge and his wife, Maria Paula. Being out in the country was such a huge change from spending time with Yubely and Juan in the city.

After spending a little time exploring the incredible farm that Jorge and Maria Paula live on, we headed off to lunch at Tereza al Tambor which is an outdoor restaurant where a bunch of Colombians come on Sundays to have a long lunch. People order food and then sit around enjoying the fresh air, some live music and each other. It was a really enjoyable meal.

Once again, a ton of meat:

But also we had a Colombian drink called Refajo Colombiano which involves mixing Colombian soda and beer together. It is surprisingly delicious and easy to drink:

After eating way too much, we headed into La Calera which is a really cute traditional Colombian town. We walked through the market and square for awhile and, because we’re in Colombia, had ice cream to throw on top of all that other food that we’ve been eating. We are definitely walking away from Bogotá muy gordo.

Thank you to all of the wonderful family that took us around Bogotá. It was great spending time with you all and the food/dancing/drink was all too much!! Thank you for your hospitality. We can’t wait to come back!

January 15-17

We had planned on being in La Paz for about two weeks. We had heard great things about the city from a number of people, but the real reason was because we, once again, were trying to get our Brazil visas. The best timing we had heard so far was from Bogota which promised 10 business days. We flew in on Sunday night and crashed. The past few weeks had definitely left their mark and we were ready to get some R&R in La Paz as we waited. Monday morning, we arrived at the Brazilian consulate 20 minutes before 8am to make sure we beat the crowds. Upon arrival, we found out that Google maps let us down and it actually didn’t open until 9am. So we waited a little extra. Still excited to beat the crowds! At ten minutes to 9 another woman joined us in waiting. So we beat out that one woman with our 80 minute wait.

We ended up spending about 3.5 hours at the consulate working through the process with a very nice man who, despite us not speaking Portuguese or Spanish (very well), seemed to enjoy us and was very kind. When we had submitted all the paper work, he pointed to the calendar and told us we could come back in two days to pick up our visas. Two Days!!!! We were blown away. So, plans changed. With this new found freedom and time, we were able to switch back to our original plan of going to Colombia and taking a boat down the Amazon to Brazil. So now we were down to just two and a half more days in the city. So we went out and crammed our days full of activity! Just kidding. We were still exhausted, so we failed La Paz. The city seemed really cool and we knew there were tons of activities that we were missing out on: death road, Lake Titicaca, the gondolas, and a highly recommended museum from Mike’s friend who is from Bolivia. We did none of them. But – we did sleep a lot and we ate really well. So basically, I’m going to tell you about what we ate in La Paz.

Street sausages: there was a sausage vendor two doors down from our hotel which provided two of our meals – I’m not sure what kind of sausage they were, but mine looked and tasted like a brat and Michael always went with the spicier version that was reddish in color. A little picante sauce and mustard completed the meal.

Vinapho: we had lunch at an excellent Vietnamese restaurant. Spring rolls and some curries. Super delicious.

Indian: we accidentally ate at the Indian restaurant next door to the Delhi Curry House which is the restaurant we were trying to find. It was still delicious.

Gustu: ok – so this is the real star of the show. Gustu is a restaurant owned by one of the owners of Noma which was the second best restaurant in the world for a period of time (in Denmark). The main theme of the restaurant is refined Bolivian cuisine. Also even though it was a bunch of Danish people who started the restaurant, they have been teaching Bolivians their methods and slowly handing over all roles in the restaurant. So when we went (two times in three days), all of the waiters were Bolivian, one of the two managers was Bolivian, and 90% of the kitchen was Bolivian, including the chef. The beauty of this place, too, was that it was cheap. They were throwing out super fancy NYC style cocktails that have things on fire and interesting ingredients for 5 bucks.

A few pictures to show off the delicious food:

That’s right – they started with deep fried ants. They didn’t taste like much, so it was more the shock value than anything,

This is llama tartar with frozen yogurt and maca which is an Andes herb. This dish was delicious! When we went back the second night, we ordered this one again.

This is alligator tail with watermelon and strawberries – also really interesting and delicious:

One non food activity: we did go to San Francisco downtown which was one of the things I wanted to visit while in town.

Whomp – it wasn’t that cool. Big and beautiful, but very similar to most of the other cathedrals we’ve seen in South America.

So… incredible food and fast visas. La Paz probably is one of the cooler cities we’ve been to – but we’ll have to visit again to know for sure. Sorry La Paz for not doing it right. Off to Bogotá!

January 14

OK – so we had 4:30 breakfast and 5am departure to catch the sunrise on the salt flats. Since it’s the rainy season, there is a few inches of water that has flooded the salt flats. We found out that on the 12,000 square kilometers of salt flats, the slope changes by no more than 60 centimeters. With the flooded flats, the ground acts like a mirror which allows for some cool pictures. We had a tough start to the day – our driver was 30 minutes late to leave since we were all a few minutes early, this gave me some major fomo. We made it to the flats in time for sunrise, but just barely and there was a lot of anxiety involved.

Find the horizon… I dare you:

Once the sun was up(ish) we tried a few perspective pictures. Some worked out really great!

And some turned out ok:

You see… Michael is supposed to be the golf ball on top of the tee…

And some not as good which I won’t post. I will say that it was harder than it looked

After pictures we headed to the hotel made of salt which was cool – it’s not in use anymore, but people congregate there and there are a bunch of foreign flags that people take pictures with. Here’s us with a slightly battered US flag:

And us showing love to Colombia and Mexico for some of our sobrinos:

After this we headed back to Uyuni to try to jump on a flight to La Paz. We were a little unprepared on how to get out of the city that night and we heard a rumor that some of the roads were shut down, so we waited not so patiently for a few hours and eventually made it onto the 2pm flight (at a cheaper price than many of the others who had bought months in advance, I might add). So we’re off to La Paz to try, once again, to get a Brazilian visa. Fingers crossed!!

One sad goodbye at that airport involved my trusty boots. We bout them for our hiking in Costa Rica for our honeymoon 6ish years ago. They have been a trusty through hikes in South and Central America and have been used to keep my feet dry for many Chicago snows. I noticed the soles were pulling away from the leather on the Inca Trail and standing in just a few inches of water today, my feet were soaked. So they were left in the airport bathroom. Thank you awesome boots – hopefully someone found you and will give you a second life!

The Salt Flats were beautiful, but we were pumped to get off that tour. Off to La Paz! One last picture and video for your viewing pleasure:

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January 12-13

We woke up early and got picked up from our AirBNB for our three day trip to the Bolivian Salt Flats. First step – crossing out of Chile for the last time on this trip and entering Bolivia. The border crossings were pretty easy – we had our visas in order. Being two of the few people from the US, we were also two of few people who actually need visas to get into Bolivia. They make us do it because the US makes them.

Day one in Bolivia was kind of boring. There was a few interesting things, but mostly we were just moving along from one lagoon to the next. We hit the white lagoon, the green lagoon and the red lagoon. Here’s the red lagoon. It has flamingos.

We also saw the Dalí Desert – so named because the rock formations look a bit like surrealist art from Spanish artist Salvador Dalí.

I like the concept – but we were too far away for me to actually see the rock formations. Even super zoomed in I didn’t have a good handle on what was going on. But the clouds were cool:

Our first day ended at a really rough hostel. No hot water – outdoor bathroom – no wifi. The indoor bathroom wasn’t promised, but I didn’t think that was something I had to inquire about, but the hot water and wifi were promised. Mostly it was tough because I wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t prepared. But it was cold in the room and coming off a few nights of bad sleep, we slept pretty well.

Day two was more interesting that day one. We were in some new terrain with lots of rock formations of compressed volcanic ash.

There were also a lot of really beautiful valleys that we got to check out like this one from up top:

And this one from below:

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Tell me those llamas aren’t the cutest jumping over the small stream.

There were also some cool rock formations that looked like a variety of things, like…

The World Cup Statue:

And a camel:

And then another formation that I also thought looked like a camel but our guide says I was wrong. There can only be one camel and it’s posted above.

And this formation which if you focus on the negative space for a minute, where Michael and I are sitting, this is supposed to be a man (on the left) kissing the forehead of a woman (on the right). The negative space defines their chins/necks/shoulders.

A few notes on this tour so far – it really wasn’t going that well. Bolivia was beautiful but our guide was terrible. He was really dry and he told long boring stories that would go on for 30/40 minutes at a time in a monotone voice while we were driving. Plus he didn’t really answer any questions that we asked – he would just adjust the question so he could talk about whatever he wanted to talk about. The second night was supposed to be the fancier hostel per our guide. It was… and we got hot water, and the bathroom was just down the hall (inside the building) but still no wifi. We were getting increasingly low on patience and were looking forward to seeing the salt flats and then getting off this tour.

January 10-11

We took a short flight from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama – our big draw to stop here before leaving Chile was to see the desert but most importantly to see some incredible stars. We were still pretty exhausted when we arrived, so we just hung out the first day and checked out the town for a bit. It is a really cute adobe style town. It is very tourist focused, but we were still able to find some really good food including meals with veggies. There was a slight hippy vibe to the town so every restaurant juiced stuff. I’m not typically a juicer type of girl, but coming off so much meat and red wine, I was totally game. We stayed in a really cool adobe style airbnb that was super hot… all the time. So we had a few nights of terrible sleep. Our second day we did the rational thing: we rented bikes and went on a 6 hour bike ride in the desert. Idiotas.

We took a ton of water and sunscreen and felt super prepared.

We rode out to Valle de la Luna, so called because much of the landscape looks like that of the moon. The brochure was in all Spanish and we didn’t have a guide, so… here’s some info from the internet.

Valley of the Moon is 8 miles west of San Pedro (which is too far to ride a bike in the desert). Some areas have not received a single drop of rain in hundreds of years. Also – a prototype for the Mars rover was tested here because of the dry and “forbidding” terrains. I’d like to think some movies have been filmed here, but no guide and no online guidance, so… just my best guess for now.

Duna Mayor:

And the Tres Marias formation:

I might not be taking the picture the right way but it kind of looks like three and a half Marias with a few baby Marias.

And then some salt mines which were cool:

But the real highlight of the day was when we came back from the hike on the major dune and found one of Michael’s tires completely flat. Now they sent us with stuff to replace an inner tube, but Michael and I have never done it before, so it was quite the experience. We were doing ok, not great, but ok when the first Chilean came to help. He sorted us out a bit and then we promised we could finish on our own. We kept working when a group of 20 something Chileans came up and immediately the one guy just took the pump out of Michael’s hands and finished for us. A bit pathetic from our standpoint but really struck a cord with how kind and helpful the Chileans are. It would have taken us another 20 or 30 minutes without their help. And at this point, it was getting really hot. I don’t have any pictures of our helpers, but I have this picture of Michael finishing the job. Look at how good we are at changing tires!!

We rode the 8 miles back to town and it was terrible. At this point, both of my tires were pretty low on air and I was super low on energy. This was a terrible idea. But we made it back and headed back to the Airbnb for hot naps before dinner and star gazing!!!

Dinner was delicious (more juicing!) but unfortunately, star gazing got canceled because it was too cloudy. ☹️

We went to bed early and tried to get some sleep since we had an early wake up to head to Bolivia the next morning. I slept terribly again, so around 2am I went outside to see if there were any stars and it was really clear. I woke Michael up and made him go outside to see the stars. After glancing at the sky he said “Southern Cross”, pointed, and went back to bed. I enjoyed the Southern Cross along with the Milky Way and a bunch of other constellations I cannot name for a few more minutes and then went back to lie in bed and wish there was some sort of air flow.

So Atacama wasn’t the most successful, but we were pumped to head off to the Bolivian Salt Flats next!

January 6-9

I promise this is the last winery posting for a long time.

Clos de Chacras – We really enjoyed this tour/tour guide which took us into their very cool cellar and the wines were also great. We bought a blend from their premium line that we drank later that night that we loved. Look at the awkward thing that is going on between my arm and Krystal’s arm:

Osadia de Crear – This was some of the best food we ate our entire time in wine country. I ordered a much needed salad while the guys started with a “pork taco” but there was no tortilla so we’re not really sure what the idea was here. Despite the not entirely accurate naming – it was incredibly delicious. Also Pipe and I had the most amazing braised short ribs. What – you thought I was going to make it through an entire meal without red meat?!?! We’re in Argentina, people.

Carmelo Patti – The enologist of the people!! That’s what a magazine article said about this guy. This is an old man that basically makes wine in his really huge garage. Then he ages it for 5-7 years or so before he sells it because he wants people who buy his wine to be able to drink it right away and he doesn’t trust that people age wine properly. He also gave us tons of random wine facts – for example, if you are opening a bottle of wine and the cork is stuck, you can put a flame from a lighter right up to the bottle outside the cork and it will loosen it. He also stated that if you break the cork, it’s not the cork’s fault – it is either the wrong opener or user error. Also, if you are going to store wine in a cellar, you should take the wrapping off the top so you can check out the cork and make sure it isn’t cracked. If it’s cracked, it won’t age properly. Also Krystal thought he was charming. He was.

Alta Vista – this tour was cool and the tasting room was really neat. The sparkling rose was fancy and delicious. Look at all the awards they won – they must be delicious!!

Zuccardi – This place was not that cool. It is one of the bigger wineries in the region and the wines we tasted were crappy. That said, we met a few cool people from the US – Tony and Gabe from LA who do a ton of traveling and were fun to compare notes with. We also met two college buddies from Atlanta and Minneapolis who had just finished climbing Aconcagua Mountain. Reminder from two posts ago that this is the highest mountain outside of Asia. They said it took them like 20 days or something crazy. Really incredible (but also I’m glad it wasn’t me).

Carinae – this one was meh. It was ok. I don’t have much more to say and neither Michael nor I have pictures, so… we’ll leave it at that.

Here in the middle of all of these wineries was a Sunday. We planned an “active day” where we were going to go bike riding or do something other than drinking that morning. We did go for a run… it wasn’t quite an active “day” as much as an active hour and a half. On my run I did see that there was 8pm mass in the town square. You read that right. 8pm. So we went and it was something else. We got there about 3 minutes late and by the time we arrived, there were already about 30 people standing outside the church. It was packed and people were spilling out. So we stood outside with them. The church had speakers outside – apparently this is a regular thing. Here’s a picture after mass and a picture of the couple that brought their dog to mass. Apparently they knew it was an outdoors kind of thing.

Achaval Ferrer – this is the favorite winery of the entire trip for all four of us. It had cool art:

And a really great guide, Felipe. Felipe was super high energy and did a great tour along with cool tastings. It was the only time we had tastings from the barrel:

And Felipe had super cool Led Zeppelin tattoos on his arm:

Most importantly, Achaval Ferrer had the best wines – super delicious and now my sister has the good fortunate of receiving a few more bottles to put in her basement with the rest of small collection of wine and beer she’s babysitting for us while we travel. Thanks, Biz!

Matervini – after the winemaker at Achaval Ferrer sold his winery, he opened a new one next door – Matervini. Obviously the same style and quality, so once again delicious wines. Plus another great tour courtesy of Augustine. One thing that I thought was super interesting was that the winemaker is not allowed to put his name on any Matervini wine, per his deal when he sold Achaval Ferrer. However, he’s allowed to hang his daughter’s art, which is shown throughout the winery. So the Achaval name can only be found in her signature on the paintings.

RJ Viña Dos – we had a chocolate tasting here. The tour wasn’t that interesting and we were all dragging, but it was fun to do something different.

Bonfanti – We were still pretty exhausted when we showed up to this one and we arrived an hour early, but the guy took us in anyway, and it ended up being a really interesting tasting. He would ask us questions about what tasted or what we thought and then would always tell us we were wrong. So it was hilarious, but still somehow an interesting and fun tasting.

Familia Cassone – a very small family winery. We loved the tour and really enjoyed the wines. They seemed excited that we had found them. And then we saw the coolest thing – they were bottling and it was awesome. I could have stood and watched them for hours.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_5934.mov

El Enemigo – this was our last stop before heading back to Santiago. We ate lunch here and did the tour. The name means enemy, but it was explained to us that they are referencing not an external enemy but your internal enemies: doubt, fear, etc. Also, the entire winery is based off Dante’s Divine Comedy with different parts of the winery depicting Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. They have a ton of really neat art to depict the three, including this super cool book in inferno. It is one of the old accounting books that was left on the property when the current owners bought it. It is an accounting ledger and on the left side as you turn each page is the ledger and on the right side, the artist painted/sketched a different piece of art in different colors and styles. It was really cool. Note: James Blunt’s full album was playing in hell.

Also look at this super cute kid space:

The lunch there was also incredible. Their theme was that if you don’t like it, they’ll replace it. They kept saying – don’t be afraid to try something new, we’ll replace it if you don’t like it. And they meant it – throughout the meal, they came back to make sure we didn’t want anything replaced. The food was so good, though, that there was no need to replace anything. Great way to end our time in Mendoza.

Then the long drive back to Santiago over the Andes.

A huge thank you to Phil and Krystal for coming out and visiting! We had an incredible time! Next stop: detox in the desert!

January 3-5

We spent three days in the Uco Valley to start our time in Argentinian wine country. A view of me relaxing at our AirBNB which overlooked a vineyard:

The valley is surrounded by the Andes and between that and the vines are incredibly picturesque. We had a great time seeing the different wineries, drinking delicious wine and enjoying great meals. We also finally got a few hands of Euchre in with Phil and Krystal. A recap of the wineries we visited:

Clos de Siete – we found out our first morning that the first winery we had a tasting at was not a winery. Clos de Siete is similar to a winery/vineyard coop. It is seven farms and five wineries. They all produce their own wine but they also all contribute to one joint bottle a year that is made by Diamandes’ winemaker (Michele Rouland). Michele goes to each farm, tastes the grapes and tells each farm which grapes he wants for the production. And everyone just agrees to give him whatever he wants.

Diamandes – on Clos de Siete – had the coolest facility. Their buildings are nicknamed the wine cathedral and have won awards for the architecture and art.

Monteviejo – one of our favorite lunches. We met the winemaker, Marcelo Pelleriti and Felipe Staiti, a rockstar. The winemaker is really well known. He is from Argentina but creates wine for the same family in Pomerol, France. He is the only Argentinian winemaker to have ever been awarded 100 points by Robert Parker. We spent some time chatting with him about a variety of topics.

He showed us pictures of the farms in Pomerol that he took with his drone. Super nice guy. He then introduced us to Felipe Staiti who was sitting with him at lunch. Felipe is a rock star. We’re not totally sure who his band is but we saw a YouTube video of him playing guitar and he’s solid. Marcelo is in a band and is really into music. Felipe is a musician who is really into wine, so they collaborated on two lines of wine that is sold under Felipe’s name. We talked with Felipe for awhile – he’s playing Madison Square Garden in June – and then, of course, we bought the rockstar’s bottle of wine.

Finca Sophenia – This winery had a great story. The two men who started the winery became friends because their two daughters, Sophia and Ohenia, were best friends. Hence the name. The daughters are now adults and are involved in the company still. It was our favorite tasting room of the trip and the blend that was served last was my favorite wine of Uco Valley… yet somehow I don’t have a picture of it.

Domaine Bosquet – We had lunch at this winery. The restaurant is called Gaia. The food was good and the pairings were good, plus it was all beautiful, but they lost our reservation, so it was a struggle to enjoy the meal, especially compared to Monteviejo which was so much fun.

Andeluna – Krystal’s loved the Altitud Malbec.

Also we got Phil and Krystal’s Dayton Quarterly picture taken care of:

La Azul – more casual, sampled fewer wines. Chardonnay and a Cab/Malbec blend. Syrah Grand Reserve was one of Mike and Phil’s favorites. We hung out with the winemaker, Ezekiel, who studied to be a vet but gave it up because people are too attached to their pets. “I have 15 dogs. I give them food and some I give names.” You can see how much Krystal loved this guy by the slightly awkward yet surprisingly natural looking hand touch.

Sidenote about driving in Argentinian wine country: it’s rough and causes flat tires. Michael changed the tire with a little help from me and Krystal. Phil was really good at watching: