Back in good ole BA

Well, we have officially survived our South American travels! Mike and I made it back to Buenos Aires about 2 days ago and have been completely indulging in all the wonderful, wonderful things that make up this incredible city. As I said to Mike, Argentina really feels like Europe after traveling in countries like Peru and Bolivia. Not to say that we did not truly enjoy those countries (photos to come of all the beautiful landscapes!), but it's very nice to be back in a country with good food & coffee, warmer weather, and toilets that flush. I think we both feel very at home here.

But anyway, I wanted to let everyone know that we are going to be uploading lots and lots of photos on our Flickr site over the next week. Since I have not been able to upload any of my photos since we first left BA (they've all been from Mike's camera), we'll be starting again from the beginning at Iguazu...a little recap of our entire South American journey. We'll try to get a new batch up every day, so keep checking back! We'll also be posting some stories to the blog. We apologize for not having kept up with it as much, but Peru and Bolivia aren't exactly on the Information Superhighway. Plus, we were really on the move a lot....taking in lots and lots of landscapes and wildlife, biking down the "World's Most Dangerous Road", camping out in the Bolivian jungle, and freezing our butts off in salt deserts that are often said to resemble Salvador Dali paintings. More details and photos on all of these things to come soon. We hope everyone is doing well at home and knows that we miss you all very much!

The Journey West

Again, we`re a bit behind our postings and don´t have a whole lot of time at the moment, but i thought I would just mention quickly how we got from the beaches of Brasil to the ancient Inca Capitol city, Cusco.

You might remember that we were in Recife for three days and I look at that as sort of a "layover", since a good portion of that we were in the airport. Anyway, Jen and I left Recife on a plane at about 10am bound for Santa Cruz, Bolivia, but before we touched down in Santa Cruz, we flew to Salvador, then Rio de Janeiro, then Sao Paulo with a 6 hour layover, then to Campo Grande, where we went through customs and about an hour layover. From Campo Grande we landed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia around 2am the next morning. We decided that we really needed to get to Cusco; one, it was as far north in Peru as we were going, and two, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu, the glorious once forgotten Inca city in the clouds. That night was spent in the airport, so that we could catch the 7am flight to La Paz, under the impression (impression the Lonely Planet Guide Book gave) we could easily find a flight to Cusco. We make it on to the flight, arrive in La Paz around 9am and find that the only way to get to Cusco is via bus and the last bus has already left the station for the day, so we decide to grab a night sleep and take the first bus the next morning. We wake bright and early the next morning, hop on the bus, and arrive in Cusco a short 11 hours later... a very lovely city and a leg of our trip that has been one of the biggest highlights.

Thought it was a quick story worth mentioning, we posted a few more pictures and stay tuned for more postings. --mike