Home for the holidays

We flew home Thursday December 19th from Santiago, Chile. Just in time for Christmas with the family;) ...And the big ice storm!

We are looking forward to catching up with with our family and friends over the next 5 weeks before we fly out to New Zealand for our 4 month adventure. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Santiago, Chile

A few highlights from our time spend in Santiago.

Best ICE CREAM EVER! 

Santiago's Emporio La Rosa is listed on the top 25 ice cream parlours in the world. 

Flavours we tried? Raspberry/Mint, Orange/Ginger, Dulce de Leche/Chocolate, Lemon/Mint, Peanut/Swiss Chocolate, Coconut, and most impressive Rose ice cream!

Chilean wines-my favourite!

Need TP? Everyone has something to sell on the streets. Anything and everything.

Best empanadas at Famosa with our friends from Ireland and England. 

The guys had to try the local soda-pap.

Valparaiso, Chile

Spending three days in the port city of Valpo-UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Valparaiso was once the largest, most important port city in the South America...

until the Panama Canal was built. 

Also on the most active plate in the world! In 2010, Chile was hit with one of the worse earthquakes in history; an 8.8 magnitude.

(Bottom right) Valpo's cerro's (hill neighbourhoods) are "easily" accessible by their many stairs, 

but also these (see pic below) 

Funicular ride to the cerro's 

City tour with our guide Wally (stripped shirt) and the "pack." (top right) 

Historically, South America's wealthiest street. (top left)

Typical brightly painted houses in Valpo. (bottom)

Boarder Crossing - Argentina to Chile

Catching the bus from Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile was "supposed" to be the least challenging part of our trip. Turns out, not printing your tickets before you get to the bus station presents a problem-even though they have your name printed on the sheet with your passport number, seat number, etc. I spent a stressful hour before the departure, right down to the last 2 minutes of boarding, running from agency to agency trying to print tickets! Finally, I gave up and tried to explain to the bus driver in my now broken spanish (stress), that I didn't have a ticket printed. Needless to say, he ended up eventually helping us and we departed for Chile 20 minutes late-oops!
Turns out that was the most difficult part of our boarding crossing-go figure!

At the Chilean boarder high in the Andes. 

Everyone on the bus was placed in a small room with all our bags while the dog checked our bags. (right)

On the way down from the Argentinean/Chilean boarder. So many curves that they had to place a sign on them! (bottom left). 

Beautiful and terrifying view of our road trip downhill. 

Mendoza Mi Amor

We won't get into all the details, mainly cause some of it is a blur;) However, here are some photos that will do some of the explaining...

Not 1, not 2 but 3 times on bikes in the Maipu region-plus one in Lujan to make that 4 days total.

 The third time in Maipu was for the olives;)

Bike parking at the bodegas (wineries). 

Vineyards, there were a few:)

Carmelo Patti-most interesting and fun tour in Mendoza...so we bought his wine. 

Wine & friends are the best mix!

These are our dutch friends that stayed in our dorm room in Mendoza at the Emperado Hostel.

 It's a toss up which was more fun-drinking wine with them or riding bikes!

We toured a few cellars-haha.

By far our favourite was the organic winery that that we tasted the wine straight from the barrel! We tried really hard to get him to bottle it for us...

Olive tours. 

See we DID visit more than just the wineries. This was our first visit on the third day of touring Maipu region. So good I bought the olives and oil:)

How to celebrate touring the wine regions in Mendoza? Steak dinner with more wine!

Bikes & Wine

Mendoza- where it's a crime not to visit the wineries. A crime!
Day 1 we decided to do just that.
After yet another looooong bus ride from Bariloche (18 hours) we dropped our bags at the hostel and meet up with our new friends from the bus (Tom the Aussie & Robyn the Welshman) and headed out to Maipu (1 hour bus from Mendoza) for wine tasting. The temperatures reached 35+C and the route we rode was over 30k. Should have know when I realized that the guys we were with were the same guys that passed us in an uphill battle on the bikes in Bariloche (see Biking Bariloche). Or maybe we should have realized when we saw the size of their calves that we were up for a challenging ride. I think I spent much of the ride with a "tomato face."

Trapiche winery. 

One of the oldest and definitely one of the biggest in Mendoza

Robyn's bike broke down and lucky the police were right there to lend a hand, literally.

There we are!

Biking Bariloche

After sitting our butts in the car for one week with over 2500km travelled, we decided to rent bikes and tour the surrounding country sides with 2 wheels. After a few instructions on the route and tips for a few stops along the way, we hit the pavement-a 25km route with many up and downs, lakes and mountain views. Oh, and one cerveceria artisanal pit stop:)

The 25km loop

Gilbert brewery- great IPA & Pale Ale. Also great view!

Homemade empanadas. Sooooo delicious!

Mirador (lookout) after a slightly struggling 10min uphill ride. Obviously worth it.