Hello again!

Sorry it has been over a week from our last blog post, but we have been hiking in the beautiful Torres Del Paine National Park and have not had the chance to find wifi. Since our last post, we have successfully crossed our first boarder into Chile, met back up with our Swiss friends and hiked many amazing trails!

At the end of our last post, we were in Rio Gallegos, the southernmost city on mainland Argentina. From here we had to a make a decision, continue south to the end of the world at the city of Ushuaia or start heading west into Chile to start our hiking. In order to get to Ushuaia, we would have to cross into Chile, put our truck on a ferry across the strait of Magellan, cross back into Argentina and then finish the drive south to Ushuaia. Once in Ushuaia we would spend 3-4 days exploring the city, seeing penguins and hiking a bit in Tierra del Fuego National Park. In total this option would be about a weeklong. Our other option was a one-day drive to the west to the boarder of Chile, cross into Chile and then go to the famous hiking area Torres del Paine and hike there for a week. It was a very tough decision to make. On one hand we were already so far south, and it would be cool to see the end of the world but on the other hand, we could have more time hiking in Torres del Paine. After doing a lot of research on what each place had to offer and on the weather for the next week at both places, we decided to travel west and spend a week in Torres del Paine. The decision came down to the quality of hiking and the weather. Tierra del Fuego has some good hiking but nothing in comparison to Torres. Also, the weather in Ushuaia looked terrible for the week, 40 degrees and rain every day, while Torres looked much nicer. With this decision made, we started west.

We were a little worried about our first border crossing, just because we didn’t fully know how it works. We knew we had all the correct paperwork for ourselves and for the car and we also knew fresh fruits and vegetables were not allowed across the border. Because of this, we chose to spend one last night in Argentina, right at the border so we could finish off the rest of our fruits and vegetables. When we were within 20 minutes of the border, we started looking for camping spots. Normally we use the app iOverlander to find camping spots but when we were about 1 mile outside of our chosen campsite, we saw a very steep dirt road leading up a hill. Immediately, Nikki said, “Let’s go up there!” Just recently on our trip to Namibia with Nikki’s family did Nikki learn of her love for off-roading and I could tell from the excitement in her voice, that at some point today, we were going to try our hand at getting up that steep hill. We did buy the off-road version of our truck after all and we needed to use it! We found the start of the off-roading trail and decided to go for it then. Upon approaching the hill, we realized how steep it was! It seemed like a trail the local town used for ATVs and dirt bikes. We slowly crept up the first section and both our eyes grew big. One vehicle length up the hill we stopped to reassess our decision. We were both a little nervous on how leaned back we were, but we really wanted to see what was on top of the hill. We decided to go one more vehicle length and see how it felt. Upon reaching our next stopping point we had both realized our truck had no problem with this hill and it was just our inexperience making us nervous. The truck climbed so smoothly that we didn’t even stopped at the next vehicle length and instead powered up the rest of the hill. Once at the top, we were rewarded by a huge meadow of yellow and white flowers! We also had an amazing view of the surrounding hills. We loved it so much up there, we found a small ravine sheltered by trees where we spent the night. We were proud of finding our first campsite on our own and not just following the overlanders who came before us. In the morning we continued to be proud as we added our campsite to the iOverlander app. Once we had settled in, we made a huge feast of all our remaining vegetables and fruits. We made a big vegetable stew that lasted us for many days.

The next morning, we drove the last 20 minutes to the Chile border and easily cruised through the exit of Argentina and the entrance to Chile. The only hiccup we had involved losing two pounds of dried beans and lentils to customs. We knew fresh foods were not allowed but didn’t expect dried beans to be an issue. With the border crossing behind us, we made our way to Puerto Natales, the nearest town to Torres del Paine and the starting spot for everyone wanting to hike in the region. This town was full of tourist from all over the world preparing to hike. The town had hostels and outdoor gear stores at every corner. It seemed almost as if English was the official language of this town. We spent two days in Puerto Natales just working in a coffee shop with wifi to plan out the next leg of our journey. From this planning, we chose 7 hikes we wanted to do in Torres del Paine. After planning and some grocery shopping, we drove 2 hours north to start our week in the park.

The main thing you should know about the park is that it contains two very famous backpacking trails, the W and the O. The O is a longer loop trail that allows for access to every part of the park while the W is a slightly shorter version that hits the highlights of the park. The hard part about doing these trails, is that there are designated campsites along the trails that must be booked way in advance. Nikki and I had looked into this before leaving Buenos Aires and had decided not to do either of these trails due to how crowded and expensive they were. For these campsites, the prices were around $44 to $80 a night! Instead of booking these campsites, we found a way to hike most of the W trail as day hikes and sleep in our camper. This way we could hike 80% of the trail but sleep for free in our bed. The cost of hiking in Torres del Paine was a reoccurring comment of ours. Everything about the park is aimed at international tourists. Every cost was substantially greater for tourists, which I am totally ok with, but the weird part was the privatization. Parts of the park were owned by private hotels or companies that couldn’t be accessed unless you were staying at that hotel. Parts like that were a bit weird but overall, we loved the park!

Our first hike was to mirador Ferrier (Mirador is Spanish for viewpoint). This trail was a relatively short trail at 6 km roundtrip, but the elevation gain was impressive. In just 3 short km, we gained 600 m of elevation! Our legs were burning as we reached the viewpoint! Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating with us and heavy clouds obscured our view of the famous torres (Spanish for towers). This was a great starter hike that really showed us the consequences of eating empanadas, steak, ice cream and drinking wine for the last month in Buenos Aires. All this hiking for the next 3 months is really going to kick us into shape again!

Our next day was also another warmup day of hiking consisting of two smaller hikes to viewpoints. These two were to mirador condor and mirador cuervos. Both provided amazing viewpoints of the stereotypical Patagonia landscapes. The hike to mirador condor was a short 2 km up but the crazy wind made it feel more like 6 km. Neither of us had felt wind like this before. At one saddle, the wind howled through the narrow saddle gap and the gusts had the power to knock us over if we were not prepared. Some of the gusts even visibly pushed us backward as we struggled through the windy gap. The view from the top was spectacular though! It provided a full 360-degree view of the mountains and lakes of the park! Even though the wind was almost knocking us over, we huddled down behind a boulder and stayed to enjoy the view for a while. After finishing that hike, we drove a short distance to our other hike for the day, mirador cuervos. This hike was also very short, about 6 km in total, but is very popular due to having two distinctive viewpoints. The first viewpoint was salta grande, a large waterfall. While this waterfall wasn’t very tall, the amount of water pouring over it was impressive at 1000 m³ a second! After the waterfall, the trail led to a viewpoint over a beautiful lake with views of the mountains. This viewpoint was much less windy, so Nikki and I took a 30-minute nap in the sun here.

After our two hiking warmup days, we were feeling ready to get onto the real hiking! The next day we met up with our Swiss friends to hike the most famous viewpoint in the park, mirador Torres. The hike culminated into a view of the famous towers the park in named after but to get there involved a 10 km uphill hike full of people. Since this is the most famous hike in the park, the trail was extremely crowded for a 12-mile hike. We started early in the morning and arrived at the peak at noon. The hike itself was very pretty and diverse with sections of windy passes, emerald forests and boulder scrambling but the view at the end really was the reason for hiking. The granite volcanic inclusion towers rise up above a stunning glacial lake. We were very fortunate to have a clear day so we could see the full view. Many days, clouds roll in and obscure the tops of the towers which would be a huge bummer since the hike is pretty grueling with a total length of 14 miles and 2400 feet of elevation gain. While we loved the views, we did not like how crowded the hike was. While having lunch at the top, about 100 other people reached the summit. We are just not used to hiking with so many people, but overall it was our favorite day of the trip so far.

Feeling energized by our long hike the day before, the next day we ventured on another 14-mile hike, but this time with much less people. A good thing about having a couple of very famous hikes is that the other less famous hikes are basically empty. We chose a hike around lagoona azul and lagoona cebolla because it was on a side of the park very few people go to. This hike was beautiful because it gave a new perspective of the torres. We hiked around these lakes but always had the peaks in the background. It was really great to escape the crowds for a day. We only saw two other groups on this hike. Even though this hike was still long, 14 miles, it had little elevation gain which made for a very enjoyable hike. The miles of hiking were adding up though and our legs and feet were needing a rest. The following day we had planned another 12-mile hike along the famous W-trek, but both our bodies and the weather had other plans. Waking up, our legs and feet were very sore, and a large storm had rolled in overnight to completely obscure the peaks. We decided a rest day was warranted. We spent the day reading and playing music while our little home protected us from a continuous drizzle. We later learned that the drizzle actually turned to blowing snow up on the trails! We felt so cozy and relaxed bundled in our warm home!

The following day we planned on doing a small one-night backpacking trip on the southern arm of the W-trek. We wanted to hike to Gray Glacier and two suspension bridges but to do this in one day required taking a ferry to the trailhead, hiking 12 miles to the bridges and hiking the 12 miles back in time to take the ferry back. We decided this was too much for one day and instead booked a campsite at the glacier to split the hike in two. The first day we took the ferry and completed the first 12 miles arriving at Gray Glacier and the two suspension bridges. The view of the glacier was spectacular! The ice was beautiful due to numerous shades of blues against the murky gray color of the lake. This glacier is part of the third largest ice sheet in the world only dwarfed by Antarctica and the Greenland ice sheet. The two bridges were also a sight to see! Both were narrow wooden suspension bridges that spanned a considerably long and deep gap! The combination of a sign saying a 4-person maximum on the bridge and the wind swaying the bridges, made crossing the bridges a nerve-racking but exciting experience! We spent that night peacefully sleeping in our tent surrounded by a hundred or so other tents. In the morning we woke up early to get a head start on our hike back down. We made it back down in time to catch the 11:00 am ferry back to our truck. We were very happy with our decision to split this hike in two. We would not have been able to hike the 24 miles in one day and enjoy the experience. Once back at the car, we had finished all our planned hikes for Torres del Paine so we drove back to Puerto Natales for a much deserved shower and hot dinner! We slept that night near the border since our destination for the next day was the town of El Calafate in Argentina.

The crossing back into Argentina was uneventful and we arrived in El Calafate in the late afternoon. El Calafate is other very touristy town in the Patagonia region due to its proximity to Perito Moreno, arguably the most famous glacier in the world. This glacier is famous due to being one of the only advancing glaciers in the world and because of this, the frequency at which ice calves off its face and falls into the lake below it. Even though this glacier is advancing, the ice sheet is also thinning at the same time so in total the glacier is still losing mass. In town, we restocked our food supplies and slept along the shores of Lago Argentino. Early the next morning we drove to Perito Moreno glacier with the goal of spending the full day there watching large ice chunks break off the glacier. This part of the national park doesn’t have any real hiking trails but instead has a couple of miles of raised boardwalks used to view the glacier. Unfortunately, as we arrived at the glacier, a steady rain had started. We had already paid our park entry fee and had no other plans for the day, so we bundled up in all our rain gear and set out on the boardwalks. The glacier really was spectacular, and we could see why so many people make a trip here. We could walk so close to it and really see all the intricate layering and colors of the ice! Also, as advertised, ice really did calve off and fall into the water! The glacier face has a total height of 80 meters, so when ice fell from the top, it made a huge splash and sound! In the rain, we walked almost all of the boardwalks and in total saw about 7 different ice calving events. A fun part of this was hearing the deep ominous sound of ice moving and cracking and quickly scanning the face to determine if and where the ice would fall! It turned into almost a game where we could guess where the next big ice chunk would fall from. The size of the ice chunks varied from the size of a large pumpkin to the size of a small house! At the start of our walk, we were basically walking alone due to both our arrival before the tour busses and the persistent rain. As the morning progressed, more and more people arrived but the rain kept most people huddled under a few covered viewpoints. With our ample raingear, we were able to have the closest viewpoints to ourselves. We sat and watched the glacier for a couple of hours fully enjoying its magnitude and beauty. After about 3 hours in the cold rain, we decided to wait for one more ice falling event before heading back to our warm and dry car for lunch. We are so glad we decided to wait for one more event. Only about 10 minutes after deciding this, a huge chunk the size of a house fell from the highest point of the glacier and cascaded down the face into the water! The sound was deafening! Furthermore, it fell from the exact point I guessed a large piece would fall from! I contribute part of this guesswork to my civil engineering training. Thanks Professor Corotis for the structural engineering knowledge! Feeling rewarded for our patience in the freezing rain, we happily walked back to our dry truck and drove to a viewpoint to eat our packed lunch and make some hot chocolate to warm up!

After lunch and a short nap, we drove back into El Calafate to relax for the rest of the day in town and plan our next destination, El Chalten. El Chalten is one of the hiking capitals of Argentina and we are so excited to hike there! The Fitz Roy mountain range around El Chalten is the iconic image of Patagonia and is actually the inspiration for the Patagonia clothing brand symbol. We are currently now en route to El Chalten and I am hoping to find wifi strong enough to post this blog! My goal is also to post the next blog in a prompter timeline in about a week, after we have finished hiking in El Chalten. I have realized the hardest thing about these blog posts in finding wifi strong enough to post them.

We hope everyone is doing well and are thinking of you all!

Until next time,

Nikki and Colter

Hello again!

We are pleased to report back that we have finished our first week on the road and we have loved every minute of it! It’s going to be hard to capture everything we have done into one blog post. I think I will go day by day to and share the highlights and interesting things from each day.

So finally, on January 3^rd we were able to obtain our truck! This process was so long and painful that I might write a whole blog just about this experience to help anyone else in the future. Anyway, at 5 pm on the 3^rd we were able to drive our truck out of the warehouse storage facility and say goodbye to our broker, Daniel. We were free! We now had total freedom to go anywhere we wanted, but this freedom also came with some new responsibilities. We now had to worry about the truck’s health and safety as well as our own. Our first goal for the truck were to obtain all our necessary components, gas, food, water and propane. After leaving the warehouse we found the nearest gas station and also came across our first new car predicament: what do they call petrol here? Pulling up to the gas pump we saw three varieties: super, gasoil and extra-max. The attendant took a look at our car and asked, “gasoil?” We really didn’t want to make a huge mistake on our first day and accidently fill up on diesel when we needed petrol, so we took a minute to think. I responded, “Necesitamos petrol, no diesel, cual son petrol?” It was immediate that he did not understand was petrol was, but the name diesel did ring a bell. He told us that gasoil and diesel are the same thing and that if we did not want diesel, we needed nafta, which is their word for petrol. We had passed our first test without making a catastrophic mistake and using the wrong fuel. We now had one of our necessary components.

After the gas station we drove our truck to the downtown district of Puerto Madero, which is the newest and fanciest financial district in Buenos Aires. On iOverlander, our app to find camping sites, there were many “campgrounds” in this area. Many of the campgrounds are just areas where you are allowed to park and spend the night. The area we chose for our first night was a parking spot on a decently busy road near a park. We felt perfectly safe there because it was well lit and there were plenty of people around. Also, from this spot we could walk to dinner and walk to a grocery store to get our food supplies. We also unpacked our camper and our clothes which we had been carrying in our backpacking backpacks for the last month. We were so happy to have everything back in its place! We didn’t sleep very well that first night since there were people and cars making noise all night, but we were so happy to sleep in our home!

The next day we woke up early to leave Buenos Aires. Nikki took the first driving shift, since I get anxious driving in traffic and Nikki gets stressed with the navigation. (We are such a good pair 🙂 ). It turned out to be a very easy trip out of town, we just got on the highway and drove straight south. Our first destination was Las Flores, a small town that iOverlander said had a good place to fill up our propane. We had heard that filling propane cylinders is one of the hardest things to do for overlanders because every country had a different connection for filling and many places only sell cylinders and wont refill empty ones. We arrived at Las Flores and found the shop, but it seemed to be closed. It was 3 pm on a Wednesday and we realized that everything was closed for siesta. Sure enough, after reading in our camper for 2 hours, the store opened back up and we were able to fill both of our cylinders. Depending on our use, we believe we can make these two cylinders last 2-3 months before needing a refill. Since it was getting late, we decided to stay in town at a campground next to a large lagoon. Unlike our first night, this campsite was an established campground with toilets, showers and a place for us to fill our water tank, we now had all the necessary things we needed for our trip to start! There was even a boy scouts group spending the night there! We enjoyed a nice walk around the lake where we saw a variety of birds, including an owl, and wild capybara! These rodents of unusual size were so calm you could walk right past them and they wouldn’t even turn their heads to you. We slept very well that night and we just couldn’t believe our road trip had started.

The next two days consisted mainly of driving. On average we drove between 6 and 9 hours a day. On this area of the east coast, there isn’t much to see and we just wanted to get down south as fast as we could to get to the beautiful scenery and hiking. Our third night we stayed in Monte Hermoso on a stunning beach! We camped with two other vans on a sand parking lot that directly overlooked the beach. We had a great dinner of spiced rice lettuce wraps with a sweet chili sauce on the beach. Unfortunately, in the morning we found we had a ticket on our windshield. Apparently, the city has been enforcing a newish rule that camping is only allowed in designated campsites. The frustrating part was that the other two Argentinian vehicles had been there for multiple nights and did not receive the same ticket. The ticket looked like a warning since it didn’t have any fine amount on it, but we went to the police station anyway to make sure. Sure enough, the lady at the police station very nicely told us to use the paid camping grounds in the future but we didn’t have to pay anything.

On the fourth night, we stayed in a small beach town called Playas Doradas. A little hesitant from our warning the previous night, we chose to camp in a paid campground; another shower wouldn’t hurt either. This campground was fine but nothing spectacular, just a lot of campers jammed in a walled in complex. It was nice to have a second hot shower though!

On our fifth day with the truck we had arrived at our first destination of the trip, Valdez Peninsula. This peninsula is a UNESCO world heritage site for its colonies of sea lions and penguins and it a breeding ground for the endangered right whale and orcas regularly hunt here. Unfortunately, we were not in the right season to see the whales or orcas, but we were very excited to see penguins in the wild for the first time! Penguins have always been my favorite animal, so I was ecstatic to see them! The drive into the peninsula turned out to be longer than we thought on the map and it took us about 2 hours to drive from the entrance of the park to the first viewpoint, but once we got there it was worth it to see the penguins! We saw a colony of Magellan penguins and were amazed at how unafraid they were of us. The penguins were literally at your feet as we walked along the walkway. We actually had to watch our steps to not kick one of them! I absolutely loved seeing these penguins so close! They are very dopey looking animals, but I think they are so funny and cute!

After leaving the Valdez Peninsula, we kept on driving south to our campsite just outside of the town of Puerto Madryn. This campsite was funny because it felt like we were part of a group of vagabonds living on the outskirts of town. There were probably 20-30 other groups all crammed into a small road between sand dunes. Many of the other groups were in campers or tents but some looked to be living there indefinitely. People had set out fire pits and yards in front of campers that looked stuck in the sand.  We parked our car among some sand dunes along the beach and went to converse with our new neighbors. Our new plan at every non-designated campsite is to talk to as many people as we can to ask about the viability and safety of camping there. At this campsite people were more than willing to chat with us! They were interested in our camper and our trip and soon enough we were invited to sit down and enjoy some mate with them!

The next morning we left for another long drive to another penguin colony, only this colony is home to 9,000 breeding pairs of penguins! As we were approaching the town nearest to the colony, we noticed a small animal crossing the road. I told Nikki to slow down and watch out but as we drew closer, we realized it was a small kitten!! We immediately pulled over on the road and contemplated what to do. We were still about 10 km outside of the nearest town and the landscape around us was a barren desert. We got out of the car and walked back to where we saw the kitten. We could hear him meowing and found him hiding under a small bush. As soon as we got there, he came out of the bush and laid down at our feet. He was so small and skinny; he must have been around 6-8 weeks old. Nikki and I were stunned to see such a baby out here all alone. We didn’t know what to do about it. We had always promised each other that if we found a stay kitten on the side of the road in the US, we would adapt it, but we had not discussed this situation in South America. Our first instinct was to get the kitten some water and food and wait and see if we saw other kittens or the mom. We gave the kitten a bowl of water and he drank for a solid 3 minutes straight. We could tell he was thirsty. The whole time with the kitten, he would not stop meowing. We didn’t know if he was calling out to us to his mom. We waited on the side of the road with the kitten for 30 minutes but we didn’t see any other signs of life around. We then decided we could not leave this kitten here. He followed us anywhere we went, all he wanted was some love. He purred and cuddled with us when we petted and picked him up. Our plan was to take him into town and see if there was a veterinarian or someone in town to take care of him.

On the way into town he snuggled with Nikki but kept on meowing. We both really wanted to keep him, since we knew we would give him the care he needed, but we also knew adopting this cat would dramatically change our trip and we didn’t want that. Painfully we decided the kitten needed to stay with someone here. Arriving in the town, we asked the tourist information about a vet in town and she laughed at the idea of such a small town having a vet, but she was sad to see this little kitten without a home. Not knowing what else to do, we took the kitten to the police station and explained our situation. With the amount of stay animals living around town, I am sure the policewomen working there thought we were crazy for bringing in a stray kitten, but we didn’t care, we just wanted to kitten to live. The policewomen very kindly took the kitten and said she would post a message on the town WhatsApp group to see if anyone could take him. We left the police station happy about our decision but also very sad for this little kitten and hoping someone will take care of him. After shedding a couple of tears and thinking about of beloved animals back home. We continued onto the penguin colony.

This penguin colony was even better than the first one we saw! The shear number of penguins was amazing and this time we were able to see chicks! The little penguins were so round and fluffy but we decided that penguins are one of the few animals where the adults are cuter than the babies. The babies are so fat and scraggly and the way they sit makes them look like Homer Simpson sitting on the couch with his beer belly hanging out! It was really fun seeing them though! We also saw hundreds of penguins in the water. When penguins surface they jump out of the water slightly to take a breath before diving in again. They looked like a group of small dolphins.

While viewing the penguins, we walked to the end of the walkway and happened upon some of our friends from our Spanish school! We knew they were roughly on the same schedule we were and we had planned to meet up at some point, but this meeting was completely random! We had even seen a Swiss overlanding van in the parking lot and had commented on it but it did not cross our minds that is was Nicole’s brother’s van. We sat and chatted with Nicole, her brother, Philippe and his girlfriend Barbara. We had not seen any of them for about 3 weeks so we caught up on everyone’s travel experiences. We also decided to camp together that night, so we left the penguin colony together and found a campsite about 10 minute away. This whole evening felt surreal. We found a campsite right on the beach on this amazing bay. We had a stunning view of the full bay and of the town across it. If we looked closely, we could even see sea lions playing and swimming in the water. There was also no one else around us, just our two overlanding vehicles and the stunning scenery. We both made camp and soon enough we made a small living room between our cars. We put down our camping carpet along with our two chairs and camping table. Similarly, they brought out their chairs and table. The whole scene was unreal. I know Nikki and I are not the heavy Instagram users but this scene looked too perfect to just happen naturally. So here we are with our #vanlife, #allnatural, #glamping, #blessed, #wokeuplikethis, #nofilter picture #megusta. You won’t get many of these from us so enjoy it.

In reality that evening felt like a dream because of where we were camping and that we were having beer and dinner with 3 Swiss people that we randomly met at Spanish School and then randomly came across at a penguin colony. We enjoyed our evening together and talked until it was too dark to see. We will both remember that night for a long time and we are so excited that we will have many more of those nights to come.

The next morning we all packed up and decided to travel together for the time being seeing as that we both have roughly the same route in mind. Today we are off to another beach camping site and I will let you all know how our next week goes in the next blog. Thank you all so much for reading!

Nikki and Colter

Hi all, just a quick post to let you know that we were able to retrieve Taka today!! We’re camping in Buenos Aires this evening and will hit the road in the morning! We’ll be out of consistent Wi-Fi connection now, but we’ll post updates whenever we find service.

Many hugs,

Nikki, Colter and Taka 🚌

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years! Nikki and I had a very enjoyable Christmas and New Years.

Our last blog left off with us just making our bus ride back to Buenos Aires on Christmas morning. Just like on the bus ride to Pinamar, we both slept for a good 4 hours due to the seats being so comfortable! When we arrived back in Buenos Aires, we felt refreshed and ready to enjoy Christmas day! Our Christmas plans were to have a Christmas lunch with our friends Seb and Julie and a couple of their friends. Seb and Julie were extremely generous to include us in their holiday plans since we had only met them about a month earlier in our Spanish school. The lunch was in a suburb of Buenos Aires, but luckily, the bus terminal where we arrived is right next to the train station. With all our bags still in tow, we jumped on the first train and were on our way to the party. We had booked an Airbnb near the party for that night since we didn’t want to interrupt someone’s Christmas dinner by having to get the keys from them. Once in San Isidro, the suburb, we dropped our bags off at the Airbnb and made our way to the party.

We arrived at the party and could hear the clamor from outside and the one major thing we noticed was all the conversations were in Spanish! It also seemed like a lot more people were there than we anticipated. Sure enough, as we stepped inside, we were greeted by 14 of Julie’s friends and a huge table of food! Seb had been cooking all day for the lunch and the results were impressive. He had cooked everything from potatoes, to beef to a wide array of salads. Everyone had just started eating, so we took our seats and started to taste the amazing food! We also introduced ourselves to everyone and it was apparent that, other than Seb, we were the only native English speakers. I guessed that much of the lunch would be in Spanish and I was looking forward to having a full afternoon to practice. Nikki on the other hand, was much more nervous for the forced Spanish but it turned out almost everyone there spoke beautiful English. I still wanted to practice Spanish, so I tried to respond entirely in Spanish while Nikki could drift between English and Spanish. It turned out to be a great scenario because everyone could talk in whichever language they wanted to practice. Everyone we met at the party was so welcoming to us! They were interested why we were in Argentina and what our travel plans were. We talked about our lives back in the States and asked them a bunch of questions about how life is in Buenos Aires. We had a lovely afternoon with everyone.

The next day we took the train back to Buenos Aires where we had booked our last Airbnb while we waited for our truck to arrive. We decided to stay in our favorite neighborhood in Buenos Aires, San Telmo. San Telmo is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires and is full of cobbled streets, cafes, restaurants and ice cream shops. The ship carrying our truck arrived in the port on time on the 27^th of December, but we knew the unloading and processing of all the containers would take some time. After talking with our broker about the timeline of the unloading and processing, we booked our Airbnb through Friday January 3^rd thinking that the truck would be ready for pickup either on the 2^nd or 3^rd. Another reason the process would take so long was because of New Years. The port or customs office would not be open on the 31^st or the 1^st which were a Tuesday and a Wednesday. We understood this and instead used this time to finalize everything we needed to while we had consistent Wifi and to buy any last-minute items we needed.

When New Year’s Eve rolled around, we once again were invited to a party by Julie! She said one of her friends was having a party and it would be fun if we came along too. Being from the US, we assumed it would be a similar style party where you have a couple drinks with friends to bring in the new year. Because of this, we decided to bring two bottles of wine, a bottle of vodka and some lemonade for mixer. The party was once again in the suburbs so we took an hour bus ride there. We showed up to the house at the exact same time as Julie and Seb which was great since we didn’t know exactly which house it was. We realized that Julie’s whole family was there including her parents and both her brothers. This didn’t seem odd at first but once we were inside, we noticed the table was set for a very nice meal for 12. It was then that we realized this wasn’t like a normal US New Year’s party. Instead we were so generously invited to an asado, a traditional Argentinian BBQ, between Julie’s family and her friend’s family. Julie’s family had seemed to have adopted us for the short time we were there. It was so sweet and thoughtful of them! But with the new party circumstances, our drink choice of vodka lemonade was a little out of place.

We sat down to a wonderful dinner of steak, potatoes and biscuits surrounded once again by the nicest people. Nikki and I have decided that Argentinians are the nicest and most generous people we have met. Everyone is genuinely interested in other peoples’ lives. We talked throughout most of the night, in Spanish once again so we are getting some good conversational practice, about everyone’s lives and it made for a very pleasant evening. We finished dinner just in time to bring out the champagne and make a toast to bring in 2020!

On the days since New Year’s we have just been working diligently at our Airbnb trying to get everything sorted and planned for the next step of our trip. We have been working to plan the next month in our truck and to buy all the necessary equipment while we are still in a big city. We have also been enjoying the variety of restaurants, bars and ice cream shops around us! Every night we go to a new restaurant and we still have many more we would love to try. While we have been preparing ourselves for our next steps of the trip, our broker here in Argentina has been working to get our truck ready for pickup but it has not been going as smoothly as we would have hoped. The processes of temporary importation of a car in Argentina is a very complicated process; as we are learning. Even as we approached January 3^rd, we were still not very confident that our truck would be ready. We were all packed and ready to meet our broker at the port once he gave us the all clear but unfortunately something held up the inspection process and we were told we would have to wait until Monday to continue. We were so bummed because we were so excited to finally be living in our little home but there was nothing more we could do to help. Instead we had to extend our stay at the Airbnb until at least Monday, which thankfully we could do. So instead of going to get our car we went out for a nice lunch and do some more shopping. We had planned to do this shopping once we had the car, but now that we had the day free we walked about the city looking for a few last-minute things, gas for our camping stoves and, more excitingly, a guitar!

I have always wanted to learn to play guitar and when we were deciding what we could do on our trip, I thought about learning how to play. Nikki and I walked 2 miles to this street that only sold musical instruments. There were probably 20 different stores all in a line that had everything from guitars to percussion to trumpets. This was the musical heart of Buenos Aires. We went into about 5 different stores and asked about guitars until we found a tiny hole in the wall shop. Inside this shop was stacks and stacks of all kinds of musical products. There were enough products to fill a store twice its size. The only way to traverse the store was a very narrow winding path. We tiptoed along this path until we met the owner of the store. I told him my story, all in Spanish, that we were traveling for a year and I wanted to learn how to play guitar. He was very excited to hear our story and new exactly what type of guitar I needed. He returned with a beautiful but plain looking guitar and started talking about it with enthusiasm. I even surprised myself when I could understand almost everything he was saying about the guitar even though I know nothing about guitars. He then tuned the guitar and started to play it. The sound it made was absolutely beautiful and I knew then, this was the guitar for me. This was also our wedding present from Laini! So now I am starting to slowly learn how to play guitar. I am hoping to post some videos of my guitar progression if our internet allows it and Nikki and I would love to post some duets together once we get her ukulele out of the truck!

I am writing this blog on Sunday January 5 and I am hoping to high heaven that our truck is ready tomorrow. If it is, I will let you all know as soon as possible since I know many people are also holding their breath for that news. If we do get the truck tomorrow, we will probably be leaving Buenos Aires the same day and starting our journey south. We will probably drive about 2 hours outside of Buenos Aires for our first night in the truck and then continue south for the next 3-4 days. I don’t know exactly when we will have wifi again, but we will make an effort to find wifi as least once a week to keep the blog updated. From here on out, our satellite phone is the best way to reach us since we can receive and send texts from anywhere. We hope everyone’s 2020 is starting out well and we will keep everyone updated on the next steps of trip!

Hello everyone!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and will have a great New Year’s!

Nikki and I have had an absolutely wonderful time since our last blog post when we about to leave for Pinamar. Our trip to Pinamar was really easy and relaxing. We took a 5 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Pinamar and it was so easy! We were able to pack up our bags the night before and walk to the bus station. Once there we boarded a very new looking bus and were impressed to see the seats were designed like lazy-boy recliner chairs. Each seat could recline almost into a full bed. Nikki and I took full advantage of this and we slept about 4 of the 5-hour bus ride! I slept better on that bus that I have on any plane ride. I have decided that for shortish distances, I prefer to travel like that.

When we woke up from our nap and found ourselves in Pinamar, we were so excited to see the beach! We got off the bus and retrieved our large backpacking backpacks and proceeded to walk into town to our Airbnb for the week. The walk was about 1.5 miles but we loved being outside and feeling the cooler ocean air. We were so tired of the pollution in Buenos Aires that the fresh air was a rejuvenating experience. When we arrived at the Airbnb we were thrilled to see it was only a 3 minute walk to the beach! We chose this place due to its proximity to the beach but being able to see the ocean so close to our apartment was amazing. Unfortunately, the proximity to the beach was the best attribute of our place. The apartment was ok but we didn’t like how grimy it felt. All the dishes and cookware felt sticky or was rusty. We quickly decided we would not be cooking much as home. Even the floors and the bathroom didn’t seem clean but we could endure the grime for the week since the price was decent and we would be at the beach most of the time anyways. We proceeded to quickly unpack our backpacks and head for the beach!

The day we arrived wasn’t a terribly hot day, around 65 degrees F or 18 degrees C, so we decided just to read on the beach and enjoy the evening. Nikki and I have both been reading a lot and have loved it! So far Nikki has finished reading Americanah and is making her way through Melinda Gates’ book and I have finished reading A Brave New World and am now reading The Goldfinch. If anyone has any book suggestions, we would love to hear them!

The next two days were spent lounging on the beach and enjoying all it had to offer! The beach at Pinamar is a huge stretch of beautiful sandy beaches. Almost everything about it was perfect! The sand was silk smooth, the water was warm enough to swim in for hours and the weather was hot! The only thing we didn’t like about the beach was the amount of people. The whole length of the beach was crowded with people since we were there during the holidays, but we made do. Each day we were able to secure ourselves a little spot to relax and swim. We swam and read and enjoyed the summer weather. Unfortunately, we don’t have many pictures of these days since we decided to leave our phones in the apartment. We had heard, things get stolen at the beach, but we never saw anything like that while we were there.

On the third and fourth days there, a storm rolled through that dropped the temperatures and brought some wind and rain. Instead of lounging on the beach, we took the opportunity to wear a couple more layers and walk the length of the beach. On the third day, we took off down the beach to the north and decided to walk till we were either tired or the beach ended. We walked for about 2 miles just talking and practicing Spanish. The beach didn’t seem to have an end in sight. We were just about the turn back but then we saw a bunch of kite surfers just around the corner. We were both interested in the kite surfers so we kept walking to check them out. Sure enough, just around the corner was a group of about 20 kite surfers. The kite surfers were so cool to watch! Some of them were jumping 10-15 feet out of the water and doing all sorts of flips and tricks while others were on surf boards and were surfing some decent sized waves. We stayed and watched the surfers for about an hour. We commented on how cool the sport was and how we have always wanted to try it. It was right then that we decided we would try it! When we got back to the house, we would try and find a kite surfing school. Actually, one of our wedding presents from Pete, Maureen, Erin and Luke (Nikki’s uncle, aunt and cousins in South Africa) was to take surfing lessons and we thought this would be a great place to use those! That evening we found a kite surfing school, phoned them and had lessons set up for the next day! We were so excited but also a little nervous for the lessons. Unfortunately, the next brought even more rain than the day before and we had to postpone our lessons another day. Instead of lessons, we spent the day inside reading but we did manage to walk along the beach again.

The following day, we started our kite surfing lessons! We decided a 4-hour lesson would be a good start to judge if we liked the sport or not. Of the 4 hours, the first hour was mainly about the safety features of the kite. This was a great way to start because both of us were a bit nervous handling the kite. From seeing the kite surfers the previous days, we knew how much power the kit could produce. We soon learned it is really easy to stay safe with the kite. At any point when you feel like you have too much power in the kite, all you have to do is let go of the bar and the kite loses all power. So as long as we didn’t panic and pull the bar in, we were going to be totally safe. The next hour of lessons involved learning how to control the kite and how to walk with it. At first this was hard to do but it seemed that once we had practiced for 15 minutes each, something clicked, and we were much more comfortable with the control of the kite. We continued to practice control of the kite for the 3^rd hour and then we finished off the 4^th hour by controlling the kite with some power. In order to get power from the kite, you must dip the kit to the ground and then pull it back up to make an 8 shape. While doing this, you can pull in slightly with the bar to generate power. We practiced this motion a lot and at the end of the lesson, we were sitting on our butts and pulling ourselves along the beach with the kite. This was a super cool sensation because we could feel the power of the kite but also felt in control. After the 4-hour lesson, we had finished all the beach training and if we wanted to continue, we could move into the water. Both of us were tremendously excited and decided to plan another day of lessons. We planned to continue lessons in two day’s time where we would go to a lagoon to practice in the water.

The following day was another beautiful day for swimming and reading at the beach which we took full advantage of. We brought a large umbrella with us along with some snacks an we were able to spend the whole day on the beach.

The next day was our last day in Pinamar and our last kite surfing lessons. The lessons involved using the kite to pull ourselves through the water. This exercise taught us the best way to harness the power of the wind and made us more comfortable about how to control the power. Eventually we were able to pull ourselves superman style through the water with ease. We both loved the feeling of gliding through the water but were really excited to try it with a board. Eventually, with the last hour of our lessons, we learned how to do a water start with the board. This was by far the hardest lesson because it incorporated all of the previous lessons. For a water start, we would walk the kite and the board into the water. This involved controlling the kite with one hand, which we practiced on shore. Once in the water, we once again had to control the kite in a certain area with one hand while using the other hand to put the board on our feet. The board was just like a normal wakeboard except it was a little thinner and has slip-in bindings instead of full boot bindings. We both found it extremely hard to watch and control the kite while trying to get the board on all while floating in the water. In the end our instructor had to help us steady the kite while we got the board on. Once the board was on, to initiate a water start we did the same 8 shaped motion with the kite to generate some power. We kept that figure eight motion going until we had enough power to stand up on the board. I went first and found success pretty quickly since it is very similar to getting up on a wakeboard. I think our instructor was very surprised at how well we did since we are both comfortable on boards. Nikki also found similar success! Initially she had the motion of the kite down but needed to be more aggressive with it to generate enough power. Her confidence grew and she dove the kite more aggressively. With one big dive, the kite propelled her forward and she got up! Once again, our instructor yelled with delight! He was so happy and proud that we both managed to get up on our first day trying! We were only practicing water starts, so when we got up we were only allowed to ride for about a couple of seconds before we had to stop and try to get up in the opposite direction, but the feel of kite boarding hooked us! It was like wakeboarding and snowboarding, but you have all the control. You have total control on your speed and your direction which makes it very fun! Now Nikki and I are deciding how much we want to continue to kite surf for the rest of our trip. We are considering buying a full kit surfing setup and continuing to learn for the rest of the year but it is a big investment and we need to look into how much we would be able to do it and how much room we have in our camper. We absolutely loved our lessons and we want to thank Pete, Maureen, Erin and Luke for the opportunity to try it! It is something we both have wanted to try for a long time, and it will be something we never forget!

On Christmas morning we caught an 8:30 am bus back to Buenos Aires but not before one last adventure in Pinamar. Upon leaving the Airbnb, we were told to just leave the keys in the apartment; all fine and well because that is what we had always done. We are always nervous about this since the door automatically locks, so if we forget anything we can’t get back in. This created another problem that we hadn’t thought about. The entrance to the apartment was inside the apartment complex and the complex had a door of its own that also needed a key to open from the inside. So, we had just closed the door of the apartment to leave and realized we needed the key to open the complex door. We immediately knew we did something very bad. We were stuck in the hallway between the locked apartment door and the locked complex door and it was 7:00 am on Christmas morning. We quickly took our bags off and ran around the complex trying to find a way out but there wasn’t. It felt like being in a jail cell. The only possible way out was a small window we could climb through, but it then involved jumping down a 5 to 7-foot ledge and neither of our big backpacks could fit through the window. Slightly panicking that we would miss our bus, we narrowed our options to 2 choices: call the owner of the apartment at 7 am on Christmas morning or start knocking on other doors in the apartment in hopes that someone could let us out. Luckily, we still could reach the Wifi in our apartment and I called the host, who by the way, only spoke Spanish. I was so relieved when he picked up! In a slightly out of breath, slighting thrilled outburst I described our situation in Spanish. He just laughed at me and said, “Puedo estar alla en cinco minutos” “I can be there in 5 minutes.” We both let out a huge sigh of relief and patiently waited for him. Sure enough, 7 minutes later, he arrived on his bike and let out us of our temporary prison. We thanked him profusely before starting our 1.5 mile walk back to the bus station.

Due to our fiasco, we were running about 15 minutes later than planned and we had to maintain a brisk walk/ slow jog to make our bus. We just thought of it as backpacking training and thankfully made it to the bus station right as the bus pulled in. We were both dripping with sweat but so happy to have made the bus. That morning could have gone a lot worse; but we made it and took another 4-hour nap on our way back to Buenos Aires.

Hello everyone!

We have just finished our 4^th and last week in our Buenos Aires Airbnb. It was also our last week of Spanish classes which we are sad about. Over the last two weeks we have seen even more of Buenos Aires, we saw a show and took a weekend trip to Tigre, a town an hour north of Buenos Aires on a delta.

We finally saw all the main touristy neighborhoods of Buenos Aires when we took a tour of the La Boca neighborhood. This is a very special neighborhood for a variety of reasons. For one, it is situated at the mouth of the Plat river, which is where it gets its name, La Boca is Spanish for mouth. Also, since this neighborhood is located at the mouth of the river, it was the original port of Buenos Aires and was the city’s first neighborhood. When the first immigrants arrived in Buenos Aires from Italy, Spain, Portugal and other European countries, they settled in La Boca. It was this mixture of languages and cultures that stared Buenos Aires and the “porteno” culture here. Also, La Boca was the birthplace of Argentine tango! The working-class men in La Boca created this dance and it spread back to Europe. We took a two hour walking tour of the vibrant neighborhood and loved seeing the artistic flair of it. All the houses are painted different colors with cobble streets running between them. There were numerous art vendors painting and selling their works in the streets. The art mimicked the colors of the houses and was so beautiful that we had to buy a piece. Also along this tour, we learned about the importance of futbol, soccer, to the city. The city has professional soccer teams, but the best and most well known team is La Boca Juniors. Many famous players have come from La Boca including Diego Maradona and Carlos Teves. On our tour we visited this teams home stadium which is famous for how close the fans are to the field and how loud it gets during a game. We both loved learning a bit about the history of Buenos Aires and experiencing the artistic neighborhood.

Since being in Buenos Aires, we have wanted to go see a show of some kind. We had already gone to a tango show but we also wanted to see another form of Argentinian art. The famous opera house, Teatro Colon, was in walking distance to us, but all of the shows were sold out until January! Luckily, being a big city, there were plenty of other options for shows, the only problem was our level of Spanish understanding limited our choices. We knew a comedy show would not work because we wouldn’t understand any of the jokes and a Broadway play would also have been hard to understand and follow. We wanted some kind of visual art that didn’t depend too much on Spanish. We eventually found what we were looking for at the Kirschner Cultural Center. This center puts on all sorts of shows and most of them are free to the public! The building itself and all the shows are funded by the state to share Argentinian culture. We booked tickets for an Argentinian folk ballet even though we had no idea what a folk ballet would consist of. We came in with no expectations but were immediately fascinated by the first act! We quickly learned this ballet consisted of many separate contemporary dance pieces with ballet elements. The different pieces ranged from telling a story about the indigenous people of Argentina to contemporary love stories to the traditional Argentine tango. We loved the whole show and had a great evening together!

For our last weekend in Buenos Aires, we chose to take a quick trip to the town of Tigre. Tigre is a smaller town about an hour north of Buenos Aires that is situated on one of the largest inland deltas. The town has been known as a getaway from the business of Buenos Aires. Many people have vacation homes there where they go to relax. The most popular things to do there are to go sailing, boating or kayaking on the delta. To get there, we took a train from downtown Buenos Aires and arrived in Tigre midday on Saturday. We had booked an Airbnb for Saturday night so once we were all checked in, we started to explore. We first walked to what used to be an important fruit port that has now been transformed into an outdoor market. At the port, we got a late lunch of burgers and beer. We loved being able to sit at the port and enjoy a nice meal! After that we continued along the port and walked past many of the old rowing clubs which looked like old German buildings. The range of architecture in Tigre was quite interesting. The rowing clubs looked German or Austrian in style while many of the surrounding houses had more of a French and Italian feel. While on our walk, we stopped for a delicious ice cream and sat and watched all the boaters and kayakers on the river. There were so many boats and kayaks, it was overwhelming, and we couldn’t believe no one ran into each other. After our ice cream pitstop, we finished out the day by walking along the river for about 2 miles. This river walk was beautiful! The whole area was green and full of fun cafes and restaurants. We turned in for an early night so Nikki could finish up her PhD application at Carnegie Melon.

The next day was a bit rainy so we decided to go to a couple of museums. The two museums we wanted to see was a mate museum and an art museum. Mate is a traditional herbal tea that is extremely popular here. Almost everyone in Argentina drinks and loves mate! They would consider it a cornerstone of their culture even. We wanted to learn more about this tea and try some ourselves but unfortunately, the museum had closed permanently. So instead, we continued back along the river walk to the Tigre Art Museum. I wanted to see this museum just because of the beautiful building! The museum was situated in a large park right on the river and the building was a refurbished French mansion with a magnificent terrace. The art inside was also great to see! There was a photography exhibit showing what Tigre was like during the 1890’s and another exhibit showing a wide variety of Argentinian artists. We spent a couple hours there before walking back to the train station around 3 pm to head back to Buenos Aires.

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On Tuesday we are taking a bus to Pinamar, a small beach town 5 hours south of Buenos Aires, to relax and enjoy the beach for the week leading up to Christmas! We hope everyone is doing well and we will write another post after a couple of days in Pinamar.

Hello again everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well! Nikki and I are still loving our time in Buenos Aires! Our Spanish classes are going very well, and we have both noticed significant improvements in our Spanish! Nikki quickly moved out of the beginner Spanish class and into the basic class, class 2 out of 6, after the first week. Her understanding of Spanish was already very high due to knowing French, and her speaking has continued to improve. Nikki and I can now easily have full conversation in Spanish, which we do anytime we are out of the house. Whenever we leave the house to go to school or to dinner or anywhere, we try to only speak in Spanish in order to blend in better and just to practice. It has worked out very well so far.

I, Colter, have also moved up a class since being here. I started in the 3^rd out of 6 classes and this last Monday I moved up to the 4^th class. I am feeling much more confident in speaking and can easily understand and communicate with just about everyone we interact with. There have been multiple occasions when Nikki and I were talking with someone in Spanish and they stop to complement us on our Spanish. This of course makes our day because learning Spanish is one of our main goals of the trip!

Over the past week we have continued to see more beautiful places here! We have been to the two most famous museums, walked around a large ecological reserve, visited the most famous cemetery in Argentina and partied like the locals. The two most famous museums are the Museum of Latin American Art (the MALBA) and the Museo National de Bellas Artes, an art museum showing a wide variety of art from different time periods. We first visited the MALBA with our Spanish school and loved seeing both the paintings and the visual art installations. Our favorite was an optical illusion of a pool that looked like a normal deep pool from the top, but we were able to walk around and enter the pool from the bottom. In reality the artist used glass and only a couple of inches of water to create the illusion.

The Museo National de Bellas Artes was a larger museum that housed a mixure of paintings and sculptures. The paintings ranged from 13^th century French and Italian painting to modern art created by local Argentinian painters. We both loved seeing the wide range of art, but our favorites were a couple of paintings by Monet and van Gogh.

On the same day as visiting the Museo National de Bellas Artes, we walked through the Cemetario de Recoleta, the most famous cemetery in Argentina. This cemetery was amazing because all the people buried there are buried in extravagant mausoleums! These mausoleums were amazingly elaborate and varied both in size and grandeur. Most of the mausoleums were made of cut granite or marble and stood 10 to 15 feet tall but others were built to resemble Greek temples or modern style houses. While we enjoyed seeing these ornate tombs, we loved learning about the stories behind the people buried there. Only the rich and famous of Argentina are buried there and some of these people include past presidents and their families, famous writers, artists and scientists. The most famous tomb is that of Eva Peron. She was a former First Lady of Argentina and the people loved her! She came from a life of poverty and became the lady of the people. She became the face of Argentina until her death in 1952. In the cemetery, many Argentinians come to pay their respects to her.

One afternoon we ventured to a local ecological reserve close to our apartment. The reserve is just on the edge of the financial district and boarders the Rio Plata. The reserve has a beautiful trail where we walked and were able to see multiple varieties of birds and plants. We even saw some wild parrots! It was really nice to have a walk through a natural area after living in the dense city for two weeks.

This past weekend we decided to go to a dance club with some of the friends we met at the school. One of these friends has a girlfriend who lives in Buenos Aires and wanted to show us the nightlife from a local’s prospective. By that, she meant that the locals here party all night long! We only started the night at 11 pm with a small party at our apartment. After playing a couple of games we took a taxi to a hidden bar called a speakeasy. This bar was hidden behind a false wall in a café but once we were inside, it opened up to a large upscale bar! We had amazing drinks there and chatted with our friends. At 2 am we finally left the speakeasy and headed for the dance club. Upon entering the club, we realized how many young people go dancing on a Saturday night! The club was full of people dancing to Argentinian pop music. To Nikki and I, all the music sounded exactly the same but it was easy to dance to. We danced until 4:30! We finally had to stop when we were too tired to continue. From the club, everyone took a taxi back to their place to try and get to bed before the sun rose. We finally got home around 5 am right as the sun was rising. Since we had been dancing all night, we were both extremely hungry, so we made a quick meal of ravioli and ate as we watched the sunrise. We got into bed at 5:30 and immediately fell asleep until 2 pm. We were so tired the next day, but we had a fun time! We did decide that the late nights of going out to a club are not our thing. We now know we prefer to have a nice dinner, maybe a drink or two at a bar but then go to bed around midnight instead of 5 am.

We have loved our first two weeks here and are so excited for what we still have left to see! Our truck was delayed one week but it finally set sail today and will be in Buenos Aires on December 26^th! Since it was delayed, Nikki and I decided to go to a beach town for the week of Christmas. So from December 17^th till the 25^th we will be in the beautiful town of Pinamar enjoying a summer Christmas! I know this is normal for everyone in South Africa, but it will be a new experience for us. We are thinking of everyone and hope everyone is having a great December! Love, Nikki and Colter!

Hello everyone!

We are sorry for the delay in posts, but the week between dropping our truck off in Houston and leaving ourselves for Buenos Aires was stressful, exciting and somber. We were so excited to start our adventure but also very sad to be leaving all our friends and families behind. We were comforted that we would be able to text anytime we want.

Our journey to Buenos Aires started in Denver on November 13^th with a midnight flight to Florida followed by a 7 hour layover and a flight to Toronto, don’t ask us why this was the cheapest flight pattern we could find. We were received in Toronto by another 8 hour layover before finally heading in the right direction to Santiago, Chile. In Chile we only had to stop for an hour to refuel the plane before starting the last flight to Buenos Aires. We landed in Buenos Aires at 4:00 pm on November 15^th making it a 40 hour trip. Hauling all our bags and our exhausted bodies through the airport we ordered an Uber. Our ride to our Airbnb at the center of the financial district was uneventful other than noticing the mobs of people coming back from their siesta. When we finally found our new apartment, we promptly crashed for the next 17 hours. We slept from 6:00 pm till 11:00 am the next day and it felt so good!

Once recovered, we began to explore our new home. Our place is a tiny 9^th story apartment in the center of downtown. Because of this location, we are able to walk to everything we need. We can walk to plenty of restaurants and shopping, but more importantly, we are only a 10 minute walk to our Spanish school. In terms of amenities, our place has everything we need, just miniaturized. It has a full kitchen, a sitting room, a dinner table, a full bathroom and a reasonably sized bedroom. We are extremely pleased with it!

For the first two days here, we mainly recovered from the craziness of leaving the States and started to gather our bearings about the city around us. We found a nearby supermarket where we can buy a majority of our food and a couple of great restaurants that serve the best empanadas we have every had! So far Colter has had empanadas for 2 lunches and a dinner. Also, the food here is so cheap due to the recession in Argentina. For example, a dinner for the two of us consisting of 5 empanadas and 4 beers only cost $10 USD! We have also found a great lunch place for only $2.50 a person.

On the day of writing this, we just started our first day of Spanish class and we love it!! The Expanish school is so organized and welcoming! Nikki and I were tested on our Spanish knowledge and placed into our respective classes where we joined 5-8 other students from all over the world! We are in classes with people from Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Australia, Holland and many other countries. Also, the age range is very wide, from 18 to 50. Our schedule so far is 4 hours of Spanish lessons in the morning followed by a lunch of empanadas and then a cultural event held by the school in the afternoon. The school hosts 4 cultural events every week that is free for all students. For example, tomorrow we are taking a tango dancing lesson!

In terms of getting around Buenos Aires, we have found it very easy so far! Colter’s Spanish is sufficient for everyday things like going out to eat or asking for directions, but these 3 weeks of Spanish lessons will really help! We are able to walk to all the necessary things, but we can easily take a bus or a subway to see other parts of the city, like Palermo and Recolota, which is our plan for this next weekend.

Moving forward, we plan to write at least one blog every week to keep everyone up to date! We love and miss you all!!

Colter and Nikki

Hi everyone! Nikki and I decided our October departure date was a bit ambitious and we needed to take a test trip to really ensure we were ready for the real thing. So we decided to take a 2 week test trip to California and push back our departure date to November 14th. Our test trip includes stops at Lake Tahoe, on Colter’s bucket list, San Fransisco, San Diego, Tempe, AZ, Coconino National Forest, the Grand Canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante and Pueblo.

Day 1: Fort Collins, CO ➡️ Delle, UT

After closing the last moving box up in Fort Collins (we wanted to have all the packing done before we left), we spent most of the day driving. We ended up at our BLM campsite in the evening, pitched camp and headed to bed, a little uneasy as this was our first real night alone in the camper, off the beaten path. We woke up panicked at 4 am with Kaya rattling like crazy in an estimated 35 mph wind!! She’s only supposed to be in 30 mph winds, so we ended up popping the camper top down and sleeping on the floor for the rest of the night/early morning. Regardless, we got some good rest, found out we could sleep on the floor and had a great first day of our inaugural voyage!

Day 2: Delle, UT ➡️ Lake Tahoe, CA

It was another long drive day for us, but our book and some life planning kept us busy in the car 🚌 We loved observing the change in scenery as we passed through different states, from rocky outcroppings on the edge of UT to rolling hills in NV to trees and views that look very similar to home in CA. Lake Tahoe is stunning and it has all the things we love; mountains, water, leaves and good camping! We are also settling into our tiny home in Kaya and learning the extent of what we can and can’t do. We made shrimp tacos for dinner and ate outside before it got too chilly! Pine cones dropping on the roof had us a little on edge due to the abundance of bear warnings throughout the campsite, but we settled in for the evening without any issues.

Day 3: Lake Tahoe, CA ➡️ San Francisco, CA (AKA S.F)

We hiked down to a river to eat our new favorite breakfast of yogurt and berries, hyper aware that berries are bear’s favorite food 🙈 We then took a meandering drive down the south coast of Lake Tahoe which was stunning – truly the best of all worlds! We had some work to get done in the morning so we pulled off and worked at an alpine cafe for a couple of hours and enjoyed the obligatory pumpkin-chocolate chip bread. We then embarked on our journey towards San Francisco! A 3.5 hr drive quickly turned into a 5 hr drive due to traffic, but it was well worth it to find Zoey! We met up for a yummy dinner of falafel, hummus and pitas and turned in for the evening. We also promptly learned, courteous of Zoey, that no one from San Fransisco calls it San Fran. So now we are part of the cool kids who call it S.F. Thanks Zoey!

Day 4: San Francisco, CA

It worked out well that Zoey had a work day today because we had a lot to get done. We bounced through a couple coffee shops throughout the day, working away. We then headed to Fisherman’s Warf to watch the Airshow on the go ✈️ After enjoying the dare-devilish stunts of the pilots, we found a place to grab a happy hour beer and met up with Zoey for a chill dinner at home. Bryan joined us and we had a fun evening out on the town 💃

Day 5: San Francisco, CA ➡️ San Diego, CA

We said our goodbyes to Zoey and spent a majority of the day driving through Cali to reach Ben! We passed by a lot of the fires currently on the go throughout Cali which was sad to see. Upon reaching Ben, we spent a lovely evening enjoying tacos and beer and seeing his new home town of Encinitas! We learned one of his favorite beer spots in town offers free pizza, and in our case, muffins which was fun!

Day 6: San Diego, CA

We started our divine day off by paddle boarding in Coronado and swimming off the coast of a beach we found along the way. We then enjoyed a yummy lunch and beer at a brewery. We spent the afternoon lounging in the sun, sampling various beers from other local breweries. We then had dinner watching the sun set over the ocean and chilling on Ben’s roof, having a long missed catch-up chat.

Day 7: San Diego, CA ➡️ Tempe, AZ

We said our sad “‘til next times” to Benji and hit the road. It was a fairly short drive day, but we had some work to get done so we popped up Kaya along the way to work for a couple hours. We got into Tempe to see Casey and Keith in the late afternoon. We met their puppo, Odie, for the first time and had a nice, hot walk through their neighborhood. We went out for a yummy dinner at a local brewery and they showed us around down town and Casey’s campus. We then went home for a fun evening of Code Names, which they kicked our butts at!

Day 8: Tempe, AZ

We got out for an early hike to try to avoid the heat, but as you can see from our bright red faces, we didn’t totally avoid it! The hike was well worth it as it took us to an overlook of Tempe, which is larger than we expected. We then took a refreshing swim in the freezing pool outside of Casey and Keith’s new place, spending the afternoon lounging and tanning. Casey then cooked a divine dinner and we returned to our battle of Code Names. We ended the evening with a much needed chill and chat.

Day 9: Tempe, AZ ➡️ Coconino, AZ

We said our goodbyes to Casey and Keith and hit the road again. We had quite a lot of work to catch up on and get done so we coffee shop hopped through various cafes in Tempe and Sedona. There are certainly worse office spaces to inhabit. We pulled into a beautiful campsite and tried out our pressure cooker for the first yummy time!

Day 10: Coconino, AZ ➡️ Grand Canyon, AZ

We had some big trip prep and some work to continue trucking through, so we worked at a divine coffee shop in Flagstaff for most of the morning and afternoon. We felt at home in the college-vibey town. We then made the beautiful drive into the Grand Canyon, which neither of us have ever seen! We buckled down for a chilly evening.

Day 11: Grand Canyon, AZ

Day 12: Grand Canyon, AZ ➡️ Grand Staircase Escalante, AZ

Day 13: Grand Staircase Escalante, AZ

Day 14: Grand Staircase Escalante, AZ ➡️ Pueblo, CO

This was a long 10 hour drive day, but we got to see Colter’s grandparents for dinner!

Day 15: Pueblo, CO ➡️ Fort Collins, CO

I realized I didn’t wrap up sharing pictures from the end of our practice trip! We spent the last week soaking up the mountain air and sun that we love so dearly and will miss when we move away. From 15 mile hikes in the Grand Canyon to 6 mile trail runs and waterfall splashing, we had an amazing week. We finished it off with a fun visit to Colter’s grandparents.

The first week of November was a major milestone for our trip! After much work and stress, we shipped our truck and camper from Houston to Buenos Aires! This shipping process started 3 months ago and has been a pain ever since. Finding a shipping company that understood what we needed proved to be a much harder endeavor than anticipated. Reaching out to shipping companies usually went one of two ways:

1) We would email and call the company explaining our year plan and that we needed to ship our truck with the camper in the bed along with all our gear. After fully describing our situation the response would be to expect a quote in the next couple of days. For 70% of the companies we reached out to, no quote arrived and the communication stopped there.

2) For another 20% of companies, the response was: “We don’t understand your shipping needs and do not feel comfortable shipping your truck.”

Our shipping breakthrough came when I reached out the Ship Overseas. Almost immediately they understood our plan and were willing to work with us to find the best way to ship our truck.

From our own research, we learned there are two main ways to ship a truck: in a 20 foot shipping container or via a roll-on roll-off (RO-RO) method. The container method is the most secure since only our truck would be sealed in the container. Also, this method allowed us to keep all our gear in the truck. The RO-RO method involves driving the truck onto the ship and securing it in an on-board parking lot. This method is cheaper than the container but is less secure and would require the truck and camper to be completely empty. After much discussion of cost and feasibility with Ship Overseas we settled on the container method due to being able to ship our gear with the truck. So after about 2 months of shopping for shipping companies, we finally had a shipping date booked! We had to have the truck in Houston on November 6th and the truck would ship on November 17th. We were so relieved to have figured out the shipping fiasco!

Now fast-forward to November 5th. On November 5th we started our long drive to Houston. Both the truck and camper were fully ready for life in South America. We carefully packed away everything we would need for the next 10 months and took off from Fort Collins for Houston at 6:00 am. Our goal was to drive from Fort Collins to Dallas on the 5th and then drive from Dallas to Houston on the 6th to have the truck at the delivery point by noon. The drive to Dallas took us about 16 hours but at 11 pm we pulled into a highway rest stop just outside of Dallas. We spent the night at this rest stop with a bunch of truckers and prepared for the craziness of the following day. We knew we had to complete a few tasks before arriving at the delivery point. We needed to somehow get a certificate from a professional that our two propane tanks were empty and disconnected and to throughly wash the truck. The propane certificate turned out to be a huge headache because has anyone heard of needed a certificate for an empty propane tank?!

The morning of the 6th, we once again hit the road at 6:00 am and started the last leg of the Houston journey. Once 8:00 am rolled around, we began calling every propane place we could find to see if anyone could certify our tanks were empty. Similar to calling shipping companies, almost every propane place we called was extremely confused at what we wanted. We got responses like: “Why do you want empty tanks,” “We only fill propane tanks,” “It won’t be cost effective to flush out propane tanks.” After receiving 15 different confused answers about empty propane tanks, we decided to head for the delivery location and hope they could help us.

Finally we arrived at our delivery location and were immediately surprised it was not a dock or port or even by the ocean. I guess we thought since the truck is being transported via a ship, we would drop it off at a port. Instead we were greeted with a dusty lot with a couple of shipping containers and a ton of totaled cars. We quickly looked at each other and said, “I really hope our truck doesn’t end up like these cars!”

We drove through the car graveyard to a small trailer we believed was the office. While we waited for any signs of life amongst the vehicular carnage, we gathered the few belongings we needed to take back with us. Finally, a man emerged from the trailer. He looked quite puzzled to see our freshly cleaned truck and in his dusty lot. I quickly told him that we are here to drop off our truck to be shipped to Argentina. I gave him our shipping receipt and to my dismay his puzzled look remained. “I don’t know your company, Ship Overseas,” he finally said. “Can I call them?” In a panic that something was amiss, I called our shipping broker and luckily he picked right up. Our broker talked with our puzzled friend and almost immediately everything was cleared up. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but I guess that is why we are paying for a broker.

Once the confusion was cleared up another man came with an inspection sheet to record any damages our truck had before being loaded into a container. We gave him the title to the truck and helped him on his inspection. It turned out, we did not need the certificate for the empty propane tanks, he just took our word that they were empty. Once we finished his inspection, he described that he would load the truck into a container and secure the truck but all of this would happen the next day after the truck had fully been processed in their system. So at this point we were told we had done everything we needed to and they would handle everything else. We would have liked to have seen the truck loaded but we trusted they knew what they were doing. So after about 2 hours in the dusty lot, we walked away from our home from the next year. We were so nervous that we wouldn’t see our truck again because we had just left it with two strangers who also had it’s title and key. They need the title for the truck to clear customs and once it does, it will be sent via Fedex to our customs broker in Buenos Aires. So hopefully our truck arrives safely in Buenos Aires but we will have to anxiously wait a month to find out.

Upon exiting the vehicle graveyard we finally noticed our ravenous hunger. To combat this, we took an Uber to the nearest Olive Garden to eat, lament on our life decisions and mentally prepare for our 5:00 am flight back to Denver the next morning.