Our latest South America trip

Plenty of pictures to get on here.
Our flight to Santiago, Chile was good - if not long.  Fortunately we gambled with our seats - picking both aisle seats in the middle section of 3 seats across.  Our hope was that no one would eventually take the center seat.  No one did so we were able to stretch out.  That's still uncomfortable but it's a whole lot better than sitting upright for 10 hours!  After a good meal, and a movie (Crazy Rich Asians) it was stretching out time and the next thing we know we have arrived.  Of course it's always a crazy long line to go through customs.  Then we get our taxi and are on our way to the Airbnb that we rented for 3 nights.  The guy had told us that check-in was strictly 3pm, even though we asked for earlier check in since we would be arriving exhausted at 10 in the morning.  We finally got to the apartment at around noon and thankfully, thankfully, the guy let us in and after unloading our stuff we all crashed for a couple of hours.

The view from our balcony.  Not sure how I got a picture with the street so empty since there was constant LOUD traffic down there even into the wee hours of the morning!

Looking into the apartment

Guillermo and John relaxing on the couch.  

One morning Guillermo and I went down the street to have breakfast at a little outdoor cafe.

Just had to get a picture of this in a shop window.

We took cable cars on this hill called San Cristobal.  Even though, there were still lots of stairs.

A partial view of Santiago.  There was a lot of smog every day.

From Santiago, we took a flight to Valdivia, Chile.  It was nice to be in clean air again.  We liked Valdivia.  Even though it was summertime, it was a little chilly there.

Such a nice place to walk along the river.  There were always lots of people walking.

This part of the walk along the river was right by our hostal.  Following that path took you to the center of town - a nice easy walk.

There's the center of town.  We are looking at it from the middle of a bridge.

The view from our hotel room.  That's a Monkey Puzzle tree right outside our window.

One day we took a drive to take a Ferry across to Corral.

Once in Corral we continued driving along the coastline until we got to Chaiwin.

Back in Corral we visited a small fort there.  If you look carefully, there in the center you can see a snow covered volcano in the distance.

On the ferry going back to Valdivia

Next place we went to was Villarica and Pucon

This is in the town of Pucon, we could see the Villarica Volcano from the streets of the town.

We visited 3 waterfalls, which involved a long walk on very dusty trails.

Driving to the Villarica Volcano.  As you can see, it's active!

Back on the river in Valdivia

These pictures are taken in Bariloche, Argentina.  We took a bus from Valdivia, Chile, to Bariloche, Argentina.  It was about 8 hours long but it was broken up by a border crossing.  

Where we are sitting here is on Lake Nahuel Huapi, down a short walk from our hotel.

That's our hotel, the small one on the left.

Lake Nahuel Huapi

The breakfast room of our hotel.

Close to Bariloche is an area called Llao LLao.  It was simply beautiful.

Here is a view of the Lanin Volcano.

We had a wild picnic at Tromen Lake by this volcano simply because the wind was blowing so much it was hard to keep our food from just taking off into the air!

Beautiful Monkey Puzzle trees around Lanin Park.

I might have a smile on my face here by one of those trees but my mind was on all that dust in the background being stirred up by a car driving by.  Lots of dusty days on this trip!

  

Another day we went to the other side and saw the volcano from a different angle.

This picture is from San Martin de los Andes.  That was one of my favorite towns.  The main plaza there was always busy with families hanging around, maybe a concert going on. etc.  It just seemed to be an enjoyable place to live.  

So, Guillermo has been talking for 11 years about taking me to the Arayanes Trail because he thinks it is a really great trail.  He just LOVED doing it with Fernando back in 2008.  Well, he finally got his wish.  Although we didn't do the entire trail like he and Fernando did, we did walk on it a little and it felt good to finally do the thing that Guillermo has been wanting to do for so many years!

Unlike 2008, when Fernando and Guillermo WALKED the entire trail, we took this boat to the end of the trail, walked back UP it a little and then had a little tea and pastry at the tea house there.  The trail is actually 12 kilometers long - about 8 miles.

This view is from the boardwalk part of the trail.  There were many beautiful views along this boardwalk, which is why Guillermo wanted me to walk the whole trail.  He said there were many beautiful views along the whole trail and that it was a great walk.

Beautiful flowers along the trail.\

Christmas in Tucson

Eva and Leo left on Dec. 15 for Sweden to spend Christmas with her family.  Fernando left 3 days later for Durham, NC because he had business to take care of at Duke.  From there he would fly on to Sweden three days later.

We enjoyed the Christmas season with Leo before they left.  Right after Thanksgiving was over, I started putting up a few Christmas decorations.  On Dec. 3, we bought our Christmas tree and set it up a few days later.  I'll never forget Leo coming home from school one day, and seeing the tree all lit up and him exclaiming, "That is so beautiful!"  We also enjoyed looking at the houses that started decorating for Christmas.  Fortunately, we had a house just two houses away with new neighbors who went all out for Christmas.  Their house was so much fun to walk to and admire.  One night we took Leo to see an especially decorated area of houses near to us.  I let Guillermo and him off to walk around the cul-de-sac so Leo could see the lights better.  I drove around and around until they were ready to get back in the car.

This was our tree

And our house all decorated outside.

Christmas will still be going on for us because we will celebrate Christmas with them when they come back from Sweden.  We have already taken out the real tree and put away most of the decorations.  But we kept out one small little tree, the Christmas village is still up and we'll be ready for our after-Christmas Christmas celebration!

Meanwhile, after Fernando left, Guillermo and I drove to Tucson to spend Christmas with Rebeca and family!  We left on the 19th and got there on the 20th.

When we were saying goodbye to Leo as they were leaving for the airport, he was in Abuelito's arms and one of the things he said was, "Don't forget to take Scotty's Christmas present".  And then, in case we weren't understanding what he was saying, he walked over to the Christmas tree and picked up Scotty's present which he had wrapped and placed under there.  He handed the present to Abuelito and said, "Here".  We just thought that was so touching.  So, here we are driving to Tucson and here's the present safely in the car.

And then safely under Scotty's Christmas tree.

Here are some things we did with Scotty before Christmas.

Made a ramshackle gingerbread house - but we sure had fun making it!

Visited a nursery to buy Christmas fairy garden items.

 Amazing truck all decked out with lights in the Walmart parking lot.  The guy who owned it said, "you should see it at night!"

Another day we took Scotty to the zoo and he wanted a picture taken with every single inflatable they had set up!

We always stop and sit on "Nana's Bench"/

Having fun on a turtle shell play structure.

                           The birders checking to make sure they saw every bird in the enclosure.

"Take a picture of me hatching out of the blue egg!"

After the zoo we took a walk around the lake and then a picture of Scotty with this peacock sculpture.

Then it was time to celebrate Scotty's birthday on the 23rd.

He had a dinosaur-themed party.  Here Guillermo and Rebeca are getting a volcano ready to erupt.

Scotty riding his new birthday bike!

And trying out his new birthday trampoline!

We went back and forth before driving to Tucson about whether we should make the trip again.  We had just come back from Tucson only about a month and a half before.  But we really wanted to be there for Scotty's 5th birthday.  We had thought we'd leave the day after his birthday so that Jason and Rebeca could have Christmas morning as a family with Scotty.  But they convinced us that they wanted us there on Christmas.  We are so grateful to them for that.  Because as it turns out, getting to experience Christmas again through the eyes of a 5 year old was priceless.  How we loved the sneaking around - whether it was shopping for gifts or wrapping presents with Scotty for Abuelito or Nana or Mommy or Daddy.  Making cookies and decorating the gingerbread house and looking at Christmas lights on people's houses and getting caught up in the rush at the mall and having people over - - the whole thing was so much fun.  Ha-ha, and I remember how parenting is SO much easier in the month of December!  Thanks so much to Rebeca and Jason for letting us be a part of their Christmas and all the magic and wonder that came with it.

Here is a picture of Guillermo's brother and sisters who came over for Christmas Eve.

Cookies that Scotty decorated all by himself!

Ready for Christmas morning!

After a wonderful morning of unwrapping gifts, we left at noon headed back home.  We stopped in El Paso and during the night it rained and got much colder.  The next day we caught up with the leading edge of that storm somewhere around Fort Stockton.  That storm had the most amazing cloud formations and they sure were dark.  I'll never forget when we got past the storm and could see how menacing it looked in the rear view mirror.   Then we noticed on the other side of the road a motorcycle rider pulling over to the side of the road.  That storm was probably giving him a real cause for concern with how it was looking.  We thought about him a few times later that day.  Did he go on into it?  Did he turn around and decide to ride it out at a rest area?  Hopefully he did the latter because the winds and rain in the storm were very strong and went on for many many miles!

I don't remember where this picture was taken.  For sure it was after Fort Stockton but close to the leading edge of the storm.

We experienced the storm again for the third time in San Antonio that night.