Before taking off on our adventure to Patagonia, a colleague mentioned she had done a hike at Estancia Cristina and that it was very long. Gulp. That hike was in our itinerary. Add a 7 hour glacial hike the day before and very sore quads, and I wasn't sure what to think. Knowing me (if you do), how exciting do you think a fossil hike sounds? About half of that phrase is interesting to me, and the fossil part is not it. It's not that I don't think fossils are cool, but a long hike to observ…
My legs being a bit touchy from our glacier hike, I was a little wary of the 14km hike that awaited us the next day. In fact, when we arrived back at our lodge from hiking the glacier, I feverishly texted my track-coach dad for some sore muscle relief tips. Thankfully, the hot bath did the trick, and I packed up, ready to roll the next day. With ma sunglasses + hat look because that glacial glare was fierce. The trek of the day was to a historic ranch called Estancia Cristina, but to get there, …
All the E's! And all the eeee's for how the wind sounded absolutely whipping across us here in Argentina. I mentioned our stay in the Argentinian side of Patagonia here, but wanted to share a bit more about our home base stay, because it was a destination just as much as our glacier walks and hikes were. In fact, the presence of our remote lodge, Eolo, remains one of our very favorite stays ever, anywhere in the world. The lodge's van picked us up at the El Calafate airport, and thanks to …
During our Patagonia trip, I had a realization that writing it now seems so apparent, but I had never formulated into a whole thought before: what I am longing for in a good trip is often someplace remote. The set-apartness from cities, crowds, and technological noise is really what makes a place refreshing, even if it involves multiple flights. At the same time, when we are in remote places--places like Sapa in Vietnam or the wilderness of Tanzania, I feel a bit of fear. What if I fall? Can I k…
Walker and I met in Scotland, but what we didn't exactly realize for years was that this meant we both had a bit of an arctic magnetism in our blood. We thrive on trips north to cooler climes: Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden and Norway. And so for years, we dreamed about the other extreme: the south. And in the best surprise ever, Walker's parents gave us the incredible gift of a trip to Patagonia in November. After a few day layover in Buenos Aires, which was surprisingly bursting with…
For me, so much of travel is lifting up the soggy log of my presuppositions to discover a whole hidden world, squirming and alive, beneath. And such was the case in Buenos Aires when we arrived, dry-eyed and hungry, in November of last year. I had thought it would be a slightly dirty city, gritty and a bit dilapidated. I actually don't know why I thought that, but there you go. Imagine my great astonishment from the plane when we flew over the city, and dotted throughout were bursts of purple bl…
Less than two weeks from Christmas, and under two weeks since we returned from Patagonia, I'm sitting on the couch with the needles of our tree in my face---our tree perhaps a bit too overwhelming for our little apartment, but certainly joyful. I thought coming home with less than a month before the holidays would leave me frazzled, but weirdly, here I am, with time to sit and write. We have dreamed of traveling far south for more years than we've dreamed of another place, and at the end o…