LETTER FROM WILL!

Hello everyone!

I made it back to Buenos Aires again. The last big trip I took I managed to make it around the world, this one I managed to make it to the end of the world! or "El fin del mundo" as they say down here. Trista and I just made it back from Ushuaia, Argentina. It is the southern most city in the world, hence the nickname. It is only 600 miles from Antartica. and a little too close if you ask me. It is the height of summer time and I thought it a little too cold for my tastes! It was usually in the 50s but the wind and the rain made it a little on the miserable side much of the time. There were however some very beautiful sites to see! We went to visit a national park which was quite nice and also cruised the Beagle Channel and saw lots of penguins and sea lions.
From there we flew to El Calafate. Which is the main town for glacier watching. We were there for four days and visited the Perito Mereno Glacier along w ith a few others. They are awesome to see! We also did a little horse back riding and a lot of trekking.
We then hopped on a bus and headed south to Puerto Natales, Chile. Very interesting bus rides down here because much of the ride is on dirt roads! We didn´t stay in Puerto Natales for long, we immediately boarded the Navimag ship and the next morning begain sailing on our 4 day trip to Puerto Monte. The boat ride was very nice although not exactly what we expected. Our room seemed to have a few extra people in it.......16 people to be exact. oh, and towards the end of the ride it begain to smell a little more like a barn yard since there were several truck loads of cows, sheep and horses just outside our room`s window. All in all though it was still a pretty nice ride. We did however find out the Trista gets a little sea sick. One of the days we made it out into the Pacific and it was a little rough. About half the people on the boat didn´t report for supper that nigh t... m ore for me! even though it wasn´t usually very good. We did stop once on the way at Puerto Eden and got off the boat and walked around for a couple hours. Beautiful but I dont know how people can live there. Very , very remote, it can only be reach by boat and it is 2 days trip from anywhere.

Once we made it to P. Monte we had mass confusion in getting our bus lined up, but I guess that is to be expected when the tickets are booked in a different foreign country in a different language and yet we still got it figured out and caught and 8 hour bus ride to Bariloche, Argentina.

Bariloche was a beautiful town up in the mountains of Argentina it reminded me of Bozeman but probly more set in Switzerland. Very nice. We ended up spending a week there just enjoying the chocolate shops on main street. We went white water rafting which is always a blast. The river we rafted took us all the way back to the Chile border. If we had rafted any further we wo uld have had to go through customs again. While we were in Bariloche we went up to the top of Cerro catedral, which is a premier ski resort here in the winter time. Very nice view of the lake and surrounding mountains. There was still some snow at the top where people were sledding. Bariloche is big on the tourist seen, we managed to run into people we had met on the boat ride a few different nights and having a lot of fun.
From there we caught a 20 hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires where I am now. We are waiting for our Brazilian visas to get processed which takes $110 each plus 4 days! what a pain in the butt! and then we have to go to the Paraguayan consulate and get visas for there. Only $50 each and one day but still a pain. Argentina is very easy to visit, they just stamp your passport upon entry and it takes about 30 seconds.

Any ways, I hope all is well in all of you lives. Let me know what you have been up to! We are headed to a bea ch tow n in northern Uraguay for a couple weeks so I`ll be writing again when something interesting happens!

Ciao

Will

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