Patagonia, Or How Lustin Got Their (Exercise) Groove Back

After a month of full English breakfasts in the UK, nearly two months of eating mostly pasta, pizzas (SO many pizzas), wine, and gelato in Italy, a month in Spain downing pinxtos and tapas left and right (they were so small!, but none of them seemed to incorporate anything resembling greens), and my unexpected hiatus from exercise due to a pesky appendectomy, Laura and I were starting to feel a bit soft in early December. Actually, that’s an understatement; we were starting to feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy, aka Poppin’ Fresh (which would be a great name for a rapper, by the way) and his portly but adorable wife (Mary Poppin’ Fresh?). Anyway, my point is: we needed some exercise, and we needed it bad. Atacama in northern Chile wasn’t the most active start to our two months in South America, and a week of wine tasting in Mendoza – which shockingly also involved some serious consumption of red meat – didn’t exactly scream “back on the exercise wagon”. It was time for some serious outdoor inspiration: hello, Patagonia!

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New Years 2011: A Tango Odyssey

Hi folks! Another quick update as we head off on our final adventure before heading home (!) in less than two weeks. We’re in Guayaquil, Ecuador right now, and tomorrow we’ll be heading out to the Galapagos Islands for eight days (that is, assuming Laura’s appendix doesn’t stage a last-minute coup as mine did right before we were originally supposed to hit the Galapagos in November). We’ll be totally offline for the next week, but we’re planning to post a full report on our three amazing weeks in Patagonia as soon as we get back. With more than 1,800 photos to sort through (good lord) and so many great hikes and adventures to write about, it’s proving to be a slightly bigger job than we initially anticipated.

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Baby Got Malbec

As the glacier-chilled wind whips down from the spiky towers of Torres del Paine National Park and blasts against the “windows” of our geodesic dome here at EcoCamp, I must confess that our sun and wine-filled week in Mendoza a couple of weeks ago feels like a world away. But I’ll do my best to provide some highlights from our week in Argentina’s most famous wine country. Let me just open up this bottle of Malbec here and see if that helps to get the creative juices flowing. Mmmm. Yep, it’s all coming back to me…

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Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad from Buenos Aires! It’s in the 90’s down here and there’s not a Christmas tree in sight, but we’re managing to make the most of our holiday away from home. I made my great-grandmother’s meatballs and homemade sauce for Christmas Eve dinner last night, and we invited Kate and James, two British friends we met in Torres del Paine, to join us for dinner in the apartment we’re staying in here in BA.

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Quick Update From Patagonia

Greetings from Argentina! We wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know that we’re heading off the grid for the next week or so as we begin a trek in Torres del Paine National Park here in southern Patagonia. We probably won’t be online again until we get to Ushuaia on 12/19, and maybe not even until we get to Buenos Aires on 12/22.

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