Buenos Viajes

We are now sitting in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport waiting for the first leg of our flight, a bit unable to believe that THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!!!

The past few weeks has been a steady stream of closing down our bay area lives for a few months, saying goodbye to our friends. Phew! Our last two weeks we were lucky enough to get to stay with Blake's sister Jenn and her family. Blake got lots of bonding time with the nephews, and we both got a few nice late evening chats with Jenn and Aaron.

Then on Friday we were off, with one last stop to check in on Scarlet and make sure she's doing well in her temporary kitty heaven, which she is.

We headed down to LA and got to hang out my brother Ben and his wife Beth, who opened our eyes to the euphoria of the Korean Taco truck, which if you're ever in LA, you have to check out - go to their website to find out where they'll be... http://kogibbq.com/

8 more hours of driving through the desert brought us to my mom and dad's place in Tucson where we were fed lots of yummy home cooking and gave mom the rundown of where we'll be when to the best of our knowledge. They gave us a wonderfully sweet sendoff complete with smokehouse almonds for the road. :)

Here we go for a daunting 18 hours of air travel - Valparaiso here we come!

(Blake describing the size of the hair he saw at Dallas airport and Rebecca checking to see how long she has to wait before she can use her new neck pillow.)

Here is our Itinerary as we know it so far: Monday 2/1 arrive in Santiago and head on over to Valparaiso. Sunday 2/7 take a flight down to Punto Arenas in the far south of Chile and head over to Puerto Natales where we'll meet up with Elizabeth and Marty. Two nights there and then we head into Torres del Paine National Park for 10 days of Backpacking the "W" circuit plus a day of camping at either end. Then, we'll wind our way up through Argentina, maybe spending some time working on an organic farm for a week or two. Then, we'll head on up to the Bolivian salt flats on our way to Sucre, Bolivia. In Sucre, which is a college town in Bolivia, we plan to take language school for 2-3 weeks and check out La Paz somewhere in there. We'll spend as much time in Boliva as we want before heading into Peru. We plan to do a 10-15 day trek into either the Bolivian or Peruvian Amazon. Finally, we'll be ending our trip lounging on the Beaches in Ecuador. Then fly back to Santiago and be back in Phoenix on June 2nd!

PS: for those of you who know Elizabeth and Marty and want to check out their yearlong adventures through southeast asia and south america, their blog is at: http://other-climes.blogspot.com.