Don't Cry for Me Argentina (or Chile)

I thought I would share some photos and highlights from our fantastic two week trip to Chile and Argentina, from which we just returned.

We started off our trip hiking in Chile's national park, Torres del Paine, along the famous ¨W¨" trail.

What makes TDP so unique is that it's situated at a low altitude but the scenery is reminiscent of higher altitude regions, where the hiking is much more difficult. Given it's location in the Patagonia region on the southern tip of the South American continent, vicious winds up to 80 km/hour and unpredictable weather (the weather changed from cold, cloudy and gray, to pleasant sun to driving rain all within a matter of minutes of each other) are part of the awe inspiring experience of hiking through the park.

This is a glacier pictured here

After trekking through TDP, we took a day trip to visit some penguins in even windier conditions than in the park!



Our trip in Patagonia also featured my attempt at growing a mustache, since many handsome Latin American men have substantial and impressive facial hair. Alas, my chief fashion consultant who happens to be my wife pointed out that those "handsome" Latin American men are usually about 30 years older than me, and so she nixed the idea before I could even get any crumbs in my mustachio.

From Patagonia, we hopped on a plane to Mendoza, the Napa Valley of Argentina. Mendoza is surrounded by the Andes Mountains and is famous for producing Malbec, a red wine that uses purple grapes originally imported from France in the 1800s. The spectacular weather and the beautiful setting of the wineries we visited made the wine taste even better.

The bustling metropolis of Buenos Aires was the last leg of our trip. Buenos Aires does have some pretty incredible city sights, but no doubt the highlight for us was all the meat we got to eat there, after spending the previous ten days munching our way through different permutations of cheese and tomato concoctions.









Other highlights included walking through the city center:

















Seeing the famous Recoleta cemetery where Evita is buried:



Visiting the memorial at the site of the Israeli embassy bombing in 1992:



and spending an afternoon walking through the San Telmo craft and antiques fair:

(notice the impressive mustache)

Finally, we spent our second to last day celebrating our first anniversary in the former Portugese and Spanish colonial town of Colonia del Sacramento, located right across from Buenos Aires on the Rio de la Plata. It was the perfect end to an amazing trip!!