Mexico

We're going on a new trip in a few weeks to Mexico, which will be filled with a lot of firsts.

Our first trip together to Mexico (we've both been as children on brief family vacations).

 Our first trip with our infant son.

Our infant son's first flight. Also his first vacation. And his first visit to another country (ex utero, that is; in utero he's been to 6 countries).

Also our first trip with a baby and the in-laws. We've traveled with them before and had a great time. We'll see how the introduction of a 4 month old affects that dynamic.

 At any rate, in addition to a few food blogs, here's the guide we'll be using:

 

 Updates to follow.

New Travels

December was a busy month for us.  We finished our semesters (mine teaching at the university, Nora student-teaching for her license and taking graduate courses for a Masters degree), gave away most of our furniture and half of our clothes, moved out of our apartment, sold our car, and bought tickets to India.

Now that we have our passports returned from the Indian mission, with Visas approved and stapled inside, we are good to go.

We'll be gone from the end of January to the beginning of May.  99 Days.  Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The plan is to start in Mumbai and circumnavigate much of the subcontinent going counter-clockwise.  The other plan is to eat a lot of good food.

We might even update this old thing a little more regularly--with pictures, of course.

Hello from the Long Silence

We are still alive.

We just booked our tickets to Iceland. We will be gone for 37 days this summer. There will be pictures and descriptions, but not until after we actually get there.

We are also going camping on the beach in Florida in a week and a half. Pictures and descriptions might appear sooner than the Iceland ones.

Good Airs

We leave Buenos Aires on Monday morning aboard a ferry to the Uruguayan town of Colonia.

We haven't updated anything in a long while, which implies a certain amount of business on our part--we're on vacation, after all.  This is partly true.  There have been periods of travel with little time to gather our thoughts.  There was an amazing bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus trek from Puerto Montt, Chile up through Patagonia and to Bariloche, Argentina. It was a truly spellbinding journey.  There was our time in Bariloche, which we loved, and then a couple days in El Bolson, which is now on our shortlist of favorite places on the planet. Then there was the 22 hour bus ride to BA--which, surprisingly, was very nice.  There were several meal services, the chairs folded into completely flat beds, and there was tons of room.  The best bus ride, ever.

 - Our cabin in El Bolson, Argentina

We have had the past 4 weeks in Buenos Aires, some of the time which we have spent taking in the sights and walking the streets and eating the food.  A lot of it we spent working, or writing, or cooking, or sleeping, or any of the other things we do when there is time to spare in a foreign city.  We got to know BA a little bit; we had high expectations, which were met and exceeded, and were pleasantly surprised in addition.  BA is a great city, and has much to admire, and much to return to.

 - A public tango show we stumbled upon one Saturday

We've done a lot of walking across BA, and we've had some excellent food.  Here's one example of that food, from an amazing pizza place just around the corner from us in the San Telmo neighborhood:

 - a Galician pie, which includes such things as onions, tuna, olives, and delicious spices.

There were also some really great sights, such as Palermo where we found a rose garden, a duck pond, and a Japonese garden.  Then there is the other side of town, the poor part of town, where can be found such things as this:

 - La Boca.  It's a little touristy, but once you get away from the sweating American and European tourists, you get to see another remarkable part of this great city.

There's history here in BA, as well.  For example, I had a coffee con leche and sweet croissants (medialunas) at the oldest cafe in Argentina, Cafe Tortoni:

We're sad to be leaving this great city, and our wonderful apartment.  But there's Uruguay, Bolivia, and Peru to come; there's many new wonders and experiences, and hopefully a few well-known and fondly remembered ones to re-visit as well.

It's difficult to say when we'll be able to update again, but know that our journey is incomplete, our travels continue, and we're following the whiff of experience and the call of wonder wherever it leads us.

I hope this finds you healthy and hale, wherever you are.

Happy travels.

New Years Day

despite what one may hope for, life is not quite a U2 song. for one, the world i inhabit is not white. for another, to say that nothing changes is not quite accurate (nora and i are now the owners of our very own car, for example).  perhaps some other parts of that song still ring true.

after a particularly nerve-wracking flight to pennsylvania in december, we decided not to wait until may to purchase a car, and instead bought one there and drove it back. we're very pleased with the results.

in 4 days we have to be at the airport shortly before 7 am and will start the long journey to santiago.  there is one connection, in bogota, colombia, in which we have 45 minutes to pass through security and board our next flight, or else we will have to stay the night in the airport.  hopefully we'll make the window, because there are a lot of places i'd prefer not to spend the night, and the bogota airport is one of them. if all things go as planned, we'll be in santiago, chile early in the morning on the 6th, where we've rented a lovely apartment for a month.

from chile we have a week to meander our way to buenos aires, where we are renting an apartment for another month.  we haven't chosen that one quite yet, but we've narrowed down the list of possibilities from thousands to hundreds to dozens to a handful.  i feel confident in our ability to make the last step.

when our time is up in buenos aires it will be halfway through march. we don't plan on being home until the first or second week of may, and are hoping to be able to poke around uruguay, paraguay, bolivia, and peru in the remaining 7 or 8 weeks.  we'll see what happens.

enjoy the new year, everyone, wherever you are.