Welcome to Patagonia

First off, we've updated our pictures. The last week in Cuenca, our epic flight, and our first few days in Argentina are all up!

After a very much-needed rest in Cuenca, Ecuador for 5 weeks, we once again hit the road and with a grand change of pace. Patagonia is the southernmost region of both Argentina and Chile, and while we had high hopes for visiting this unique region we were never sure how far south we'd make it after starting in Mexico. Luckily, the travel gods smiled upon us an gave us a cheap flight to the southern edge of civilization, all the way to Ushuaia.

Ushuaia, Argentina is considered by most to be the southernmost city in the world. Further south than South Africa and Australia, we're only 740 miles from Antarctica. Luckily, it's summer here and the weather is a toasty 54 degrees on average. But we've been rewarded with incredible vistas of snowcapped mountains and a myriad of things to do and see. To get here, we took four flights over 48 hours, stopping in Guayaquil, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. We passed our New Year's Eve in Buenos Aires, escaping the airport for a few hours to have a pizza and taste some of the famous Argentinian wine while locals tried to light the streets on fire with homemade fireworks displays: solid layover entertainment.

There's plenty of kickass things to do in Ushuaia. After a day of recovery from our long flight, we decided to jump right in and took one of the popular boat tours of the nearby Beagle Channel, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Channel is speckled with tiny islands, on some of which live colonies of sea lions, penguins, and various species of birds. The boat takes you up close and personal to the bird colonies and sea lions, whom we saw lying around being fat and lazy right up close! Bundling up to guard your body from the wind, you really start to feel like you're in the Antarctic (or at least close), though it was a gorgeous sunny day and the weather couldn't have been better. We'll be heading out to walk with the penguins tomorrow!

Today was a bit colder and cloudier, but after traveling Central America during the rainy season we're pretty much armed for anything. We took a hike just outside of town to the Martial Glacier along the rim of mountains that line the north side of town. The hike was easy but beautiful and even the clouds contributed to the atmosphere. The glacier wasn't much more than a pile of snow on the mountainside, but it's summer so the levels are low, and you could clearly see the paths the glacier has cut into the mountainside over thousands of years. The streams of water pouring down from the melting glacier in almost every direction were beautiful as well.

We've got a few more days on the edge of the continent before we start moving back north, this is the furthest we'll be from home and from here on out we'll just be heading back in your direction... which should make our Mommies very happy. But there's still plenty of Patagonia adventure left!