-
When we got back to Buenos Aires from Mendoza, we spent some time wandering around the botanic garden and the Japanese garden. The view from the rooftop deck of our Palermo apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal) A fountain in the botanic garden (Photo/Jason Rafal) Yerba mate plants (Photo/Jason Rafal) A giant crane in the Japanese garden (Photo/Jason…
-
On Sunday, we flew to Mendoza for a couple of days. We booked two tours while we were there – a wine tour, as one tends to do in Mendoza, and a gaucho day (gauchos are the Argentinian cowboys). We also spent our evenings walking around the city of Mendoza, which is an interesting mix…
-
Jason and I picked Buenos Aires to visit for a few reasons: it was in the southern hemisphere, which made the weather favorable in our chosen travel time of late November; Jason’s sister Emilie had lived there for a few weeks after college and liked it; and it had an interesting reputation as a European-feeling…
-
On Thursday night, I got pretty sick. Sick enough that when we left Old Faithful on Friday morning after walking around for a couple of hours, I was very grateful to my body for not feeling the need to throw up at the geyser. I wasn’t really able to sleep in, so we got an…
-
On Thursday night, I got pretty sick. Sick enough that when we left Old Faithful on Friday morning after walking around for a couple of hours, I was very grateful to my body for not feeling the need to throw up at the geyser. I wasn’t really able to sleep in, so we got an…
-
For the 4th of July, Jason and I took a road trip to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Despite both having spent considerable amounts of time living in the West, neither of us had ever been, and the mid-week holiday seemed like a good excuse to take a couple more days off. Approaching…
-
For Memorial Day weekend, we went to the riverside town of Astoria, Oregon, which is famous for being where Lewis and Clark spent a miserable winter after finally reaching the Pacific. It’s an old town that is not so slowly becoming a favorite of Portland dwellers and hipsters, and it’s quickly gentrifying as the old…
-
On Thursday we woke up early to go to the Manuel Antonio National Park for a guided tour. It had rained hard the night before, and in a possibly related turn of fortune, we got very lucky with animal sightings. We saw several sloths, a couple of which were moving; fantastically camouflaged helmet lizards; a…
-
On Tuesday, Emilie, Ally, Jason and I went zip lining. We were picked up at our resort and driven to the zip line company, which was a major operation. Buses of people seemed to be arriving constantly, and we were shuttled through to get helmets and harnesses. One of the employees even helped me strap…
-
On Monday, Ally, Emilie, Jason, and I went on a hiking tour. Along with the people picked up from four other resorts, we stuffed a 15-person bus and went to a hiking trail beside the Cerro Chato and Arenal volcanoes, where we put the provided lunches in our backpacks and started our big loop for…