Happy Holidays Friends and Family,

I know most of you reading this are in, or near, Wyoming and are suffering from what I hear is one of the coldest winters in a really long time. Nonetheless I hope that you are all in good spirits for the holidays and are enjoying yourselves, and situation, as much as possible. Lindsay and I have been trying to call as many of you as we can to wish happy holidays and to keep you informed about our whereabouts and plans. Unfortunately because we have talked with a lot of you we haven’t posted, except pictures, in awhile but here we go.

So in Lindsay’s last post we were in Arequipa, Peru, a little past halfway through our “Big Bus Fun Trip”. From there we had what was looking like a long trip down through the Andes into Northern Chile and then we were going to cross over into Northern Argentina and see the city of Salta before zipping down (about 20 hr bus ride) to Mendoza. But when we were in Arequipa we found a flight from a kind of small time airline to Santiago for less then the busing would have cost. It was one of the funniest flights either of us has ever been on because it was practically a flying bus. The flight took off from Arequipa and landed first in Arica, Chile - which was about a 30 min flight. Then we got off and did customs and continued on to Antofagasta, Chile – which was another 45 min flight. This time only some of the passengers got off and new people got on. Then we flew to Santiago, Chile – which was maybe a 90 min flight.

We spent a couple days in Santiago which is a HUGE city. As most of you know, or have gathered from this blog, we aren’t really big city people. That being said Santiago is actually a pretty cool place. It felt very safe and friendly (we had a complete stranger stop and ask us if we needed help because we were looking at a map, this isn’t that much different from other places we have been except that he didn’t try and sell us something afterwards). On the downside of things Santiago is expensive like all big cities. From Santiago we took a beautiful 8 hr bus ride over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina.

This is where we are now. We have gotten a short-term apartment here in Mendoza (which was enough of a hassle it might warrant its own blog post) to spend the holidays and figure out what we want to do next. Mendoza is known for its wine and its proximity to Mount Aconcagua – which is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. Mendoza is bigger then we thought (about 850,000) but it still maintains kind of a smaller town feel. Unfortunately we are only at about 2,000 ft altitude here so we should probably change our blog name. It is really hot, which makes us feel even worse for those of you who are suffering through such bad weather right, but we do have an extra bedroom for anyone who can’t take the cold any longer. We have already taken a regional tour which included a short trip to Aconcagua National Park and we are going to take some wine tours soon. So hopefully we will have more to post later about wine tours, our future plans, and anything else that we do and think y’all be interested in.

-Beacon