Blue sky! After spending the past 3 months under a thick tropical haze, we were struck by the crisp and clear air of San MartÃn de los Andes, Argentina. We had come to this mountain city to visit Julia’s family friend Fernando in his home, as well as to follow our passion for hiking and camping in the surrounding mountains. But that would come later. The first thing on our agenda was sleeping, a lot. For days, we were completely exhausted from the journey we had taken to get there from Bangkok: 14 hour plane ride to London... 4 hour layover... 14 hour plane ride to Santiago, Chile... 14 hours sitting in a city park... 12 hour overnight bus ride... and finally a 6 hour bus ride over the mountains into Argentina. After 65 hours in transit we vowed: Never again! Although it was not exactly convenient to get to Argentina from Thailand, the country was on both of our bucket lists and we wanted to fit it in before the end of our big trip. Colby had lived in Argentina wi
We certainly didn’t have a typical experience in Thailand: no beaches, elephants, parties, seafood, or shopping. What did we do for an entire month, you might wonder? Well, for our first 5 nights we stayed with Don, a medical school friend of Julia’s dad, and his partner Paul in their central Bangkok condo. From the 12th floor we looked out upon the enormous city and its skyscrapers. Bangkok is truly huge, with a population of 15,000,000 and rising. Knowing our dislike of cities, we had planned to spend as little time as possible in Bangkok but ended up spending more than half our time there under some unfortunate circumstances. But that came later. For our first few days, Don and Paul were great in helping us get oriented to the city. On our first full day, they took us to one of their favorite markets, which was full of all sorts of exotic sea- and river-dwelling creatures. Paul seemed to know all the names and how to cook them. Now we have a little more u