No news...good news!

Dear All,

We are now in Sucre Bolivia and have not had access to internet for a while! To be honest it was quite tough...So what have we done while you were at work apart from drinking a very nice Quilmes (argentinian beer)?

Our last day in Salta was very nice, we followed the trail of the "tren de las nuves" which goes from Salta at 2500 meters and ends with a breathtaking (dans tous les sens du terme) bridge at 4200 meters!

On Thursday we traveled 12 hours to get into Tupiza, Bolivia. We had to wait standing for 2 hours at the customs to get out of Argentina... one of the charms of this country is that you always have to queue for everything. People are actually VERY disciplined about it (even more than in Switzerland! Can you believe this?) and queues can be more than 200 m long: Argentinians will not be discouraged!

From Tupiza we started a 4 day tour on a private car with a chauffeur named Coco and a guide named Herlan. The made us discover the South-West tip of their amazing country. We had long discussions over our picnic lunches at more than 4000m about the history, politics and sociology of Bolivia. The evenings were alot of fun playing pool and ocho loco! (cards)

The downside was that there was alot of "camino" - at least 5 hours a day and up to 12 hours and that:

1. the tracks turn alot and they are not paved
2. Claire is carsick as you all know
3. Claire discovered she is also mountainsick above 3500 meters... and we went up to 5000 m several times

However we made the best out of it and visited the most amazing places in Bolivia as you can see in the pictures!:

- La laguna colorada and its pink falmingos
- La laguna verde and its volcano which is the border with Chile (and made us think of the Caribbean!)
- The Sol de Mañana geysers on one of the volcanoes at 5000 m where we were freezing although the bubbles behind us were at more than 200º C
- The Salar de Uyuni (biggest & highest salt desert in the world) where we played with the perspectives as you can see on the pics! And where the temperature reached 37.5 º C on that day which is quite exceptional for this altitude. This is definately the bit we prefered of our trip in Bolivia until now.

One thing that you will all recognize is important on a honeymoon: hotelsJ

These are amazing in Bolivia: they are in the middle of nowhere, built directly on the Andes and with a rustic feel, although very clean. We are always welcomed with a mate de coca (coca leaves tea) and a nice, warm dinner. We also had the most amazing experience, sleeping in the Palacio de Sal, which is a luxury hotel only built with salt from the Salar!

We'll be staying in Sucre for 3 days and then will head to La Paz and Lake Titicaca.

Sending you alot of honeymoon love ;-)

PS: the pictures are upside-down so start with last one and go up if you want them to match the text...sorry ;-)

Claire and Alex

Los Mielistas

We’re having a great time in Salta –
We’ve been visiting the city which is as big as Geneva on Monday - and on Tuesday we have been to Cachi which is a beautiful village at 3600 m. in the pre-Andes. Our guide and driver Horacio was chewing coca leaves all day long which gave a stong smell in the car…a mix of diet coke and mint… He drove very safely though so weren’t not too worried! We really enjoyed the route to Cachi, part of which is the "camino de los Incas" through whicih the Incas walked down from Cusco (Peru) to the South of Santiago de Chile from the 13th to the 16th century.
The mountains are amazing with red and green colors which are caused by the concentration of iron and copper. We also visited the cactus nacional park and had alot of fun with the cactus as you can see in the pictures above!
Today we had a new guide, Federico, who took us to HUMAHUACA and to JUJUY. On the way we met some guanacos (Argentinian lamas). We actually had some for lunch …! Claire is feeling guilty now that she sees the picture...
People here call us “los mielistas” – the honeymooners!! Everyone is very friendly with each other and we really sense that people grow up with a sense of community, unlike in Europe or in the US.

We hope you’re enjoying reading about our trip – don’t hesitate to add comments!

What's next? Overview of our trip till X-mas

Just to give you guys a quick overview of what's coming next, here's our plan:
- Salta and surrounding for 4 days
- Crossing the border to Bolivia at almost 5000m in a couple of days to head up north to Salar de Uyuni
- Then Sucre and Potosi and plane to La Paz
- Couple of days on an island in the middle of the Titicaca lake
- Macchu Picchu and the Inca trail
- Lima (capital of Peru) and then Colombia to visit Alex's family plus a week in Cartagena to enjoy the Caribbean!!!
- Back to Argentina to visit Patagonia all the way down to Ushuaia
- X-mas in Buenos Aires (New Year in Punta del Este?) and then one month visiting the different Estancias (farms owned by friends and family).

Week 1: discovering Buenos Aires

Dear Family and friends,
We hesitated a lot at first because we thought that the creation of a blog would take ages but it's quite easy actually! We also hesitated when it came to choose a language: french, spanish, english, spanglish? English seemed to be the most commonly understood...at least we hope!
It's been a week since we arrived and we have had the best time ever! Everyone is so kind with us and always keen on showing us the multiple faces and aspects of Buenos Aires. Claire's aunt (Tareka) has welcomed us in her lovely house in San Isidro (special thanks to Ramon for giving up his room...) and we have spent a lot of time with all her cousins. Besides, as you can guess we have had the best meat you can eat (see pictures of yesterday's "asado" at Horacio's dressed to the nines for us...and the dinner we had on Tuesday with Rick at la Brigada. Believe it or not but the waiter did cut the meat with spoons...it was like butter!!!).



We have been discovering Buenos Aires as follows:

1 . on the tourist bus (cheesy)... but it's definitely the best way to get an overview of this huge and beautiful city!

2. With our cousins' cousin Agustina who has shown us some of Bs Aires exclusive aspects such as horse jumping (her boyfriend actually owns a very promising horse named Million Dollar ;-)

3. We want you to know that we miss you all and that we are very thankful be able to be here thank to you guys!
We are currently writing this message from Salta because we took the airplane this morning at 6:30 AM (woke up at 4 am...) as we are starting today our big trip in the Andes that will lead us to Colombia.
We'll keep you posted!