Viva Argentina!

Although it still feels like winter, we all took a week off for our "spring break" trips. Dave and I headed WAY south to Argentina - and it was amazing! We started the trip in el Calafate, Patagonia. It took us 25 hours door to door, but it was totally worth it. We arrived Saturday night, checked into our hotel, which was more of a bed and breakfast, and headed right to dinner, where we enjoyed some amazing wine (Malbec of course) and local beef. We spend Sunday exploring the town, which is small and tourist-based, with lots of little shops and plenty of places to eat. And then on Monday we took our first big excursion, where we hiked the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Here's what it looks like from the water...

 And here's the group (8 of us and 2 guides) about an hour into the hike (it took us about 2.5 hours to get to the middle of the glacier)

At the center was a pool, where we sat and ate our lunch (which was a quick lunch, b/c it's pretty cold sitting on a glacier)

The next day we took another excursion to Estancia Cristina, a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, it was a three hour boat ride to get there, and we passed nothing but icebergs on the way. Here's one of them...

Once we made it to the Estancia we did a 9 mile hike down through a canyon, which at one time was covered by an ocean, so there were lot of fossils. Here's a shot of the group (there were 12 of us and a guide) hiking down into the canyon. 

 Dave and I with some mountains in the background. There's a hanging glacier on the one right above my head. Unfortunately no pictures really do either of these hikes justice. The scenery was really breathtaking. 

On Wednesday we left Patagonia (sadly) and headed north to Buenos Aires, where we spent the rest of the week. The weather was warm (unlike Patagonia or Philly) and the city is incredibly vibrant - although not many people spoke English, so we had to bumble along with our very poor Spanish (mine much worse than Dave's). 

We did the tourist thing - mostly wandering around to different neighborhoods, checking out the the sites and eating... lots and lots of eating (lucky we were doing so much walking). Here are a few random shots...