Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

Blog reading:

1. A few of you have asked us via email about keeping up to date with the blog without checking it manually every day. It´s really easy: fill in your email address in the box on the left side of the blog page and click the Subscribe button to register for updates. If you already use an RSS reader, then you can subscribe to us with that, but then again, if you´re in that group, you already know this.
2. Some have asked why their comments don´t immediately show up on the site. If it´s your first comment, it won´t show up immediately. To control spam in the comments, we´ve set it up so that we have to approve your first comment. After that, you should be able to comment all you want.

Infrequent updates:

Our access to the Internet is spotty at best, and when we get it, it´s painfully slow. Remember dial-up access to the Internet? It´s worse. With our FIOS service at home, we have more bandwidth to our apartment than the entire southern half of Argentina does. At least it feels that way. Meredith took an hour last night to read two emails. I didn´t even try. What this means is that our posts here will be “bursty” so you should see several at a time. We write them offline as we go, and then post them if we find an Internet cafe and some time. FYI, the boat in the Galapagos won´t have Internet access, so that´s 11 days where you probably won´t hear from us.

I´ve taken lots of great pictures and the plan was to include them with our posts. This has been difficult in our current location, but hopefully will be better in the next, and I will post them as soon as I can.

Oh my God I am so sore.  Taking the day off from hiking today.

Dave & Meredith with Crampons              Gene Simmons with Spikey Boots

We hiked on a glacier today! I don´t think I stopped smiling the whole time I was on the glacier (2 – 3 hours). It was amazing and I wasn´t really that sore from doing the all-day hike yesterday.

Dave & Meredith in an Ice Cave

Today we did an all-day hike around the base of Mount Fitz Roy. It was beautiful. I haven’t done an all-day hike in a few years. It was challenging and really rewarding. Feeling really good about getting back into the gym for the last couple months to help prepare!

Scenes from our All-day Hike

One of the great things about traveling is the people you meet.  We have a great group with us on the Patagonia trip.  We have lots of time during meals and bus rides to get to know each other.  Because we’re on a trip half way around the world, it’s a safe bet that we will be with people that share a love of traveling.  This group is unbelievable, though.  I thought that Dave and I were pretty well traveled, but once I started talking to the people on this trip, I started feeling inadequate.  Probably not unlike a guy who compares himself to another guy who was better endowed.  Not that I would know what that would feel like.  But it brings up an interesting story.

The company we’re traveling with sent us a little book full of information to help us prepare for our trip.  Packing lists, helpful tips about currency and weather, etc.  It also had a section on the wildlife that is endemic to the areas we’re visiting.  The area we’re in now (Peninsula Valdes) has a lot of Southern Right Whales that migrate here for breeding from August through December.  This little book we received has information on the Southern Right Whales’ geographic range, feeding habits, behavior, etc.  I was reading this section during the flight down to Buenos Aires.  After a very dry and pseudo-scientific description of the whale’s dermis and fat content, I read the following sentence:

“One interesting fact about this species is that the male right whales have the largest testes in the animal kingdom.  Each pair weighs about 1 ton, the same weight as a newborn right whale.”

Okay, now seriously.  That is what it said.  And in fact, I *did* find it to be an interesting fact.  And as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a guy, so I don’t really know what this would feel like, but I ask the men reading this blog posting how you would feel if you were walking around with 1 ton testes.  Or, let’s even try the relative size thing – how would you feel walking around with 8 or 9 pound testes (the weight of a newborn baby)?

What does this have to do with our newfound friends on our Patagonia trip?  Well, I was able to assess by day two that the people on this trip, in addition to being well traveled, have a great sense of humor.  So I asked one of the guys at dinner on Saturday whether he had read the pre-trip briefing book.  Perfect dinner conversation, obviously.  Whale balls are *really* funny after a couple glasses of Argentinian red wine.  And I learned a new word from our newfound friends: schwanz.  Look it up.  It’s yiddish.

I´ve never seen roadkill happen before. As we drove to the town of El Chalten, a bus approached us from the other direction at the same time an armadillo decided to cross the road. He stopped at a point where the bus would have missed him just fine. But then he freaked out and started to run back to where he came from. I expected a simple pancake. What we got was an explosion. Meredith and I let out a simultaneous, “WHOA!” This is one of those things where I am supposed to act grossed out, but what I´m not telling other people on the trip is that I thought it was really cool. 🙂

This trip has something for everyone. If you’re into wildlife, great – lots of mammals, sea creatures, birds – you name it. Like food and wine? Check and check (The tomatoes here are so incredible. After several months of crappy out-of-season grocery-store tomatoes in Boston, it’s like heaven to come here in their summer. And we haven’t had a bad bottle of wine – and there have been a lot of them already because there are 10 people on the trip, most of whom can drink me under the table). Do you like hiking? Patagonia is famous for it! And last but not least, if you like beautiful scenery, Patagonia has that in spades. Both landscape and other. Ladies, check out this picture of our local guide on Peninsula Valdes. His name is Marco. Lots of the people on our trip think he looks like Antonio Banderas, but I think he’s even dreamier – like a Latin George Clooney. I get to take in that scenery for 3 days, but unfortunately, Argentina has a system where you can only be a licensed guide for a specific local area, so Marco can’t come with us to our next destination. This is different for tour leaders, who are with us for the whole trip (no disrespect to our fabulous tour leaders Irene and Melissa but you’re just not the right gender for me). 🙂

We’re on Peninsula Valdes, which is a remote and protected peninsula in northern Patagonia. We have seen lots of wildlife – penguins, elephant seals, sea lions, guanacos (sort of like llamas), hares, lots of birds, etc. My favorite animal sighting was the armadillo. We saw several of them scampering around at an estancia near this penguin colony we visited. Yes, that’s right. There are armadillos and penguins in the exact same area. Pretty cool, huh? I love nature.

It’s been a marathon couple of days but we’re in the home stretch and it feels like we’ll get out of here without forgetting anything major. Mer was smart and got some sleep but I pulled an all-nighter to get packed. I’m feeling it too. It’s surprising when you realize half (if not more) of your luggage is photo gear. People may think I don’t travel light but if I took the photo stuff away, I’d probably only need a backpack.

This time it’s exacerbated by me buying a underwater housing for my Canon G9 (can’t miss swimming with all the critters in the Galapagos!) but no one had Canon’s in stock so I bought an Ikelite. It arrived yesterday and it’s about 4 times the volume and weight of Canon’s – doh! Didn’t expect that. If it weren’t the Galapagos, I might just scrap the idea and send it back but I’ve had such fun with the housing for my SD550 in the past that I know it’ll be worth it. Now if I can just get past the airlines’ weight limits…

We’re new to the blogging thing so it’ll take us a few posts to find our style so please join us for the ride. I hope to be able to post pictures while we’re on the road. I have many photographer friends out there so I’ll also post some techie stuff from time to time on some of the gear I’m bringing, how well it worked or didn’t. I’ll flag it with the “Photo” category so if you’re not interested you’ll know to avoid it. 🙂

Our flight to Buenos Aires connects through Dallas so I’m looking forward to catching up on some sleep. Talk to y’all later.

I just re-read my last post (still procrastinating).  It was a little bit whiny.  Sorry about that.

I am psyched about the trip, obviously.