Surf camping, touching dolphins, and Farro music!!

Yes, yes, we continue our travels, but they are definitely slowly (quickly!) winding down...
What do we miss most from home (other than our great friends and family of course!)...In-n-Out Burger, delicious craft beers, kitesurfing/mountain biking whenever we want, pillow-top mattresses, clean places, a good salad , and dill pickles. Yep, there, you have it.

We also forgot a few highlights from Praia de Pipa. It has got to be one of the top surfing spots in the world, because the guys surfing there are AMAZING. Look up some videos on Youtube. Intense. Scott is trying his luck at making it pro before we head home, but the chances are pretty slim. An added bonus of this beach is that you can literally walk out and swim with dolphins. Yep, a dolphin licked my toe as it went by. I was ecstatic!

The dolphin that licked my toe!

Look closely...the guy at the surf campground is flattening out the spot for our tent. This would never happen at home!

After Pipa we met up with a few new friends in an off-the-beaten path town called Joao Pessoa. We had some awesome times - great food, good company. See ya in Switzerland Victor and Stephanie!

Lisa splurged and got a haircut. She looks great!

Some new friends and good times!

After enjoying the beaches for a solid three weeks we decided it was time to stop being such bums and check out the city of Salvador de Bahia.  Like most places we go to these days we google the place to see if it looks cool and we try to decifer Lonely Planet's exaggerated storytelling to see if it's really cool.  We arrived in Salvador after a long overnight bus to find that the city was mostly shut down, totally booked, and was preparing for a HUGE festival.  The festival, Sao Joao, is the second largest festival in the state of Bahia (first is Carnaval, obvi!) and we had no clue what to expect.  After looking at five different places to stay, we found a small apartment overlooking the bay to rent right near (but not in) all the action.  We always love renting apartments so we can cook something a little more normal (aka not rice and beans). 

The historic UNESCO neighborhood center of Pelourinho. Beautiful.

An automatic sugar cane juicing machine. Normal.

We're still alive! Enjoying fresh coconuts. Delicous. Again. 

More Salvador

View of the famous landmark, the elevator. And the view from our apartment!

Some kids hanging out on the street. Good clean fun. Except they were lighting firecrackers until who knows when...

Salvador is super artsy...

Even the public telephones are artsy - this one is the shape of a half coconut!

Love this place!

The festival is a HUGE celebration. These pics are basically the during the day before the festival started and only one at night (not a good idea to bring cameras out).  The festival is all farro music (pronounced Faa-ho, of course, and is super popular in the northeast of Brazil). It is all locals with amazingly cheap beer and food.  There were a total of seven different stages running four nights in a row from 8pm to 2am. It was a big deal, with everyone dressed in their best going out clothes! Surprisingly, we knew many of the bands and had such a blast singing along to our favorite Brazilian songs :)  I didn't even realize that we knew local music down here but turns out when you are in a country for over a month you learn a lot.

Traditional garb...and city streets!

The main square during the day

The same square at night

Yeah

The first night in Salvador also happened to be our eight month anniversary (yes, we celebrate every month) so we set out to go to one of our all-time favorite meat restaurants, Fogo de Chao.  They are also a chain in the US, but rightly so, the food is amazing. After we explained that we liked our meat medium rare, not well done like every local here, we enjoyed some amazing cuts with some great wine.  I can't wait to see what's in store for our nine month celebration!

I can look like a normal person and eat delicious meat!

Mmmmm....

Until next time...

We heart Patagonia

El Chalten is billed by Argentinians as the "hiking capital of Argentina", so of course we couldn´t resist checking it out. It´s also an internationally famous rock-climbing destination. There´s some crazy sheer cliffs around here! This city, the newest city in Argentina, is one of those no-stoplight towns, that you have to love (or at least when you want to get away from it all for awhile). The best part about it is that there are tons of awesome day hikes to the famous Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy mountains (again...more pics later when the internet is good). What does this mean? No hauling our heavy gear for 5-6 hour hikes each day!! This is huge.

So we bought camping gear in the last town and posted up in El Chalten at an awesome campsite in a beautiful valley, next to a glaciar river, overlooking the mountain range. (this might be when a picture tells a thousand words...hold out until our next stop...) Oh, did I mention that this campsite has barbecues?? That´s what I´m talking about. That´s what´s been missing from our lives, barbecue!

We´ve been here for a week camped out in our little house next to the river doing one day of hiking and then one day of relaxing (generally reading and sitting by the river, trying to solve the world´s problems...ha), trying to figure out our next steps.

Our first hike was a 5 hour out and back to Laguna Torres, the beautiful overlook to Cerro Torre. As we´ve noticed, both the Chileans and Argentinians are not so good about identifing the time and difficulty of their trails. First of all, they rate their trails almost all as "easy", but the times are off by huge amounts. ANYWAY. This hike was great, mostly flat and beautiful the whole way!





Our second hike was a 5 1/2 hour crazy uphill hike to this place called ¨Loma del Pliegue¨ what is the translation you might ask? Dunno...maybe "amazing view of the entire mountain range, glaciars, and lakes". This hike was a 3000 foot climb to this amazing peak overlook. Pics to come!

Some crazy flowers at the top, they´re called "Lady Slippers"

We made it!! Wind was about 40-50 mph up here...didn´t stay long! Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy in the background


Our last adventure here was a bit different you might say. We mixed it up with a boat tour of the Viedma glaciar, ice trekking, and ice climbing. FREAKING AWESOME! This was our first organized tour since we left Antarctica, good and bad as we all know (you can imagine the touristy nature of this trip, rather than the backpacker/independent traveling that we´ve been doing). Anyway. Let´s just say that ice climbing with crampons is freaking amazing. We walked around the glaciar (and even under it!) for a bit, then found a shear wall to climb. It was awesome, what a great day...and change of pace!

Ready for the adventure! Check out the crazy color of Lago Viedma...




Yep, she´s underneath the glacier!!

Whadya think of this hombres??!! Boo-ya!

That´s it for El Chalten, Argentina. The weather has turned a bit...we´ve been told that it´s generally windy, rainy, and sunny all in the same day...and it´s starting out...so it´s time for us to move on! (The weather has been unbelievable here - warm, sunny, and awesome for the past 6 days!).

Tomorrow we take off for another 12 hour bus ride north along the infamous Route 40 (Ruta 40). Hopefully we´ll find better internet for you to have some pictures!

Hope everyone is doing well back home.

Scott and Lisa