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I've been on a business trip now since last Wednesday (03/Aug). It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Providence, RI. I've already been to Montreal, B'burg, Princeton, and Northborough, MA. It's been a long trip, and I'm looking forward to getting back to Brazil!

I was lucky to be able to schedule this business trip for the same weeks as the DCI Championships. (What is DCI? ) I've been going to the championships for about 5 0r 6 years now, so I was happy to keep my streak alive. Next year, they'll be in Madison, WI.

Even though there's been some fun, it's still been a long business trip. I think I may be back to the States in early November, and then again Christmas-time.

Lagos Andinos, Part II

Day 3: The bus left early on Day 3 for the Valle Nevado ski resort. All 20 or so of the other people on the tour were Brazilians, and a good many of them were from places in the North, like Amazonia, Fortaleza, and Recife. Most had never seen snow, so the point in going to the ski resort was not necessarily to ski - but to see snow.


The resort is about an hour or so outside of the city. It's 3500 meters above sea level and the road to the top is not for the weak-of-stomach. The road has 70 hairpin turns (numbered) and the rest of it is snakey. Of course, there are no guard rails, so every turn is like a scene from some movie (for example, the scene in Motorcycle Diaries where Felix the half-blind Peruvian is driving Che and Mial in his old beat-up truck).


Since we were only going to be at the ski resort for about 3 hours, we decided it wasn't worth the cost to rent gear and buy lift tickets. We met a young guy from Colorado working in the ski rental shop - he said they don't get many Americans there. The resort was well appointed with a variety of hotels and restaurants. The snow seemed excellent for skiing. It was a tough to be so close and not go. I have to admit, though, it was great to feel cold weather again.

That night, we had dinner with our Austrian and Brazilian friends at a New Zealand themed restaurant in Santigao, Chile. (There's a sentance I never thought I'd ever say.) Our friends from SJC happened to be in Santiago, Chile at the same time as us, so we met up at Akarana.

(More pics from Day 3)

This was our last day in Santiago, and we were sad to see it come to an end. We promised ourselves we'd go back. The next day, we flew to Puerto Montt, Chile.

Lagos Andinos, Part I

A couple of weeks ago, we went on our longest vacation ever. (The stats: 12 days, 11 nights, 4 planes, 3 countries, about 4200 miles, maximum land elevation 3500 meters, and 60 kg of luggage).

We had signed up with a local Travel Agent for their 12-day "Lagos Andinos" tour. The trip included: Santiago, Chile; Cruce de Lagos (Cruise of the Lakes); skiing in Bariloche, Argentina; and a few nights in Buenos Aires. Overall, it was a great trip. I'd post some great pictures to my Flickr account, but our camera was stolen in Bariloche by the maids at the hotel (more on that in a future post). I do have a few pics from our video camera - it takes stills, but not the highest quality. We weren't really expecting to have to share the video cam pics.

Day 1: We departed Sao Paulo in the afternoon, and were in Santiago by early evening. By the time we got settled at the hotel (Crowne Plaza), it was only about 8 or 9, so we still had time to catch dinner. We had a great meal at Como Agua Para Chocolate, and the wine steward gave us a lesson on wines. Chilean wines are really bold and crisp, with great legs (whatever that means). By the time we finished, it was getting late, so we just grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel.


Day 2: We woke to a bit of an overcast day in the city, but not so much as to ruin the fun. On the day's agenda was a city tour in the morning, a stop at a local shopping mall, and a tour of a Chilean vineyard. The city tour was good - well, at least as good as seeing the city from the window of a bus can be. The city seems clean, relatively safe, and the people are generally nice. We did stop once or twice to get out of the bus to stretch our legs and get a closeup of a few sites. One stop was the Presidential Plaza where we were lucky to see the arrival of the President of Chile, and his entourage and military parade. I guess this is one of the more touristy things to see in Santiago as I see some of the same pictures we took posted all over the web. We also saw the city cathedral, which was impressive for sure.

Later in the day, we stopped at a Shopping Mall for lunch. For Edge, this was one of the highlights of the whole trip. There before us was the neon glow of "Burger King", "Taco Bell", and "Dunkin Donuts". Seriously, he almost wept. As far as the fast food places we are oh-so-familiar with in the US, to date we've only seen two of them in Brazil - McDonalds and Pizza Hut. MickeyD's tastes basically the same as back home, but Pizza Hut is different (Brazilian's do not put a lot of tomato sauce on their pizzas). But, Burger King was an elusive dream for Edge, and he happily ate is Whopper. There's rumored to be one somewhere in Sao Paulo, but he's is down 2 votes to 1 on us hazarding a trip to inner-city Sao Paulo to find it. Regardless of what Edge says, we think it's refreshing not to be inundated with all those over-commercialized fast food restaurants here.


Last stop on the tour was the Concha y Toro vineyard. This is one of our favorite wines that we have discovered in Brazil. The tour was interesting and we got some free wine along the way. Unfortunately, July is not the month too see any grapes on the vine as it's the dead of winter in South America now. We spotted the "diablo" of the "Castillo de Diablo" wine fame in the underground dungeon (somewhat tacky, and clearly touristy, but fun).



Finally, after a long day, we went out to a Chilean-themed tourist-friendly restaurant/dance hall. The food here was not the best, but the show was good. It featured costumes and dances from each of the different regions of Chile, including Easter Island (yes, that Easter Island; it's a part of Chile). In the end, we wound up dancing a bit ourselves, and a good time was had by all.

In retrospect, Day 2 was one of the busiest of the whole trip. I posted a few more Pics from Days 1 and 2 on Flickr. We had a great time in Santiago and are planning on going back one day.

Look for more details of our trip in future posts.

First Post

I guess it's about time that I got into this "blog" thing. Blogging seems like a good vehicle for sharing our Brazilian experiences. As you know, I'm not really much of a writer, so don't expect to see any fancy prose here. Just some thoughts, observations, and a few interesting links. I don't think I'm going to be too strict about keeping on the topic of life in Brazil. You'll just have to wait and see how this evolves.


So, here we go...