Join the Adventure!
Cape Horn (Cabo de Hornos) was the windiest and coldest place (as well as the furthest south) we went on our Patagonia adventure. Cape Horn marks the northern part of the Drake Passage which separates the Americas from Antartica. Believe it or not, there …
What a way to start the end of our Chilean adventure – with a 4-day cruise along the Patagonia glaciers on the Stella Australis! Our adventure began before we even landed with a spectacular aerial view of all the snow tipped volcanos and bright blue …
December 11th, Asher was all dressed up in his “Uniforme Numero Uno” with his new haircut, ready for the Prize Giving ceremony at Mackay.
The ceremony started off with an amazing entrance by all the Primary School boys coming in from all directions singing and clapping to the song “Para Delante Camina” from Alex Orantes. It was so colorful and uplifting and magical!
After the little guys put on a super cute performance of the Lion King in amazing animal costumes,
Asher’s class went up and performed “I Feel Good!” Asher’s rythm was fabulous!
Here are some good pix of Asher and his classmates: 
After the all school assembly, the boys went back to their 2C room to receive their diplomas from their teacher, Miss Silvana
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Then they went outside with Miss Silvana and their Prefect, Raul, to take a class photo.
And, of course, “una foto desorganizada”!
I was so proud of Asher!
The “Spirit of Giving” ceremony at St. Margarets school was a beautiful and loving end to a spectacular five and half months of fun, friendship, learning, singing, dancing and nurturing support from Aliya’s friends, prefect (Chiche), and teacher (Miss Valentina) in 4B. The ceremony started …
The name of the restaurant says it all: El Rustico! One of Ben’s favorite meals of all times was at a very rustic Chilean BBQ spot on the way to La Campana National Park in Olmue. All of the food was cooked in wood burning …
What will you dial in an emergency? . . . 911?
Not in Chile! Can you remember 0226800001?
How many 0s were there? Can you remember the other numbers?
Don’t worry if you can’t remember 0226800001, you can always dial 0226800002!
Just one week after heading up north to the desert, we flew south to the Region Los Lagos (the Lake District) to hike around the volcanos and tour the Lakes. Our low point happened when we arrived with 2 starving kids at 7pm at our …
As we were eating a delicious torte at Cassis in Pucon after 4 fabulous days in Los Lagos, we asked everyone what were their favorite things about Los Lagos. And here is what we said: ALIYA (1) Almost lost my tooth (2) The Green Lagoon …
For Raquel’s 40+ Birthday, we took a long weekend trip to the desert of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile for amazing stargazing, breathtaking views of the colors of the desert, salt lake floating, and some arts & crafts.
After a 1.5 hour drive from Calama, we arrived in the town of San Pedro de Atacama, which is an adobe colored, two-bit, touristy town of narrow roads lined with single story adobe structures. Think Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1800s!
Except there are volcanos in the outskirts of San Pedro, like this one, Volcan Licancabur:
Our first night, we were fortunate to be able to go on an amazing star gazing tour. In fact, it was the last night they were running the tour for a while because the moon was getting to be too bright to see the stars. Be sure to check out our Star Tour blog entry for some amazing pix of our 1st night:
Our second day, was our water tour. We started with a trip to the Cejar Lagoon (salt flats) for floating in the cold, salty water:
Think Dead Sea, but with Volcanos, very cold water, and no Ahava mud products!
Afterwards, we went for a sunset tour of the Chaxa Lagoon. Often there are flamingos, but we unfortunately didn’t see any. But we did see an amazing array of colors from the white salt and crystal blue waters to the red glow of the sunset on the Licancabur volcano:
Our third day, we toured the Valle de La Luna (Valley of the Moon) and Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley), which was Raquel’s favorite tour and great photo opportunity. The Valle de la Luna got its name from it’s similarity to the lunar landscape. Our guide told us that many people still believe that Neil Armstrong landed here and not on the moon back in 1969. According to our guide and wikipedia, NASA is using the terrain of Valle de La Luna to test some of its equipment for future Mars missions.
We started our tour of the Valle de La Luna with Asher’s favorite part: The Caves, which were formed by wind and water erosion.
There were some amazing sand formations at the Valle de La Luna:
Next we were on to the Valle de la Muerte, which our guide said was originally called Valle de Martes but was misunderstood by the Belgian explorer Le Paige (whose name is all over San Pedro) to be Muerte instead of Martes. Check out the amazing colors of the sunset over the Valle de La Muerte:
These are some of our favorite sunset photos over the Valle de La Luna and back towards the Volcan Licancabur:
Our fourth and last day, we woke up early to travel out to see the spectacular colors of the Valle Arcoiris (Rainbow). Check out the amazing array of colors caused by various salt concentrations and minerals found in the sand:
One of the things we try to do when we travel is make sure we try something local and new. Asher loved trying Inca Kola, which he said tasted like extra sweet cream soda.
We also really enjoyed our hotel, Cabañas Ancar Atacama, where we stayed in a cute little cabaña.
The kids favorite part of the hotel was the freezing cold pool, which was too cold for Raquel, but extremely refreshing for the kids who were hot from our 1k walk from the town in the hot desert sun:
No trip to Atacama is complete without a trip to the markets:
Asher really loved his time in Atacama! Here he is in the plaza:
O2 was our favorite breakfast spot. We liked it so much, we went twice. The kids loved the manjar pancakes, while Raquel loved the amazing veggie quiche.
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This is what the top of the walls looked like:
Here she goes again. This is one of Raquel’s artistic shots that took way too long to capture, so half the group went on to the Plaza, on the other side of the church steeple that is in this photo.
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‘”Is Your Mama A Lama?,” I Asked My Friend Ben.
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Cactus Flower, the only thing growing here!
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Don’t get Ben started about the veracity of these carvings!
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The Atacama Dessert sky is one of the clearest for star gazing! It’s dry conditions (it usually gets less than a millimeter of rain/year), high altitude (8,000 feet), and low level of light pollution (there is pretty much nothing else there besides San Pedro) make …