Day 1: Argentina

So some of you know and some of you don't that I am currently in Argentina!!! It was a very random trip in the making and was initially inspired by my brother, Jason, whose business partner works down here in Bariloche, Argentina. He had talked my dad into traveling with him just for a new fun experience and after that he had presented the concept to my aunt and uncle who thought it an exciting proposition. After my mom found out that my aunt had committed, she had agreed to go as well. At that point, I DID NOT want to be left out of a once in a lifetime experience so after a small emotional breakdown, Derrick realized how important it was to me to go and he lined things up so that he would have a cameraman on a couple of the hunts for the TV show that would have hindered me from going....thanks babe!
Anyway, we started out on Oct 5th around 4pm. Headed to Houston International for a 9pm flight to Buenos Aires. I am not very good at sleeping on a plane, so I was concerned about this one and sure enough...it didn't go all that great. I slept about 3 hours and froze my tail off the rest of the time. We arrived in Buenos Aires around 9:20am and went through many lines of customs before meeting up with Uncle Doug & Aunt Laura who had gone on a different flight. We found a taxi (remises) service as we then had to change airports from the international to the domestic airport. We bumped along in Buenos Aires traffic for over an hour and finally reached our destination. Buenos Aires is the 2nd largest metropolitan area in South America with ~15 million people!! (Houston has a little over 2 million)....shows you how HUGE this city was! We then boarded our flight from Buenos Aires to Esquel. We were originally supposed to fly directly into Bariloche but there is an active volcano eruption since June near Bariloche and depending on the wind direction, the airport opens and closes due to ash in the air. So, unfortunately, it was closed so we landed in Esquel and then boarded a bus for a 4 hour journey back up to Bariloche. I didn't get much more sleep the whole journey as my plane mate on flight #2 was an elderly Argentinian lady who didn't speak much English and who sat in the window seat instead of the aisle seat like she was supposed to. (I can only sleep if I am able to lean up against a wall). Then on the bus, we were the last ones to board and the only available seat for me was an aisle seat next to a tri-lingual man from Switzerland. That was kind of cool though as my heritage (Kaspar) is Swiss so we talked about the home country for a while :)
We arrived at the Bariloche airport around 9pm where Tarek, Jason's friend & business partner) was there to pick us up. He brought us back to our cabin, which is TOTALLY cute. Reminds me of a little chatel you'd find in Wyoming or Colorado...all made of cypress and overlooking a gorgeous lake. Bariloche is known as the Swiss Alps of South America! This was my morning view!!

Thank you Lord for making the beautiful world of Bariloche, Argentina!