We're in a hippie town called El Bolson in the Argentine Lake District. At first we felt disoriented because we didn't see very many hippies around town, but the artisan fair we went to today more than made up for it. I drank homemade beer, ate a waffle sandwich, listened to my partner explain why he's like a sparrow, and bought a hippie-ish hat. On a Tuesday! We decided that while we aren't quite hippies we're not totally yuppies either, so we thought we'd call ourselves Huppies - hippie upwardly-mobile urban professionals. We'll get to work on the professional and upwardly mobile part soon enough…

We haven't gone overboard with purchases or gifts while traveling but have discovered we both have a penchant for hats. We've acquired 10 between the two of us in the last 6 months: 9 of which we purchased ourselves, 1 of which was a gift from my friend Nancy in Bogota, and 8 of which have survived the journey thus far.

We're loving the lake district in Argentina - it feels truly vacation-like. Nice B&B´s, chocolate and homemade ice cream everywhere you turn, charming restaurants, snow-capped mountains and crystal clear lakes. This morning (late morning) the hostel owner asked if we wanted to switch to another bed so we wouldn't sleep so much.

Coming back into Argentina has felt quite luxurious overall, particularly after the salt flats of Bolivia. We spent the last week or so in the charming towns of Salta and Mendoza in the Northwestern part of the country. We traveled with our new friends, Magnus and San, and their company made the good food, good wine, and beautiful sights even more enjoyable.

In Salta we had some great food: our best brunch in a long time and some amazing steak at a local Parillada (even though we had to walk around for two hours while we waited for the restaurant to open at 8:30pm). We went on a hike overlooking the city to balance out our dining exploits and our hostel room was big enough for a yoga session.

We then traveled 18 hours south to Mendoza - a smaller and greener city. It's known as the wine capital of Argentina and its wineries and Malbec grapes didn't disappoint. We took a bus to a small village about an hour out of town and had a nice hike with an adorable little stray dog that adopted us and protected us in exchange for a bit of our standard salami and cheese lunch fare.

We've spent 48 hours in buses in the last week and lived to tell the tale. We have one more long bus ride left - 24 hours down to Southern Patagonia leaving on Thursday. Hard to believe it's almost over. We are both ready to head home (we won't miss the bus rides or living out of a bag too much) but it's been an amazing journey. I've learned I can sleep just about anywhere if tired enough; it's finally sinking in that we in fact do NOT have the right of way as pedestrians; and we are now packing masters, although we still can't seem to remember to hide our fruit so it doesn't get confiscated during the agricultural bus raids. Hopefully that's a lesson we'll learn on another trip someday, although not anytime soon!!