We stayed three nights at the hippie hostel in El Bolson simply relaxing, going for a few runs, chilling by the river and doing yoga. Oh and one day we went horseback riding which was kind of boring and dusty and more of a "well-now-we-have-done-it" kind of trip than a real adventure. After all this relaxing and pretending to be hippies (we never fooled anyone though with our rolling Samsonites and well-brushed hair), we were ready to see some more of Bariloche. We got there in the evening and went for dinner at yet another awesome steak restaurant close by. The whole next day we spent walking the streets of Bariloche. The town is seriously trying its best to copy every aspect of a small skiing resort in Switzerland: large chocolate shops (which were AMAZING I might add), amazing surrounding nature and of course Skt. Bernard dogs that you can take pictures with… a bit strange and touristy but nonetheless quite charming.

We ate chocolate, drank wine, ate lunch and then had our final large steak in Argentina (or so we thought) before heading out to the airport the next morning flying out to Puerto Iguazu to see the falls. We arrived about 8 hours later late at night and were a bit shocked by the humid climate that met us when we exited the plane. Our plan to visit Puerto Iguazu was to see the falls from the Argentina side before heading on to Brazil the next day with an overnight bus so that is exactly what we did. The falls were as breathtaking as I remembered and luckily Andreas was amazed too, so we had a great day in the hot weather walking around in the beautiful national park and taking tons of pictures (as you can see on the blog). We spent the afternoon browsing through the not so exciting city attached to the national park, had some red wine and tapas and went home to take a nap. The hostel owner who apparently also was the house chef served dinner at our hostel restaurant and guess what was on the menu: STEAK of course J

We crossed the boarder from Argentina to Brazil the next day with our new taxi driver friend (who somehow had become our private chauffeur during our stay), which literally took 2 minutes - nice and easy J

Our family friend Katia is also backpacking South America so luckily we managed to meet for a late lunch on the Brazilian side of the falls before we caught our night bus to Florianopolis (Southeast of Brazil). It was really good to see someone from home again and sad that we were heading in completely different directions - even though I had the feeling that our and Katia's trip had a bit different agendas (two single girls in their early twenties vs. an old married couple J- well you get the picture).

We were soooooooo ready for Florianopolis, which is known for its 40 white sandy beaches and summer holiday atmosphere. After all the adventures we had experienced the last 1,5 months, 10 days of relaxing at the beaches taking it all in was exactly what we needed.

I am writing this on our last day here and if I had to sum up our stay this is how we spent most days: morning run, fresh fruit and eggs for breakfast, relaxing at the beach, salad for lunch a nice walk on the beach, some more sunbathing and a restaurant for dinner.

One of the more eventful things that happened was that we rented a scooter half way through our stay but when we went on our morning trip to the local baker to get our fresh juice we had not expected that the police were going to stop us (I was not wearing my helmet) and since Andreas' drivers license is floating around somewhere on the South American postal hemisphere (we forgot we had given it as a deposit for our rental gear for Torres del Paine so they had sent it to Floripa a few weeks earlier but it has yet to arrive) the police decided to take the scooter in custody. Oh well, a 2000 DKK fine later we no longer had a scooter and decided to stay on foot for now. However, we still really wanted to do some day trips and on our 1-year anniversary (yeah J) we took a cab to a starting point for a small 1-hour hike that ended in a private lagoon only reachable by foot or boat. We spent the day here in the sun and took a boat ride back to a local fishing village only to discover that taxis are not of plenty on the island so we ended up hitchhiking across Foripa back home (amongst others we were picked up by 2 rastafari dudes singing a long to Portuguese rasta music - quite the experience). The next day we went out and rented a tiny car for the remainder of our stay.

Our home the last 10 days has been a small green house 200 metres away from a long white sand beach (Campeche) for only 230 DKK pr. night. We have really enjoyed staying at this cozy and homey place with a small garden, hammock and everything but now that I have seen 2 cockroaches and stray dogs bark us to sleep every night we are ready to move on - to Rio de Janeiro. Last stop before the big US of A.

Pictures are already uploaded.