Brazil and Argentina (ft. family)

It’s nearly midnight on our first day on the National Geographic Explorer and the sun has finally set. We’ll spend the next two days navigating the Drake Passage, after setting sail for Antarctica a few hours ago. The forecast is for waves that are “only” ten feet high, which apparently is pretty manageable as far as these seas go.

Both pairs of our parents and Jack met us in South America to spend Christmas together. It was the first time all of us had been on an extended trip as one group, and we were so glad to be able to make some really wonderful memories together. Corralling seven people across Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, and Argentinian wine country in ten days is no easy task, but Alice (with some help from the rest of us) made it all happen. Almost a full month of the eight that we’ll be on our sabbatical will be spent traveling with our parents. That is an upside of this time that we hadn’t really thought about before starting our travels, but are so grateful for now that we’ve had the first of our trips together.

Copacabana

It seemed that Rio was the beach, and the beach was Rio. We’re a little sun-shy, so we spent most of the Brazilian mid-day in restaurants or our hotel room, looking out over Copacabana through our window. But in the early mornings and evenings, we found surfers, professional footvolleyers, and crowds taking in the sunset from the rocky shores of Arpoador.

Devil's Throat

About half of the Iguazu River’s flow is concentrated through the Devil’s Throat, an enormous, tempestuous wall of water and mist. It reminded me distinctly of watching Paul Atreides ride a sandworm for the first time on the Lincoln Center’s IMAX screen, down to the maelstrom of gold, brown, and white and the thunderous, almost overwhelming noise. Apparently, that scene was meant to evoke the feeling of being buried in an avalanche or the thrill of big-wave surfing.

Garden of Eden

We weren’t originally planning on visiting Iguazu Falls. But we found ourselves with a couple of extra days between the Galapagos and meeting our parents in Buenos Aires, and decided to crash their trip to Brazil. It was a good idea. I’ve only felt the way I did at this viewpoint in Iguazu Falls one other time, when I first visited the Zion Canyon. There, I understood how the first Mormons to arrive to that place, confronted with its beauty, could see no other possibility for such a design beyond a divine and inspired architect.

Between the dead and the living

Buenos Aires was a beautiful city, and one we didn’t spend enough time in. Palermo reminded us of the West Village while the avenues of Recoleta seemed like grander, wider versions of the ones we walked down in Barcelona. The lyrics “It’s a really old city / Stuck between the dead and the living,” which open a Sara Bareilles song, seem like they were written about the Cementerio de la Recoleta. The alleyways there could’ve just as easily been alleyways in the bustling old towns of San Sebastian or Girona.

Five o'clock somewhere

It’s hard to find anything to complain about when you find yourself in Argentinian wine country with your family, the snow-capped Andes far in the distance rising above the vineyards. We spent a day tasting our way through two wineries and a three-hour lunch in the late afternoon, before watching the sun set from our balcony terrace around a fire, experimenting with the flammability of peanut and pistachio shells.

Lazy days

We went horseback riding as the sun set on our last day in Mendoza. I rode on Lazy, who stopped to munch on vines every few minutes, giving me the chance to take in the mountains over the horizon and the dust kicked up by the others, floating in the golden hour light. That night, we played drinking games with the parents, a haze of good times punctuated by Jack in a Santa hat, a contest to identify the most Chinese characters, and a group hug to end the night.