Getting ready for South and Central America

Almost there.... after shoveling about a foot of fresh snow here in Chicago this morning we are doing the last preparations for our journey. The last few weeks have been busy trying to get everything in order to just be able to leave for 6 months to South and Central America. We are leaving on Saturday morning (hopefully they dug out O'Hare airport properly at that time)

We were even able to setup Oliver's job in Switzerland and we can go all relaxed knowing that a position is waiting for him on September 1.

The bags are (almost) packed and ready to go:


The approximate itinerary is laid-out below and is somewhat flexible. The only fixed milestone so far is that on May 14th we start on the Inca Trail to Macchu Pichu in Peru as well as our flight back to Chicago on August 13th from Belize.

1. Venezuela (Carnival in Carupano, Orinoco Delta, Angel Falls)
2. Brazil (the Amazon, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Costa Verde, Iguaçu Falls)
3. Argentina (Buenos Aires, Torres del Paine, Mt Fitz Roy, Perito Moreno Glacier, Bariloche, Mendoza)
4. Chile (Santiago)
5. Bolivia (La Paz, PN Madidi)
6. Peru (Lake Titicaca, Colca Canyon, Machu Picchu, Manu Reserve, Cordillera Blanca)
7. Eventually Ecuador or Colombia
8. Panama
9. Costa Rica
10. Guatemala
11. Belize

I tried to layout our route on http://www.maps.live.com but somehow could not get it to work on the blogspot site. Google's map are pretty crappy for some Latin America countries (especially Argentina is blank), so if you like to check out the route in more detail visit the maps.live com link above.

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