Pucon - I was there at a very wrong time of the year, it was raining crazy, so I left for Santiago

I have no comment to make about Pucon as I saw a flooded town and nothing else, reminded me of some parts of Dhaka in the rainy season during my childhood in Bangladesh, honestly, I hated to be there. Anyway, I came up with an exit strategy with few others in our travel group and left Pucon two days earlier than scheduled and now I am in Santiago, Chile, so far love this city!

Porto Varaas - a nice but windy and rainy town when I was there

I did not do much in this town other than walking in the street of this small town and having meals and breakfast and snacks when needed. It would not be fair to comment much about the town, but my walk by the lake was quite nice. We went up to see the volcano but it was too rainy and misty, could barely see anything. The rainforest we went to was quite nice and pretty even if it was raining, the leaves of the trees were bright and colorful. BTW, I drank tap water from the hotel as I forgot to buy bottled water and was still fine, may be the pollution was not that bad in this town, well that is definitely something quite positive. I had my hot chocolate again and it was quite nice probably better than the ones in Bariloche but not as good as Colonia though.

Bariloche - Another beautiful town, the look and feel and the landscape has lots of similarity with Queenstown in South Island, New Zealand

I loved Queenstown and I almost cried to leave that town, I could possibly move to Australia just to be close to Queenstown. This town reminds me of Queenstown. We took the cable car ride up to the hill top and then the view of Patagonia was just absolutely stunning, I became wordless seeing the beauty, could not stop taking pictures but believe it or not, there was no way to capture that beauty through a camera lens. We also had a very good lunch at the rotating cafetaria on the top of the hill. It was such an amazing experience! I just loved it all. I watched the sun setting but it was freezing cold outside, still I took a lots of picture. I went for horse back riding the second day in Bariloche for almost all day long with few hours break for a BBQ lunch. I got soaked like a wet cloth in both halves of the day but still loved the ride and the natural beauty around the area, on the mountain top, saw a rainbow and some deer. It was a good re-cap of my riding skills after quite a few years!

Buenos Aires - Paris of South America

It is an amazingly beautiful city with rich architechture and history. One of the main street had 10 plus 7 = 17 lanes for two ways, such wide roads, I can´t remember seeing so wide roads back home in the US. The city offers a lot of places to visit and lots of activities. I was happy to be there 3 days but I could be there more days than that. Since I did not see all that the city offers, I will definitely come back here some time in the near future. I loved the neighbourhood called La Boca, you can see such colorful display of the houses and the shops and restaurants. You can see street tango and lots of interesting little shops with great art and handicraft items. I could not resist myself in buying few custom jewelry for myself and some amazing magnets, those were done by a local artist. I felt like going back there but had no more time. There were quite a few museums but went to see only one , the national fine art gallery at Recoleta, it was very nice, some of the works were really great and very beautiful, something I did not see before. I think I missed out in the modern decorative center and also the modern art museum of Latin America, also there were some beautiful botanical garner and few other places that I wished to go but had no time. Next time when I get to Buenos Aires, I am definitely seeing all of those and another great Tango show. Oh, BTW, I did go back to see another Tango show at Tortini, which is the national Tango institute in the country. The show was quite good but not comparable to the one we saw the nioght before. Did I tell you that I got some Tango lessons as well, and the guy who was teaching me made me look like a great dancer, belive it or not I do not know ¨T¨of Tango but he lead very well and I felt like a real dancer, wow! Did I mention my recent obsession of submarino, I started having this in Colonia but continued in Buenos Aires. It is basically hot chocolate but they only give you hot milk with a dark chocolate bar and you let the dark chocolate melt in the hot milk and keep starring, oh, it is so yummy!

Cute small colonial town - Colonia, a real gem and then Buenes Aires, the one place I have been looking forward since my planning of this trip

I loved this town, it has the beauty, the artistic essence and the sophistication. It is quite a touristy town but still drew my attention a lot. I bought some real cute stuff for gifts and decorating my apartment back home. I think Paraty in Brazil was quite nice as that was also colonial and artistic but this one was more classy and I would love to go back there in summer time and spend at least few more days and it is only 1.5 hours away from Buenes Aires, Argentina. Talking about Buenes Aires, I am in Buenes Aires now and guess, what, I experienced last night! A live tango show, it has been one of the most pleasant experiences of my life. If I believed in recurnation I would have loved to be born as a Tango dancer, oh, the passion is so intense and the dance expresses the emotions and the moods in a so vivid way, it was just wonderful and I have no word to express my feelings watching the dancers and the singers performing there. In fact, I may watch another show tonite, so will rush now to get back to the hotel for the next few days in Beunes Aires. This is a beautiful city and I feel quite at home, afterall, I can´t deny that I am a big city girl!

Foz Iguacu or Iguazu falls within Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay

This fall is one of the best natural attractins I have scene in many of my trips. The fall is so wide and so spread out in a huge area within Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. I went to both the Brazil and Argentine sides and both sides are beautiful. I liked the walk in Brazil side and enjoyed being under the falls in a boat ride in Argentine side. I wish I could spend fe w more days there but definitely it will be in the top 10 of my favorite list from my trip. I can´t explain in words as I am neither a poet nore a writer but it is awesome and fantastic. The rainbow on the fall made it even prettier. I have to attach some pictures later to explain the beauty although they won´t even capture 10% of the true beauty of the falls.

Paraty, a nice colonial town in Brazil

Paraty is a colonial town with cobble stone roads and nice pretty buildings. I really liked this town. I went to see the sunrise in the beach and finally got successful unlike other attempts I made to do the same in other places in Brazil. We went for a half day jeep tour through the country side near Paraty and saw several waterfalls, rainforests and churches, lots of interesting birds and trees/ plants. We also went to few wine distilleries and tasted liquor and wine. We crossed a swing bridge which was lots of fun. We saw mud houses, old wooden houses from 17th century and lots of items in an old museum. There were even dead snakes in the museum preserved in jars. I am not a coffee person but had one of the best coffee at one of these places near the museum and we had some sweetener made from sugarcane instead of processed sugar and it was so yummy. We went to a beautiful orchid place and I saw one of the most beautiful orchids in my entire life there. I have taken so many beautiful photos of trees, plants, nature, falls, fruits in the trees, flowers in the nature, greens etc.!

We were five of us- Diana(Toronto, Canada), Leah(BC, Canada), Dionne (London, UK), Mayra(Quito, Ecuador) and myself(New York, USA). There was one couple from the south of England and another one from Portugal. It was a very lovely trip and we had number of bumps to cross, but we all had so much fun, it was totally worth of the time and money we all spent in this tour. We had lunch in a very pretty place although my salad was not filling in particular, but was well presented and tasted good. Finally, we had our last dinner in Paraty in a Thai food place. It was so good that I would say, this was one of the best Thai food I ever had. I bought some coconut sweets from one of the places we visited, it was so delicious that it tasted exactly how my late grandma used to make it. Well, I am tired, so I will go to sleep now, will have more coming up in the next update. My next destination is Iguazu falls which is shared by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. We will stay on the Brazilian side but will visit the other sides as well. A long journey to Iguazu falls is waiting for us tomorrow all day. We are going through Sao Paolo but wo~´t stay there more than few hours. Until I get to the internet again.............

Illha Grande, what a lovely Island!

My trip continued to further south of Brazil and came to an island named Illha Grande. It is an amazingly beautiful place to be, has a look of those islands you see only in movies but this is not plastic at all, in fact it is so real anyone who has an eye for nature would simply love it. The boat ride we had to get to the island was a very pleasant and beautiful one, the natural beauty around is spectacular. It falls within Rio de Janeiro Region in Brazil and a very special one. We had some lovely dining at a buffet place which was quite cheap but was great. The place we stayed was very artistic and had a bungalow kind of look. I met 6 to-be-practicing doctors from London and they were very nice, all had some Asian background/ ethnicity and are very successful young people. We had few incidents among some of the people in the tour but all came to normal at the end. We had a boat party for almost entire day, the food was so good and we had so much fun! I made quite a few new friends. I took another mini attempt to see the sunrise this morning but was not motivated enough so, I missed it again and went back to sleep after being awake this morning. We had a boat ride and a bus ride to go to our next destination, named Paraty. I am writing from Paraty now, it is a beautiful colonial city with cobble stone and brick roads, gives muscle exercise to the ankle and feet. We are doing a 6 hrs jeep tour tomorrow, so will write more later. BTW, will try to see the sunrise again tomorrow.