Pascua Feliz!
Coyhaique, Chile

We´re not really sure if Jesus loves us, but Chile is certainly treating us well. After Margaret and Stephen left us for the Northern Hemisphere, we decided the best way to overcome our post-partum sadness was to rent a car and drive the wild roads of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia. We spent Good Friday bumping along Ruta 40, a ripio road that is Argentina´s dirt & gravel answer to US Route 66. After 10 hours of rattling our way through absolute and sublime desolation of desert scrub, rocky mesas, and signature Patagonian winds, we ended up eating cheese and peanuts for dinner (washed down with some grapefruit-flavored Tang), and sleeping by the side of the road--gloriously fulfilling our trip ambition of doing things that will be much more difficult when we´re older and infirm. Saturday, our brave little VW Golf brought us slowly but surely over the border into Chile, where we were astonished to see long expanses of pavement, tall green trees, and the glowy golden lights of cabins dotting the mountain roads. We woke up this lovely Pascua morning in hearty little Coyhaique, the scrappy capital of central Chilean Patagonia. The skies are cloudy-but-bright, and there are snow-capped Andes on the horizon. Soon we´ll get back on the road, headed down the mythical Carretera Austral--Chile´s wild southern road (paved for at least a little ways)that runs until the glaciers and ocean cut it off.

We´re hoping to be back in Argentina on Wednesday night, and then we´ll go down to Puerto Natales (the southern tip of Chile) to catch a boat that navigates the fjords and glaciers of southwestern Chile for 3 days to bring us back north to Puerto Montt--a 15-hour bus ride south of Santiago.

It´s amazing to see so many fall colors in April. We really are in the Southern Hemisphere. Orion looks upside down in the night sky. The moon is waxing and waning from the opposite directions. I haven´t noticed that the toilet flushes the other way, though. And we have yet to figure out which of the kite-shaped constellations is the Southern Cross...

p.s. Interesting language experiment with "Pascua Feliz" -- if you put "Happy Easter" into Babelfish, and translate from English to Spanish, you get "Pascua Feliz." But if you put in "Pascua Feliz" and translate from Spanish to English, you get "Happy Passover." Language and religion are funny things. Happy Eastover!