Chicago Again
And so trip has come full circle. We arrived back in Chicago 14 months after using the city as our departure point for our Latin American adventure, this time to see my sister, her husband, one niece who I knew and another who I was meeting for the first time. It was a very cold visit; Chicago in December is no joke. But it was also a fruitful one. We spent a lot of fun time with the family, and also some fun time exploring the city.
A little Catching Up…
It has been a while since we last posted an update here... I suppose that the gradual transition to a normal life on our way through the US has made us a bit, shall we say, soft. Well, that is done now, and we will soon be transitioning this blog from our travels and adventures to the more pedestrian issues of job hunting, apartment moving and getting fat again. But in the mean time, we have nevertheless amassed a couple of experiences to write about, so here is the first of our catch-up posts: Denver!
Paradise Lost…
As we are slowly getting to the closing chapters of our southern adventure, we though it wouldn´t be quite fair to our readers to finish the story off on the beach in the sun, with us living happily ever after. So here is the true, unabridged and inglorious story of Matt and Venla's last couple of days in Latin America, as they travel from their paradise island to the harsh realities of Masaya and Managua.
Finally Moving on to Chile
We finally did it. The entire goal of this trip was to go to South America, with a quick stop in Central America and Mexico on the way. That was pretty naïve: there is just too much to see and do in that part of the world. So, five months later, we celebrated finally getting to our goal as we stepped on a plane out of Mexico City: we were going to sip wine in Chile.
Arrived in Chicago
We had a great time in Chicago over the last couple of days. That is one gigantic city, I must say. It's not New York, but it is still impressive. We saw my sister, her husband and my beautiful niece for the first time in about a year, which by itself made the trip worth it. That is a good thing, because we didn't do much else besides go to the zoo (which was also greatly improved because we went with the family). Anyway, we got a couple of really nice pictures of the family, check out the gallery!
Halloween Gorilla Run
No pumpkin carving or trick-or-treating for us this year... but one giant costume party!
Matt, his dad and I were 3 of the 1061 gorillas who took over the streets of downtown for the Denver Gorilla Run on October 31. We signed up to run the 3.5 miles (5.6 km) thinking it should be pretty easy, but it turns out that even a relatively short run can get you out of breath and make you sweat buckets if you are a gorilla - or even if you are just wearing a furry full-body suit with a plastic mask and trying to run at an altitude of 5200 feet (1600m)!
Bergen Park, Colorado
After the sun melted the 1st snow of the season in the Denver plains, we headed to the mountains for a little day hike. Reasonably small mountains, of course, just behind the foothills west of the city, and nothing but a leisurely 6 mile (10 km) stroll. We didn't want to get too crazy for our first day out...
Centennial, Colorado
Before heading out on our great Latin American adventure, we are recharging our batteries at Matt's parents' in friendly Centennial, Colorado. This is suburbia-land as it should be: big houses, strip malls, monster SUVs on wide roads, and a church or a Starbucks on every corner. The perfect place to eat too much good food, drink too much tea/coffee, watch too much tv, and get into too many political discussions about health care reform, spooky socialism, crazy religious people, store boycotts, "the Economy" and other favorites.