As of today, we have been on the road for 500 days. That is 500 days of new locations, amazing sights, new foods, hotel rooms, mostly sunshine and good luck all around.

Day 500 is sort of like a birthday: crossing the threshold feels no different. Mostly it is surreal. It does not feel like it’s been that long. And as much as I know how lucky we are to have traveled for 500 days, somehow it feels… normal. I know that it shouldn’t be taken for granted, but I just don’t feel as excited or amazed by it than I should. Thankfully, I know the reasons why.

First, we are tired. I am tired. 500 days is a long time and I think that it was too long for me. I am no longer enjoying traveling as much as I used to, and it’s a shame. I am lacking energy and sightseeing is being kept to a minimum. We simply don’t do much anymore, and it’s affecting our perspective of cities and countries in a manner that I feel is undeserved. Yes, we are still having fun and yes, we are glad to be here – it’s just that now traveling is the norm and it doesn’t feel as special anymore.

Secondly, the end is now in sight. While we had planned and budgeted for 2 years on the road, we will be cutting our trip short. Why? Well, because we are tired. Furthermore, we had not expected South America to be so expensive. In fact, our money is running out. With this in mind, we have changed our travel plans to more realistic ones. Today, on our day 500, we have purchased our tickets back to Canada. We will be flying “home” in 75 days, on March 28th.

While we will be back in Canada, our trip will not be over yet. Indeed, we feel that our trip will actually be over once we have reached the city we will be making our home: Kelowna (explanatory blog post to follow). Our flight from South America is to Montreal, where we will catch up with family and friends. We also plan on doing a little sightseeing there, as well as organize our belongings that are currently stored in my dad’s basement. As of now, we do not know when we will be flying back to British Colombia to start settling down.

As you can see, today is a little bittersweet. We are enjoying a warm summer’s day and we love the freedom that travel affords us. Yet, we are tired and getting lazier by the day… We are looking forward to going back to Canada, but we are sad that the trip will be ending. We are not looking forward to facing real life and getting jobs. Yet, we have 75 days left of sunshine and warm weather, and knowing that these are our last 75 days will help us make the most of them.

So, what did we do today? Nothing much! I edited movies and photos, I booked our flight home, blogged and sent some emails. I did this overlooking the city of Posadas (and Paraguay, on the other side of the river) from the desk in our room. We had sunshine and heavy rain, and hanging out in our room felt nice. For dinner we went out to the corner bar, and were surprised with good food. It was a quiet day; it was a good day.

PS. Happy Friday the 13th!

For New Year Leslie took us to a dinner party at one of her friend’s house. They cooked a lechon over the parrilla (a whole pig on a BBQ) and we ate and drank outside. We had some good food (tongue salad) and some weird food (pound cake rolls filled with savory things like ham, cheese, chicken and avocado) but ultimately the star of the evening was the lechon. It was by far, hands down, the best one I’ve ever had. Yes, better than the one in Bali and better than the one in the Philippines. This proclamation might make some people angry, but I stand by it.

At midnight we poured sparkling wine and went to the 2nd floor’s terrace for a better view of the fireworks over the city. We all kissed and wished each other feliz año nuevo. It was a great night.

Our ferry destination was Colonia Del Sacramento, or simply, Colonia. Colonia, now an UNESCO city, makes a perfect day trip from Buenos Aires and is a prime travel destination for Argentines. We planned on staying longer though, much longer: to pass New Years in a lovely city, and later, into the rest of Uruguay to really explore the small country.

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After having just met up with three friends in Buenos Aires, we were blessed to meet yet another friend, this time in Uruguay. Leslie, who had once been Travis’ boss when he used to work on yachts, picked us up at the ferry terminal. Now in Uruguay for over 5 years, she owns a house and land just outside of the city. After dropping off our bags at the hostel, we got back into the car to go check out her house.

Her house, which is very modern, is quite stunning. It has huge windows, loads of light and catches the breeze. She has planted a small orchard and garden, and looking at it all, it reaffirmed our dreams of owning our own land and attempting to be self-sufficient as much as possible.

After a drink and a stroll, we headed back in town for dinner. Les brought us to a hopping pizza joint – within minutes of the doors opening for evening service the place was packed solid. We sat on the patio, overlooking the Rio de la Plata and watched the sun set over a perfect day.

On the menu for tomorrow: a walk around the old city, and then a move to the countryside!

First up was Viet-Tu and Gustavo. As you might recall, Viet-Tu is a friend and coworker of mine from Vancouver who married an Argentine, and they were here in the city over the holidays. We went for lunch and shared stories over pizza. Afterwards we hung out on the roof of our hostel, drinking beer. It was really lovely to catch up with friends from home!

For dinner we met up with Stewart, whom I had only met on a few occasions. Stew used to work with Travis back in Vancouver, and has been living in Buenos Aires for a while now. It was fun to meet up with him. We learned that he was now engaged (congrats!) and later that evening we got to meet the awesome bride-to-be. We drank wine and ate meat from the same parrilla we had visited the day before.

Guys, it was great hanging out with all of you!

The overnight bus ride turned out to be not too terrible for me, as I managed to sleep. It’s not good sleep, but at least it was sleep! Traffic into the city was pretty bad, and so we arrived an hour later. From there, it was a quick subway ride to our hostel – it’s always nice to show up somewhere you’ve been to before as you already know how to get around town.

Our hostel is quite nice. We are in the Jewish neighborhood, and the hostel is located inside an old building. It has courtyards and a nice rooftop terrace, as well as eclectic art around the place. It’s really a nice find.

At lunchtime we spied the hostel’s owner eating something tasty, and so we inquired about it. A few blocks from the hostel and we were at a tiny parrilla (for locals, not tourists) ordering choripán. It’s a really simple meal of chorizo sausage in a crusty bread with some chimichurri sauce, but boy is it ever tasty! We took our to go and ate it on the terrace of our hostel.

Leaving Bariloche the scenery was captivating: more of the typical Argentina Patagonian landscape mixed with odd rock formations and blue lakes. Everywhere we looked was covered in white ashes from the volcano, making it looked like it had just snowed. There were also many ash devils (like dirt devils, but with ash instead) dotting the landscape.

By the time dinner came around we were hungry and had a headache. Dinner on the bus was pretty good though, with an actual hot meal of chicken with mashed potatoes, salad and bread. They served us surprisingly decent wine (with refills) and then *sparking*. Sparkling! Clearly splurging for the “cama” bus (somewhat plushier and more reclining seats) was worth the extra pesos.

In the afternoon we Skyped with my family – 16 people in total! It was great to see people I hadn’t seen in forever and to feel even more in the spirit of the holidays. We listened to carols again, and watched a little TV. We didn’t do much, tired from yesterday and wanting to keep our energy for tomorrow’s 20+ hour bus ride into Buenos Aires.

With tonight being our last night in town, it was time to clean the fridge. As such, we had quite the unorthodox Christmas dinner: burgers. It was quite the feast though: Travis made two kinds of burgers (ham with Gouda – cremosa with grilled green onions) and served it with roasted vegetables leftovers. To top it off: sparking wine and The Family Stone. It was great!

Merry Christmas everyone! Here is one of my favourite Christmas song, just for fun

Even though Argentina doesn’t really celebrate Christmas we did notice two traditions. First, everyone at the grocery store was buying lamb. Not just a leg, like we did, or cute little chops: no, they were buying whole lambs. They had freezers full of whole lambs and everyone had one poking out of their grocery cart. What a great idea, lamb is way better than turkey anyway!

The second tradition is something we learned a few minutes before midnight. The whole city erupted in fireworks and firecrackers, and it went on for about 45 minutes. Sadly it was the small kind of fireworks and they were mostly all hidden from view, but it was still loads of fun. I love fireworks! Sadly the fireworks were followed by some heavy partying, and so neighbours kept us up ’till the wee hours of the morning. At least I was glad to find out that in the end, Argentina does celebrate Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and other holiday greetings to all of our readers! Thank you so much for visiting the blog and reading about all of the places we have visited thus far on our long, long vacation. And thank you for your comments, they make me smile and encourage me to blog more.

We are spending Christmas in Bariloche (Argentina) and New Year in Colonia (Uruguay). Thus far Argentina hasn’t been very Christmasy – there are hardly any decorations, no trees or Santas around, and barely any holiday music playing in the stores. It is very surprising to us, as we thought that a Christian country would be more into the holidays than communist Vietnam (where we spent Christmas last year). Who would have known!

Today our view from our apartment is stunning: blue sky, no wind. Pure flat water, and even some fresh snow on the mountains. We are listening to holiday music and tomorrow we will watch some holiday movies while cooking our Christmas Eve dinner. Even though the country isn’t into the holidays, hopefully we’ll managed to make each other feel like Christmas!