I received the best birthday gift this year – my parents.

They flew in to Santiago on my birthday. It was a bit of a nerve racking wait. They were stopped by the agriculture department for two apples that Mom had forgotten she had her in bag. Dad almost swore that they were originally from Chile, but that didn’t matter.

We had a good few days in Santiago, which was good since one of their pieces of luggage did not make it until the next day. We visited Plaza de Armas, Cerro Santa Lucía, Cerro San Cristobal, Mercado Central, and ate our way through the city. They also had the delight of riding on Transantiago, the public transportation system of bus and metro lines.

Santiago was good but southern Chile was excellent. More on that soon.

It’s always good to spend a bit of time with old friends and experience a bit of their lives. I had the chance to do that with the Blumes. I spent four days in Porto Alegre between Santiago and Rio with them. My time included new friends as well and I’m not really going to continue talking about it because Kevin did us all a favor and wrote about my time there.

Here’s a bit:

We don’t stop much in our day to day lives. We told Garrett to jump in wherever he wanted to as well as just stay home and chill when he needed to do that. We told him he could stay with us as long as he wanted. His two night stay turned into a 4 night stay… Continue reading at The Blumes in Brasil.

More photos on flickr from Machu Picchu. I will blog soon. Sorry for the wait.