Honeymoonin’

When I first started this blog, I began writing about all of the places I had traveled. It then took a turn and became mostly about either Disney or where I was currently traveling. Well, there is no current travel going on, and I realized after the last post about getting outside that I missed writing. And I got an angel babysitter so I have some time for me. So I have decided to live vicariously through my old photos and start writing again.

I actually just opened Google Maps to look at the world and see where I wanted to touch upon next. I came up with two options – my Birthright trip to Israel followed by a family cruise through Egypt, or my honeymoon to Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Then I remembered that the two main goals of birthright trips are to a – convince you to move to Israel and b – ensure that you don’t go out drinking since you’re under age in the US but not in Israel. They do this by allowing about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and packing every minute of every day with activities. Therefore, I remember nothing about this trip, except that almost everyone fell asleep while we were watching a Holocaust survivor speak. Great job birthright. Also, let’s be honest, I write my posts based off of the itineraries I have in my email from Brian, not my faulty memory, and he did not participate in Birthright, so let’s talk about the honeymoon. (FYI he did not participate in this either but he fully planned it.)

We got married in July because, once upon a time, I was a teacher (ha!), but we also really wanted to ski on our honeymoon. Skiing in July left two options: New Zealand or South America. We had already been to New Zealand (read about that here and here) together so we went with South America. (HAHAH JK we made like 6 itineraries for Europe and Japan too before actually settling on South America). Anyway no one cares, let’s get to the point.

We began our trip at the Rosewood Mayakoba in Mexico. It was beautiful, amazing, and relaxing with some seriously delicious food. But we were in Mexico, relaxing by the pool or beach. This makes for beautiful pictures but not super interesting material.

We did a few things, so here are the beautiful pictures from them:

We toured the Mayan ruins at Tulum, followed by cave swimming and snorkeling (which I did by myself because snakes, of course).

This was in the middle of our stops. I just really thought these grocery carts were amazing.

We swam with dolphins. I do not have pictures and this is my biggest regret. I was annoyed that they were like $150 so I didn’t buy them. Now I want them so badly.

We did an ATV tour with some swimming in the middle, and got this photo op at the same spot that a Corona ad was photographed. The beer, not the virus. There was also some swimming on the ATV tour.

That’s just some dust on my glasses from the ATV.

We rode some bikes and did some Spa-ing.

We rode this little river boat and which took us on a tour of some of the other beautiful Mayakoba hotels.

We did a very limited amount of water sports because, similar to Eric’s fear of snakes, my fear of boats is extremely limiting in these circumstances. But just look how cool this is. I couldn’t pass it up even if it meant getting on a jetski.

And of course we did some regular old fashioned relaxing, eating, and drinking, as one should do at a beautiful resort in Mexico on a honeymoon.

And just for fun, here we are having really bad pizza for breakfast at the airport on our way to Chile.

So after our week of relaxation (BTW for those of you considering a part relaxing part action honeymoon, I highly recommend starting with relaxation. After the hype of the wedding weekend we just wanted to do nothing), we headed down to Santiago.

Our first day in Santiago was wine tour day. This was truly amazing. OF COURSE, since Brian planned the wine tour, we had been signed up for the highest level tasting at each location, which basically just means more wine. And also some cheese and chocolate. Chilean wine is excellent, and I have to admit that even though I am a red drinker we really loved and preferred the Chilean whites.

I guess I got cold. Check out those mismatched prints before mismatched prints were even cool. Are they cool?

The next day we did a half day city tour of Santiago and some exploring on our own. TBH I have absolutely no memory of this day, this is just what the itinerary and pictures say. Santiago obviously was not that interesting, and if I remember correctly the only reason we went there at all was to have some wine country time. After looking back at my pictures, I remembered that our tour also included a train ride up to the highest point in the city which provided us with beautiful views. So that was cool.

Same sweater, different mismatched prints. I guess this was my jacket for this mild weathered part of the trip.

That night we had dinner at Borago, an incredible tasting meal and experience and at the time the #1 restaurant in all of Chile (I have no idea if this is still true, it’s probably googleable). Eric still has nightmares about what he calls the “raw horse meat” that was ground in front of us at the table, but this meal was actually fascinating and delicious with some of the best presentation I’ve ever seen. And the chef was from, like, Ohio or something so she came out and translated some stuff for us. We were basically VIP.

Here’s the meat grinder with said horse meat. (I actually do think it was some sort of baby South American horse.)

The next day it was time to head out on the “ski” portion of our trip at Bariloche in Argentina. This was the leg of the trip that we were most looking forward to and the part that we basically planned all of the rest around. We REALLY wanted to ski on our honeymoon and wow, what a failure that was.

It all started the next day, our first “ski” day, when we went to buy 4 day lift tickets and ski and boot rentals. The concierge at the hotel recommended that we hold off on that and just do a one day pass just in case the weather wasn’t good enough for skiing. I am forever grateful for this guy.

When you ski in Colorado (our usual ski spot) the weather “not being good enough” means it’s too cold or there is a blizzard or something else naturally ski and snow related. Apparently in Argentina, this means rain and/or wind. And by wind I mean wind strong enough to close the lift down. (I haven’t done much East Coast skiing in my life, but I imagine some of this might happen here too.) I can say with confidence that this first ski day was the worst ski day of my entire life, and I’ve done a lot of blizzard skiing.

We started by renting our skis and boots and carrying all of this stuff down the world’s largest metal staircase to get to the base of the mountain. Please note: rental boots are incredibly painful and uncomfortable. 10/10 do not recommend.

And by “we carried” I mean “Eric carried” my skis and I took his poles.

Here we are, blissfully unaware of what we are about to experience.

Our first run was broken up by little bits of skiing and little bits of me sitting on the mountain crying out in pain. The bottom of this “ski” run was pretty much melted, and we were skiing over mud and rocks.

We decided to give it one more try. I loosened my boots a bit to make them more comfortable and we got back on the lift “line”. There is no order to lift lines in South America. It is just a mess of skis and snowboards rolling over each other and people pushing each other out of the way to be the next one on the lift. It was all very overwhelming and certainly not COVID friendly. I wonder if these mountains implemented some new lift line policies this past summer.

Also not a high percentage of helmets back there.

We finally made our way to the lift and began the ride up. Just as we were approaching the top of the mountain the wind picked up. And I mean REALLY picked up. It felt like our chair was going to flip over or fly off the wire. Apparently this is the type of wind that our concierge was telling us about that could close down lifts. Because it closed down the lift. While we were on it. You read that right. The lift shut down due to wind while we were still sitting on it. Thankfully this only lasted a few minutes but let me tell you, it was a few very long minutes of wondering if we’d make it off this lift or get blown away still in the chair.

Finally, we were off the lift, but the wind was still there. Skiing in this type of wind is really cool. JK it’s awful. At this point we were just focused on getting to the bottom so we could get out of these boots and go back to the hotel. But not before we got this picture to make it look like we had the most amazing honeymoon ski day of our lives, helmet veil and all.

I want to point out that we did not go to one of the well known Patagonia ski resorts that most travel agents would recommend. All of these resorts had one week minimum stays, and we wanted our week in Mexico and a few days in wine country to go along with our two week honeymoon. Looking back, maybe we should have done a 4 day Mexico and week long ski thing, but it’s fine. The skiing was awful and after the awful skiing it rained for four days, BUT, this stop was still probably the highlight of our trip and I am dying to go back again. And here’s why.

First of all Bariloche is absolutely beautiful. I’ve been to a lot of places, and this is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen (see also: New Zealand South Island). Even in the rain, the views from our window were stunning.

This is weird but I think these chandelier reflections are kind of cool, and also proof that we were stuck inside.

Other than the view, there was plenty to enjoy even with bad weather and no skiing. One of the highlights was our dinner at a restaurant called El Refugio, that could only be accessed by “moto ski”, or as we would say in the US, snowmobile. I don’t remember the food, which was fondue, being particularly good, but the experience was definitely memorable. It started at the check in area with some charcuterie and snacks, followed by a 4×4 ride up the mountain. I cannot speak to the safety rating on this part of the adventure as we climbed the “road” that was almost too narrow for our vehicle, and felt like we might roll over the side of the mountain, but I am here to tell the tale. The 4×4’s dropped us off at our snowmobile which we would then ride the rest of the way to the restaurant. After 20 something years of visiting Colorado every winter, I am fairly certain that I had only been on a snowmobile once before, and it definitely wasn’t at night in Argentina.

Here’s where things got a little crazy. The entire dinner was a package, meaning that the 4×4, the snowmobile, and the dinner were all a set price. This package came with unlimited wine and beer. Let me say that again. Unlimited wine and beer. Not so crazy for a normal set price dinner. Super crazy if you consider that our ride home was our self operated snowmobile down a mountain at night.

Like, what?

Okay we made it back safely but it was very clear that we were not in the US anymore.

Anyway, the rest of our stay in Bariloche was wet. Very very rainy wet. Not snowy. Rainy. Not ideal for a ski resort in the middle of their “winter”, but whatever. We were staying at a beautiful resort with beautiful views and we had an amazing time anyway.

A moment of sunshine the day we were leaving 😦

We did some stuff we never would’ve done if all of our time was spent skiing.

We got a couples massage and facial.

I convinced Eric to take his first pilates reformer class.

We took a painting class.

The scene behind us was the inspiration for our paintings. Can you tell?

And most importantly, we ate so much heavy South American delicious food and drank so much delicious South American wine that by the time we went home all we wanted was lettuce.