Southern Hemisphere...

What a better way to start my blog quoting this email to a friend of mine...?

I am writing [...] from my hot, humid, green, lush (and now, this very instant, rainy) hometown. Christmas in the warm weather is an experience I had almost forgotten. Santa comes riding a motorcycle, not a slide, in this part of the world. Time slows down, you disconnect so quickly... Siesta time takes precedence over the hectic pace of Buenos Aires, or any other big city for that matter.

Instead, an afternoon by the pool, a walk at night at the Iguazu Falls, or an adventure tour in the rain forest, hanging with harnesses from trees, jumping over water, some pretty crazy stuff.

We drove from Buenos Aires to Iguazu--a 15-hour drive, with my brother, his girlfriend, and her dad. The drive into my province is spectacular, where the landscape suddenly changes as soon as you cross the border, and the flat becomes rolling hills, and the pale soil turns into bright red. And everything turns green, dark and intense. And the people, laid back, seem to belong to a different time. On the highway, a ñandu (an ostrich-like bird) crosses the road, and then an iguana greets us into town.

Life's simple in this part of the world. We sit outside in the evenings, have some mate, and watch the sun set, by our little pool, with our dogs, and catch up on what happened in 2007...