I don't know where to begin... we had such a beautiful trip in Chile.

We started almost two weeks ago in the Valle the Colchagua, one of the major wine areas of Chile, we rented a car and stayed in the Santa Cruz Plaza hotel. From there we made a couple of tours around the area where we did a horseback ride through a vineyard (together with the Chilean champion jumping), went canoeing in the river while watching the black swans, we tasted a lot of wines, had too much food but enjoyed it a whole lot!! Luggage was filled up with bottles of wine...

Then we flew up north to the Atacama desert (http://www.tierraatacama.com/); a completely different scenery, but oh so beautiful. Sometimes it looked like the moon, then it changed into a kind of Death Valley and we also floated in a salt lake (like the Death Sea). In the meanwhile, we got up at 4.30 am to go and see the geysers of the El Tatio vulcano. On our way back to San Pedro de Atacama, we saw wildlife, we visited a very small village where we gotta taste llama meat! What an experience!

Then off to Santiago de Chile for a nice stroll around the city, a climb to the top of Cerro San Cristobal (by bike) and a business diner...

And now we're back in rainy São Paulo, quite a change...

And already planning our next trip... (you need something to look forward to, don't you?).

What will your next trip be?

Have a nice weekend!

Time to say goodbye!
We'll be off to visit Chile: the vineyards (Valle de Colchagua), San Pedro de Atacama ánd Santaigo.



We'll be back in about 2 weeks!
Love, C.

Blue sky, bright sunshine, a couple of friends, coffee & cake, what else do you need for a happy feeling?

I missed them during the Christmas holidays and although the holidays aren't over yet, I invited them for a coffee at my house.

We had a wonderful, cozy time together, with lots of laughs!

It's always a nice treat to be with the girls...

A new year, time for new colours in the garden.

Not yet finished, but I'd like to give you a glimpse...

I'm off to do some more painting... Have a great weekend!

Forgot to tell you, meaning to write a post about it when it happened...

We had a hail storm at Christmas Eve... Can you imagine, a hail storm in São Paulo in the middle of summer??

And it was pretty scary. We had big palm tree leaves in the garden, my plants and flowers were all damaged, the swimming pool was pitch black... But it looked like we were lucky... the next day (Christmas Day) we walked through our neighbourhood and saw that the streets were full of fallen trees, sometimse you saw trees that had fallen down from behind a garden wall and the wall collapsed too of course.

We still had elecricity, but the main part of the city celebrated Christmas Eve with only candle light, quite romantic (and electricity back only by the end of Christmas Day) .

It all seems to be a result of the climate changes, unfortunately. We really should be more careful with our planet, don't you think?

It's 2009!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years Eve, sure we did (still recovering...)!
A tropical night (kids in the pool until 2.30 am) with champagne ánd 'oliebollen' (a typical Dutch sweet, fried ball of dough, with or without raisins, or apple, or...).

And this is how our breakfast table looked this morning.

Wishing you all a happy 2009, full of joy, sunshine and new challenges!

Love, C.