Heya KJ... don't get stuck at GIG, Rio's international airport, unless you are able to enjoy the luxuries of the Admiral's Club - yikes, what an ugly and old terminal, not to mention that just about everything is closed and super-boring here. Well, time to update the blog. Maracana on Sunday wasn't nearly as impressive as I expected it to be like; yes, there were a few samba drums and dancing girls but nothing compared to the lunacy at a Boca Juniors game in Buenos Aires, if you ask me. The evening made up for it, though: The fabulous trio took a whole bunch of us out to Baronetti, the current hot spot of luxury night life in Ipanema - now *that* was an eye-candy palace, I must say! Too much cachaca, as always in Rio, so the return home at 6ish in the morning was kind of blurry, but what a tough life if you can relax all day at Poste 9 on Ipanema beach! The young, the rich, the beautiful - in short, the most impressive bikini catwalk you will ever get to witness in your life. Spent Monday doing some more touristy stuff and took the old rumbling bondinho street car from the city center to the Santa Teresa neighborhood. One more night out, and today I am back on my way to EZE - via SCL. Yeah... five days relaxing in the nightlife of Buenos Aires and at *home* before heading back into the snow of Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica.

Yowza KJ... summer time again!!! Have not been able to sleep much since my arrival here in Rio de Janeiro three days ago. San Francisco what!?!? I think *this* is the most beautiful city on earth... Cidade Maravilhosa as the carioca call it. Spent my daytime visiting the tourist stuff so far... Sugar Loaf at sunset, Christ Redeemer on top of the Corcovador (yes, I did take the rumbling cog train through the rain forest!), and beaches beaches beaches - I am staying right smack in the middle of the sand-and-surf action, in Copacabana, right on the beach. Drool drool drool... never seen so much dental floss separating thousands of nicely tanned and beach volleyball-tuned cheeks! Couldn't believe that Caipirinhas are cheapest at A Garota de Ipanema, the bar where Morais and Jobim wrote that famous song that started it all - made a few friends and got wonderfully wasted on prime-quality cachaca! Plenty of fresh and exotic fruit juices to pep you up the next morning here, whenever that is. I am back inside the tropic of capricorn and the climate tells... frigging humid here and 35/93 degrees here throughout the day, sunshine or not. Taking the overnighter to Florianopolis later today, back to Rio on Saturday - no way I will miss that football game at the Maracana stadium!

Hola Sr. Frog - back in Bs.As. tonight after a whirlwind tour of Patagonia this week. Flew into this outpost of civilization called El Calafate and immediately went on to a day trip to the Perito Moreno glacier. Holy fucking cow!!! I thought I had seen my glaciers back in Switzerland but this one is a way more impressive sight to watch - a 30 km long and 4 km wide advancing icefield continuously calving new icebergs from its 60 meters high front. The impact of the icebergs when hitting the lake water below cannot be described... what a roaring thunder, as if a mortar shell hits the ground and explodes! Wait until you see those pictures... Next day for 5 hours over the infamous gravel and pothole-infested Route 40 to an even tinier outpost of human settlements, El Chalten: Self-declared trekking capital of Argentina and (they think) the world. Got my workout during a 7-hour hike to and back from Cerro Fitz Roy the next morning, one of those picturesque mountain ranges that are a Garden Eden for postcard sales people. Same evening back the afore-mentioned 5-hour ride to El Calafate, only to immediately get up again at 5am (!!!) to go for another 5 hours over dirt roads in a Land Rover to Chile and its fabulous national park Torres del Paine. Here came my next boink, boink, boink moment: You should see the herds of guanacos running around all over ther roads! Yes, I do have pictures, and I even caught a grey fox fletching his teeth at me only 2 meters away! Not to mention all these funny-looking newborn lambs - just too funny how their tails dangle when these poodle-looking creatures run for cover... More Kodak moments in the park: Wonderful trekking, huge waterfalls, another glacier field with icebergs on a seasonal beach, just simply amazing nature everywhere. And I even got to see my first two condors in the wild!!! Enough of the cold trekking world for now... tomorrow its Brazil... samba, Rio de Janeiro, beaches, Florianopolis, and just being lazy for 10 days!

More from Rapa Nui - what a wonderful experience... after two days you can recognize almost every face you see on the street and today, after five days here, almost every local waives a greeting of hola or iorana when I walk by. The first days seem to leave an impression of poverty around the island but the longer one stays the more amazed one will be how happy these people truly are... no worries here (Bush who?). The food doesn't have a lot of variation but what they do is yummy... especially the Ceviche, lemon-marinated raw tuna. After my dives yesterday I watched local fishermen prepare the fresh catch of the day at the pier - quite a bloody affair to separate a monstrous tuna from its head and stomach (yes, I do have pictures!). Speaking of diving here - huge coral reefs and an amazing variety of underwater landscape, some caves, and a few strange-looking fish. Oh yes, huge turtles!!! Amazing how these plump animals can look so graceful when swimming underwater. Back via SCL to EZE tomorrow, then immediately south to El Calafate on Sunday.

Today, an extremely happy Iorana Korua from Rapa Nui ("Hello everybody from Easter Island"). Christmas - or Easter, so to speak - came almost two months early for me this year... I have finally made it and can now proudly put the crown jewel of true globetrotters into my traveling resume: I arrived on Isla de Pascua, the most isolated and remote place on earth. Over 3700 kilometers from South America, over 4100 kilometers from Tahiti - nowhere on this planet is one further away from populated areas, including the polar regions. The nearest island is even tinier Pitcairn, about 1700 kilometers to the west, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame - the paradise where Fletcher Christian and his men found refuge (it is not permanently populated these days). Getting here is an adventure in itself, a challenge of luck and one's wallet. LanChile's 11-hour Santiago-to-Papeete/Tahiti flight makes a stopover here once or twice a week, depending on the season - being able to actually make a reservation is a different story, as discount fares, RTW seats or mileage award spots are virtually unavailable. From brightest sunshine and sweltering heat to torrential rainfalls - my first day had it all. Went on a hike to stand next to some of the famous moai, huge sculptures carved out of a volcano mountain's side and mysteriously transported by the Long Ears and Short Ears to their ceremonial ahu sites. Sunset coloring these monoliths was amazing, with the tropic clouds constantly changing the shades of purple, yellow, blue and orange. Steering a 4x4 through red lava mud can be quite challenging but I never got stuck so far. Anakena beach and its Thor Heyerdahl moai today, then two days of scuba diving... woohoo!!!