" I got the South American Porcelain Blues"

Yup...as many of you guessed, it was only a matter of time before meryl or myself would be praying to the porcelain gods of "Southie".
Puerto Varas is an awesome place to visit. However my innards have spent more time perculating and bubbling inside the bathroom walls of Casa Margouya hostel than i would prefer. The sun is shining and the sandy beach becons...but still the churnning produces sounds that would deafen the stethascoped ear...
We have tums...no help
We have rolaids..no help
We have Pepto Bismol...no help
We have immodium...we'll see...
Meryl finally had to explain to the cute gals working at the hostel that "no, the door is not accidentally locked. And, yes, my boyfriend is not feeling well...And no,it is not necessary to open the locked door with the key to make sure..."
Tomorrow we depart to take a 4 day, 3 night ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. I hope they do not charge $ for bathrooms use like in Santiago or Peru because i would be in debt up to my eyeballs.

The weels go turning... round and round

Hello Chile!

So far Chile is Awesome! After 2 days of traveling and 2 interesting and unrestfull bus rides we have arrived in Puerto Varas. Apparently is has been raining here for the past 5 months and the bad weather has only recently let up (about 10 days ago) but you would never know that because right now there isnt a clound in the sky and its about 85deg, and this town is amazing!

We crossed the Chilean-Argintine boarder 2 nights ago at 5am, after waiting for 4 and a half hours in line (rediculous)at customs. We got to Santiago arround 8 am, I had a hard time waking up to get off the bus. We had the day to spend in Santiago because our next bus to Puerto Varas didn't leave until 9pm. We navigated the Metro to find a future hostel that we will be staying at, so that we could drop off some of our climbing lugage that we will not be needing further south. When we emerged from the Saint Isabel metro station, we realized our directions werent very good, but we were quickly assisted by a very nice man wearing stilts (haha). He wound up sending us in the wrong direction, but he was very nice in his attempt to get us going. After our luggage drop we ate breakfast wandered through some parks and ventured to the Santigo Zoo. We saw hippos and tigers, lots of exotic birds, a baddger and some friendly goats. Afterward we found agreat place for lunch, where Forrest insatiable hunger, had us ordering plate after plate of amazing food for hours. We decided to go for the cheap seats on the bus to Puerto Varas because we are splurging on our ferry boat trip... this turned out to be a bad idea. We had lots of screaming babies on our bus (the ride was 12 hours long) and we were on the top floor (most of the busses here are doubble decker) in the back. About 2 hours into it, they shut all of the curtins on the bus so people could sleep, but with the lack of viewing of what was moving past me, I got horribly motion sick and wound up throwing up all night.

All is good now, however. We had an amazing breakfast this morning and just spent the afternoon on the beach overlooking the Osorno Volcaino, swimming and lounging in the sun... We are happy to be in the and of Lakes and Vocainos!

Farewell Mendoza!

Forrest and I are leaving Mendoza in about 2 hours... by bus. We are headed to Santiago Chile, where we will deposit some of our luggage (we have a lot) before heading off to Puerto Varas. We will spend 2 days in Puerto Varas before embarking on a sea voyage. We are taking a ferry to Puerto Natales and then we will begin working our way up through Patagonia.

We didn't quite reach the top of Aconcagua but we got pretty close, within about 3 hours of the Summit. We turned arround because I experinced a bad headace and dizzyness. Overall we were quite pleased with what we acheved because the weather for the 2 weeks that we were there was pretty bad, and Aconcagua is really high. The mountains have recieved an unseasonable ammount of snow recently and the winds have been quite intense...

Our first night during the walk in at camp Confluencia we endured a fairly intense dust storm which ripped away and destroyed about 7 tents. Fortunatly during the huge wind burst we were sitting in our tent making dinner, so it didnt blow away, but as a result we had quite a sanday meal. The following day we hiked to base camp "plaza de mulas" which is an interesting place... There were a ton of people there when we arrived and it give off the atmosphere of a very bizzare party. They have an art gallery and bars, and people were having dance partys in cook tents until the wee hours of the morning.
From base camp we slowly began our journey upward, trying to time it so we would be aclimitized for the "ventana" of the 9-12 (the 12 would have been our first possible summit day if we followed our schedule and aclimitized with no problems) that all of the weather people were predicting. Well I had problems... at Nido de Condores camp II started having bad headaces, (the camp is at 18,200 feet). We wound up spending 2 extra days there in hopes that my body would adjust better. It did and it was good that we were unable to attempt the summit on the 12th because the wind that day was really bad and a huge lenticular cloud loomed our the summit all day. We headed up to Berlin, the high camp, on the 14th (we saw a glider plane flying at 20,000ft past our camp) and after an unrestfull and chilly sleep around 19,300ft we headed for the summit. After about 5 hours and mid-way through the traverse (aprox 6,500m- 400m or so below the summit) we turned arround, because I felt like "ass". In the following days we witnessed helicopter evacuations and people who were unble to walk out on their own, so we were pleased with our decision.

We have spent that last few days recuperating... aka driking wine (and i have been napping a lot!). We went on bicycle wine tour which was awesome, and rediculous. We drank some excelent wine (too much) and ate an amazing lunch. We have been eating lot of Argintine BBQ, which is good but we are a bit tired of meat, they dont eat a lot of veggies here. It is also "Federal Week" here so there is a huge concert and festival in the Park every night, which has been fun.

No we are off to Chile... to eat seafood and drink more wine... and see amazing places. I hope all is well in the states, we are missing Biga Pizza and good bread, but we cant complain to much.

Return from the Mountain

Lenticular cloud above the summit-high winds, unstable weather

Base Camp: Plaza de Mulas

8.5 hour hike through the Horcones Valley to Base Camp

Aconcagua in background

Hello all-

Meryl and I have safely returned from our long long expedition from Aconcagua! We did not summit but we did reach about 400 meters (1800 feet) from the top. We are happy to have both broken our height records. On our summit day we climbed to over 6,400 meters (~21,100 feet).

Here is a rough breakdown of our numbers: We spent a total of 14 days in the park. We slept at 18,000 feet for 5 days at a camp called Nido de Condores. The highest camp we slept at was called Berlin at 5930 meters.

Aconcagua base camp is called Plaza de Mulas, is located at 14,000 feet and is the 2nd largest base camp in the world behind Everest's.

We witnessed a number of helicopter evac's and were told of a handful of cases of HACE and HAPE.

As the crazy wind ripped through our tent every night we dreamed of steaks and warm weather in Mendoza, our favorite restaurants in Missoula and a hot shower....after 14 days it looked as if i put a jar of grease in my hair...i could sculpt a mohawk in a few seconds.

For all the marbles...

Hey yall-

Tomorrow morning at 6am we depart for Aconcagua! We are aiming for a total expedition of 14 days- but it could take up to 20. Today was spent buying food for 20 days...and gear which either was stolen or misplaced on our warm up climb of Cerro Plata (lame)...

Cerro Plata was fun... i got a little altitude sick at 14,000 feet and Meryl vomited because we ate some bad Quinoa (dont buy bulk quinoa in a 3rd world country...it may be full of sand and rocks). Meryl also sat on a cactus..the quill may or may not still be in her bum. At the 14,000 ft camp, Salto de Agua, a fox hung out and ate old food scraps and a hawk circled the camp catching updrafts.

The wind ripped through camp on our last night. It picked up the corners of the tent and we thought we may fly back to Mendoza in our yellow tent. Aconcagua should be just as windy or even more.

Tomorrow we take a bus to Penitentes where we meet with our mule driver, he will take some of our gear to Base camp at about 14,000 feet. It will take us two days to hike to base camp (Plaza de Mulas), we will have a rest day there, then hike gear up to the next camp, hike back down to Plaza de Mulas, sleep, wake up and move to the higher camp where we stashed gear. This process will continue for a few thousand more feet...then an intensive summit day.

We will keep you all informed of our success...or bad weather (its very snowy on the mt).

To our parents and family: we love you all and there is a helicopter for evacuations in case we stub a pinky toe...evacuations are free if you convince the doc at base camp that your toe hurts bad enough.

Wish us Luck!