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.
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