Quick Update

Presently I am on Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua)! The internet here is really slow... i think it is a dialup connection... But I thought I should give everyone a brief update.

Forrest headed back home to the states on the 17th :( and I flew to E. Island, thanks to some very nice frequent flyer miles. I am spending about 10 days on the Island, which is almost 2x as many days as most. It is absolutly amazing here!!!!!
I took about 500 pictures in 2 days, thats more photos than I took in the first 2 months. The island is also really expensive, a beach towel cost 40-60 dollars! yikes!
So far I have toured the island, visited both parks, spent a day on a pink sand beach, I went fishing (not what I was expecting, it invoved a net and a snorkel instead of a pole), I went snorkeling, I learned how to make ceviche, I have eaten so many different kinds of fish that I have lost count, I have seen 20+ sea turtles and much more.
The internet is too slow to uplead photos, but I will pst many when I return to ¨the mainland¨!

Meryl

Fox Video

Santiago, Chile...My last day in Southie

Julia, Meryl, Jose, Forrest after all you can eat meat buffett!!!

The end of highway 3, Tierra del Fuego

Cooking breakfast in Tierra del Fuego

Hostel cooking doen't have to be hotdogs and sandwiches...Linguine with calamari and clams in a whitewine, butter sauce with Zucchini and a delicious Sauvignon Blanc!

Candid Meryl

Candid Forrest "wahh! my backpack is heavy!"

Meryl and I are back in Santiago after being at the end of the Americas, Ushuaia, Argentina. We flew in last night and the airport is still in shambles. We got off the plane using an old-school metal staircase and walked through a maze of fences and tents. We never were allowed to enter the airport, apparently the ceilings have collapsed and it is a mess. We grabbed our baggage from the tarmac and caught a shuttle to our hostel. The city looks pretty normal and everybody goes about their day as if no earthquake happened. Everybody says the city was very well prepared and we only saw a small number of buildings that were cracked or damaged with rubble near them.

In Ushuaia we camped at Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego...in the rain. We barely got out of the tent due to the weather which means we ate all of our cookies in the first day and slept about 15 hours that night! In the morning i was cooking eggs, over easy, with bread and butter (aka 'capture the yolk' i call it (with the hole in the bread of course)) and i looked over my shoulder at Cordi (meryl's little red/yellow dog)...wait a minute...cordi is not in southie camping with us...where am I? Tierra del Fuego, right? Yes...I turned my head and a fox was about 5 feet away eyeing my buttery eggs and bread! He hung out for a bit and then trotted off on his merry way without looking back. He returned the next morning to inquire if i was going to be more generous with my breakfast. We got some good video, i'll try and post it.

We then took a bus to Punta Arenas, Chile. On the bus we met a cool doctor and his son from the Falkland Islands. In Punta Arenas we woke up early to go on a tour to walk with Penguins. Well, we woke up at 6:30 and remembered that it was daylight savings time, so it was really 5:30. So we slept for another hour and walked to the agency only to find out that Chile does not have a time change and it was actually 7:30, not 6:30 as we thought...so we missed the Penguin tour. (We had a hard time trying to explian "daylight savings time" in a foreign language!) So we walked around the town, were adopted by a small street puppy-dog that we named Ronald. Ronald ate granola with us and then left us on our walk back to the hostel, weaving in and out of the traffic as the street dogs do like the taxi-dodging instinct was in their blood from the start.

Anyway, On this trip Meryl and I have met so many cool people and travelers from all over the globe...

Julia and Jose: Germany and Spain

Simon and My: Scotland

Beth and Greg: New York

Chris and Kristin: Essex

Claire: Ireland

Jack: Holland (Aconcagua)

Julie: Oregon (Aconcagua)

Kevin: Illinios (Aconcagua)

Stuart: London (Aconcagua)

Jon and Denise: Colorado (Aconcagua)

Vitali: Russia (Aconcagua)

Martin & Peter: Czech Republic (Aconcagua)

Curtis & Shelly: Oregon

Amy: Missoula, Montana!!!!

Rudy: Peru/Germany

Eduardo: Brazil

Pablo: Chile

Kelie: Australia

Gretchen and Patrick: Washington State

Ben and Karryn: Tasmania/ Australia

And many more!

Thanks to my family and friends who helped me make this trip possible:

Mom and Dad

Grama 'Rene

Adrienne & Jesse

Trevor

The Haywards

The Brittons

John and Liz Storb

The Robinsons

Jen and Ted (Thanks for the PB in a time of need!)

-Sorry if i missed anybody!

F

Southern Patagonia... Torres del Paine

We had AMAZING weather in Torres del Paine. We had 4 days of sunshine and no wind.. well until the last day when it got quite windy. The park was amazing, we only had 5 days so we did the most "classic trek" (aka the most popular) the W. It was one of my favortite parts of our trip, the national park is amazing. Forrest and I were joking most of the time that this is the land where faries and dragons come from. The forests are bizare and consantly changing, their are glaciers everywhere and the geology is absoulty spectacular! The highlights of the park for us, were the Gray Glacier and Valley Frances, both are stunning and we saw them on gorgeously sunny days. Our final day was the only slight let down. We got up at 5 am to hike to the view point of the towers so you can watch the sunrise turn them red. It was too cloudy to see the sun that morninng so they stayed gray- oh well. It also got quite windy that afternoon, so we did experience a bit of the Patagonian wind that everyone always talks about. After our trek, we had a nice dinner in Puerto Natales with some great people that we met on our trek and on the Navimag. Early the next morning we hopped on a long bus to head further south to Usuhaia... which is where we are now "el fin del mundo" as they like to say here.

Animals sighted:
Huanacos- lots and los
Flamingos
A Condor
The Bizzare Patagonian Ostrich- lots
Fox
Lots of other interesting birds

Navimag and a very large earthquke.

photos: Meryl abord the Evangelistas, Crashed sugar ship from 1969, cheesy meryl and Forrest at Puerto Eden, boat and glacier Pio IX, sunset in Puerto Natales

I think that Forrest and I found out about the earthquke just north of us after most of you did. We left Puerto Montt, Chile on Friday at about 5pm on the Navimag Ferry the "Evagelistas". The weather was amazing and the scenery incredible, we sailed past huge volcanos, through amazing channels on our large barge. The earthquke occured during our first night on the ferry. We had no idea that anything happened, until the announced arround 11am the following morning. They informed us on the loud speakers that there had been and earthquke in Chile, but they didn't know any details. Around 5pm that night they called a meeting on the boat to inform the passengers of what they knew at that point. We were told that the earthquke was a 9.2 and that the town of Conception was completly destroyed, and severe damage extended arround the area and to the north. They told us that lage builings in Santiago had collapsed and the airport was closed, but they didn't have much more info than that. It was difficult to grasp, we had just sailed out of the channels and into the ocean, we had seen Blue Whales, dolphins, birds, Sea Lions, amazing mountains and volcanos, and incredible sunny calm Patagoninan weather, so it was hard to imagine the destruction that had occured several hundred km north of us. The following day was just as amazing, we visited the Town of Puerto Eden located in the middle of nowhere, and then we took a side channel detour for about 4 hours so that we could see the Pio XI glacier, the largest glacier in South America! It was amazing! Our huge boat floated right up to the end of it, past ice-bergs that had been cleaving off. We got within 60m of the terminus and it was incredible. They sent out a life boat with some crew members to collect some of the Glacier Ice, so that we could enjoy it in our cocktails, haha! It was a huge highlight for me to be so close to that amazing river of ice. On monday early afternoon we sailed into Puerto Natales, the first semi-flat area we have seen in Patagonia. It took about an hour to dock our large ship in this small port before we could disembark.

Forrest and I went out to a fancy dinner our first night here to a place called "Afrigonia" were african and patagonian food are combined... delish! We both had some of the best sea-food that either of us had ever eaten, and we topped it off with a Kilmajaro chocolate cake for desert!

Yesterday we spent the day wandering the town, and learning of the massive devistaiton of one of the largest earthqukes in history. If you would like to see some good photos check out this fliker site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rlinfati/
We were very lucky to be on the boat when we were. We drove through the epicenter of the earthquke in a bus about 48hrs before it occured and we got on on the boat about 8 hours before.

We head off to Torres del Paine national park to do some backpacking for the next 5 days. Afterwards we head to Ushuaia (the southenmost town in america) before heading to Santiago. Forrest heads home in 2 weeks... three months has flown by!

" 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!

Mudslide on Inca Trail, tourists killed and stranded

Looks like we got out of Cuzco and off the Inca Trail in the nick of time! We were stuck in Cuzco for 2 extra days due to the bus strike. As we hiked and watched the Urubamba River- Meryl and I were amazed at the power and rediculous amount of flowing water...we even video taped it! Check out this news link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583989,00.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fworld+(Text+-+World) Forrest

Summertime is HOT!

I can't stop sweating!
We arrived in Lima in the evening on Tuesday.
We spent all day yesterday walking along the beach in Lima and through the neighborhoods of Miraflores and Baranco. It was really HOT and really humid! I have re-affirmed the fact that am not a very good hot weather person.
The neighborhood of Baranco is awesome both Forrest and I really liked it, it reminded me of New Orleans. We ate over priced popsicles and sat along the beach for most of the day. Forrest got pooped on by a bird (haha), and then we ate churros so he would feel better.
Last night at 1 in the morning we almost missed our flight to Santiago, because of massive lines in the Lima airport, 3 hours is not enough time to make an international departure there. We also forked over a small fortune to LAN Airlines because of our overweight baggage. FYI flight within south america do not give you international baggae allowances. Forrest and I were only allowed 23 kilos each... needless to say we exceeded it and payed for it, BIG TIME! OUCH!

We are in Mendoza now, it's really hot here too (90+) but it's not as humid. Tommorw we will begin running arround trying to get ready for our warm up climb of Cerro Plata (thanks Toren and Dylan for all of the advice), which will be about 4 days, and should bring us up to 6,000m blowing Forrest previous altitude reccord (that was set in Peru) out of the water. It is a bit stormy tonight, windy with some rain so everyone think good weather thoughts for us!

ps... i could really go for some snow right now.

Nazca Lines

Meryl and i leave Nazca today. We arrived yesterday morning at 5am after the 14 hour bus ride. I stayed awak during much of the bus ride listening to another passenger vomit in the tiny metal toilet near our seats. The ride was very jerky, and it rained much of the drive. I felt a little uneasy as the driver of our double decker bus seemed to drift around the wet mountain corners.

We took a 35 minute flight over the Nazca Lines in a Cessna 206. The pale sweaty woman in front of us vomited in her little puke bag and i watched the pilot roll his eyes as he handed her a napkin to wipe her mouth. haha. The Nazca lines were amazing. These are lines that were carved into the desert earth by a pre-Incan culture. They can only be seen by the air, so some people belive ET's or UFO's created the lines. (see "Cheriots of the Gods" out of print though) My favorite was the huming bird and the autronaut. After the flight Meryl and I ate a huge meal at a local favorite restaurant called Paulita's for only $2 each. We hung out in the plaza and 'people watched' as music was played for a 'End Polio' festival. Meryl and i bought hard boiled quail eggs from a kid with a small cart. They were very delicious and very small. In Huaraz, we saw kids selling these eggs and on the bottom of the cart were the quails that laid the eggs! We lounged at a fancy pool for 4 hours and swam and ate sandwiches. meryl fell asleep and sun burned her armpits (yes her armpits haha). The pool seemed like some cuban resort with white adobe walls. We drank cervesas on the terrace rooft nice top of our hostel and layed in hammocks...Damn life is hard when school is finito and the 'real world' hits you! Today we leave for Lima, stay for a day and tomorrow we depart for Argentina!

High and not so dry... aka stranded in Cuzco!

The 24hr bus stike has turned into an indefinate bus strike with no signs of letting up... as a result we are pretty well stranded in Cuzco. Their is a glimmer of hope that our bus may leave this evening but it is not looking promising. According to news here, 6,000 bus and 120,000 truck will not run until the transportation unions reach an agreement with the govenment about fuel tax on diesel. So, that means we are probably not going to Nazca...
The only way out of Cuzco at the moment is by plane, so we may wind up flying to Lima tomorrow, so that we can get out of $$$ expensive Cuzco. In other parts of Peru sates of emergency have been declared, and in others the busses are still running, it is all very confusing and no one really seems to know what is going on. So, in the meantime Forrest and I have been walking arroung the city, visiting the markets and churches, Forrest got a nice fedora (hat), and we have been consuming a lot ob cheap boxed wine. It is quite rainy today but yesterday was beautiful.
Wish us luck!!!! We will be pretty excited if our bus leaves tonight!