Torres del Paine, part 1

OK, so back to when we were in El Calafate, Argentina. After having to dodge thousands of rabbits on the way to El Calafate we made our bus to Puerto Natales. On the way, we saw some nandu, which are South American ostriches. Anyway, after a 5 hour bus ride that included the biggest waste of time border crossing I think I´ve ever seen, we made it to Puerto Natales:

The town is not the most attractive one, but it isn`t horrible either. It certainly is in a beautiful location and is well setup for people planning on hiking in Torres del Paine National Park.
After a day to rest and get our stuff together for hiking, we headed up to the Torres.

It is about a 3 hour ride to the park. Once there, we caught a boat that took us to our starting point on Lake Pehoe.
When we got there, the weather was horrendous. We had the pleasure of setting up our tent in driving rain and about 48 degrees.


That night there were about 100 people in the cooking hut because of the terrible weather. After we were done, it was still awful out, so we had a drink in the bar there. They have bars and little restaurants out in the middle of the wilderness in South America. Chilean wine is really good and really cheap too.

The next day, the rain had let up somewhat, but the wind was even worse. There´s the forecast for that day:

We started up our 22 km hiking day to Glacier Gray and back in just ridiculous winds. A couple times it just about blew us over.

The lake is probably 15 miles long, and once you get to it from Pehoe, there are icebergs that have floated all the way down there.

It was pretty cold, so we made pretty good time up to the glacier.

Once you are up there you can walk right up to some icebergs in the end of the lake.

You can walk up to the glacier as well, but it is another hour or two one way and we were freezing, so we headed back.
The wind didn´t stop, but on the way back it actually started to clear up:

The next morning it was much much nicer. Mostly clear and pretty warm. Compare this picture to the other one of the campground. It is the same place:

Our walk from Pehoe to Campamento Italiano was really pleasant (and flat).

We made it to Italiano, left our heavy packs and headed up towards Campimento Britannico:

When you get to Britannico you can see the back sides of the Torres and the Cuernos. You probably have seen pictures of the front sides of both. But I´ll get to that part on the next post.

In real time, we´re heading to the beach tonight and will be hanging out there for several days. We´ll have time to update blogs and apply for jobs there.

Movie Review
Forget Paris: 0
This is an old Billy Crystal movie they played on a bus ride. It is just supremely bad. I am not sure I´ve watched a more irritating movie. Ghosts of Mars and Ghost Rider are bad, but I´d rather watch them back to back (by far) than watch Forget Paris again. Super stupid, super irritating, super pointless, not funny. It kind of makes me mad just thinking about it.

It looks like kids in Chile have moved on from drugs to harder things:

From where I left off in Buenos Aires

We were in Buenos Aires for most of 2 weeks except for 4 days in Uruguay.




Uruguay (well, Montevideo and Colonia de Sacramento) is nice and very European like, like Argentina.










Our hostel in Colonia had free bikes to take around, but they were also the most uncomfortable bikes EVER:





After Urugay, were were back in Buenos Aires. We were going sailing, but first we helped Maxi´s friend Juan move a little.
Moving by pulling a couch up 3 stories with straps and ropes to a balcony:


How do you like that method Annemarie?

Sailing with Maxi and his friends on the Rio Plata.




Maxi bargaining for fishing poles:



Plata is silver, but it does seem a little brown to me. It was an awesome time though and it was super nice of Maxi´s friends to take us out on their boat and then we sailed over to an island and camped there.

Then we flew to El Calafate, Argentina. They have some big glaciers there:








The Perito Moreno glacier is really cool. Huge, house sized chunks of ice break off all the time and drop into the water. It is really loud and makes pretty big waves in the lake. A few years ago, a big chunk of ice fell into the lake and the wave from it killed several tourists. Now they don´t let you get as low down to the lake level near the glacier.

Here´s a video of some ice falling (well, some falls about the 1 minute mark... sorry Samoa):


We camped at a really cool campground nearby that night. It was definitely one of the best private campgrounds I´ve ever been to. A fox ran through our campsite too.





The next day we had to get up really early to head back to El Calafate to catch a bus to Puerto Natales, Chile. From there we´d be backpacking in Torres del Paine National Park.

Today we´re in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

It has been impossible to find a computer that is capable of reading a SD card. Finally I found one in probably the smallest town we have stayed in the whole time.

So, I´ll update what we did earlier later when I have my other chip with me. I just had my camera with me, so I´ll put a few recent things on here.

How´s everyone doing?

OK, here we are by Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas:




We were at about 10,000 feet here.

We went to Barreal, Mendoza, Salta, and Cafayate after that. I´ll get to most of that in more depth later.

We had a really nice time in Cafayate for a few days.

Then onto Salta which is (along with Cafayate and Bariloche) probably the nicest place we´ve been.

Some Cafayate:





Then today we went over the Andes. The road was just ridiculous. We were over 15,000 feet for a long time. Usually when you go over mountains, you kind of go up, over and then back down. Today we went up, then stayed up for about 5 hours. It is just crazy how big the mountain range is and how weird looking it is. A few examples:





Tomorrow we have to start a geyser tour at 4am so I need to get to bed, but I wanted to at least get some pictures up here while I can.

Hopefully I´ll get a chance to update further while still here.


Passing a gas truck in a no passing zone on a corner, on a cliff, at 12,000 feet is a great decision:


Aaron

Argentina

I made it down to Buenos Aires with a 5 hour layover in Miami where Susan very nicely picked me up and took me to lunch on the beach. Pretty cool.

Then to Quito for about 30 minutes, then Guayaquil for about 20 hours. Guayaquil seems like a pretty cool place. Things in Ecuador are super super cheap. It was hot and humid there like Samoa.

and look, a breadfruit tree:




After Guayaquil, I had to go to Lima for a day. When getting off the plane in Lima I was waiting for the girl across the row to go and I looked at her, and it was Sam McManus. Crazy. Her and her fiance are also traveling around South America. They recently went to Antarctica too, which is pretty cool.

So I met Naomi at the Lima airport the next morning and we flew to Buenos Aires and met Maximo and Gonzalo for a beer by their work. Really cool to see them.



So Buenos Aires is not like Mexico at all, despite being in South Mexico. It is a lot more like Italy, but probably cleaner and definitely more orderly. People like to make lines for everything. The food here is really good and everything is really cheap too. You should come and check it out.

Maxi and Gonzalo have this group of friends that has kind of like their own private bar. El Pude:

They have stuff about 3 nights a week there, sell beer for cheap and have a bbq for sale as well. It is a great idea. Someone in Seattle should get that going.

We went to Uruguay for a few days also. Uruguay is pretty much the same as Argentina, maybe a little more expensive. Montevideo is a really nice city too. They have nice beaches and waterfront. We got lost and did a ton of walking there, as this has been a major theme of the trip so far--- tons and tons of walking duet to lostness...which is good for me.
We saw a carnival competition there, which was cool, but I didn't know what they were saying and parts of it were like a Mexican sitcom.
Next to Colonia del Sacramento, also in Uruguay. It is a small, well preserved colonial town on the river. The river here separates Uruguay and Argentina and is probably 60 miles across. 60... really.






OK, Maxi is hassling me to go to lunch, so here are some more pictures. Gotta go:






Fa!

3 more days

Well, my weekend started out on a sad note. My Grandpa passed away Friday morning. That is sad of course, but at least I got to see him when I was home in October.

I need to upload some pictures from this weekend. We had a going away sloshball game and mini Palagi Olympics Saturday. Really fun.

The Super Bowl was a good game, but come on...how many blatant holds can Pittsburgh get away with? When you have a slow QB that holds the ball for 20 seconds every play, why else is he not getting sacked. Oh, and you can clearly see the holding anyway. There were plenty of other ridiculous calls as well. And no replay at the end of the game? Really? Wow.



UW handily beats ASU at ASU, leads the Pac-10, and ASU is ranked ahead of them? How is this possible? UW has a tough road trip coming up, but if they can lose just 2 more and win the conference tournament, I think they'll be in line for a 2 or 3 seed.

I'm going to try to squeeze in one more round of golf and a trip to Sliding Rock this week. Then, I'll be mentally ready to go I think.

I will really miss this weather though. I saw that it might snow when I'm home!

9 days left in Samoa

I'm enjoying my time that remains here in the tropics. It was cool today. It is 630p right now and it is only 84 degrees. Plus the humidity seems lower than it has been.

On Friday, Team Puppy backpacked down to Massacre Bay for some camping.


On the way up, it was NOT cool out. I'm guessing it was about 92 and 100% humidity. And that trail is steep. I was a super sweat machine.


The trip was really fun. Sleeping without pads sucks though even when the ground is sand.

So I applied for a job a month or so ago in Seattle working for the US Dept. of Labor adjudicating workers compensation claims. That seemed pretty cool. A couple weeks ago I had a phone interview and the people that interviewed me also seemed cool. Plus the job is in downtown Seattle. Today they offered it to me, but want me to start March 1. I knew I might get an offer for a while because my boss said they called him for a reference the day after the interview. It was really stressing me out for a while. It is really hard to pass up a job in this terrible economy, especially one in Seattle, but I've decided I can't take it. I can't not go on this trip that I've already paid for. Plus, I don't have a mortgage, or kids, or anything else that would make it harder to go. I think I need to do it. I'm going to tell them I can start June 1, but I doubt that will work. Regardless though, it is nice to get an offer for the first job I applied for. Hopefully I won't be unemployed in 8 months. I think I'll be ok. Maybe another position at the same place will open up that starts in June.

I was disappointed to see the OKC fake basketball team won 5 out of 10. I was hoping for worst record of all time (not that the NBA isn't dead to me).

I hope the M's sign Griffey. I know he could suck, but he could help the team as a DH/sometimes LF with power. $5M/ 1year would be great.

The Huskies are ranked! I don't know how the coaches could not rank the Huskies and still rank UCLA. UW has a better record, is 1st in the Pac-10, has a higher RPI, and just beat UCLA by 11. They need to keep it up. If they could possibly keep the losses to 3 from here on out, they'll get a relatively high seed in the tournament. That's a tall order, but at least it looks like they'll make the tournament. So I'll have to find an internet cafe to watch the tournament games online.
I'm really glad MBA didn't break his toe too.

My neighbor's clothesline:

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas too. I guess I haven't done an update since before Thanksgiving either.

So, here's a great local music video to make up for that: King Aeto!

I have less than a month left on the island now. Since my last post, Fred left the island. He'll be missed.


I think coming to Samoa is a great experience and it has been a great time. But, two years is a long time. When I leave, I think there will only be four people in the group that were on-island when I moved here.

Today the Huskies hired USC's defensive coordinator. That is a pretty positive sign. At least we can't do worse next year.
Also, it should be noted that UW's D coordinator makes more than WSU's head coach. That is probably appropriate.
Speaking of the Cougs, the Huskies finally beat them at basketball. Nice job.

One month from now, I'll be in Hawaii. Weird! Weird but good.

I'll be back in WA on February 9th. I plan on coming up to Seattle probably for the 10th and 11th. I know it is during the week, but I'd love to hang out with people there if you can arrange it. Then I'm going to hang out with my parents and belately celebrate my mom's 60th birthday.
On February 15, I fly to Miami on a red-eye, then head to South America. In case anyone wants to meet me along the trip, I'll provide what I think is our itinerary:

Feb 18-March 2: Buenos Aires area. We'll be staying with Maximo in town and also checking out a nearby town for Carnival and probably a couple days in Uruguay.

March 2-13: Patagonia. We fly into El Calafate and have one day to check out the Perito Moreno glacier. Then we head south to prepare for 5 days of backpacking in Torres del Paine park in Chile.

From here on out it gets less scheduled, but it'll be something like this probably:
March 13-18 Bariloche, Argentina area, some of this time spent hiking/camping.
March 18-23- Make our way to Pucon, Chile- camping probably along the way.
March 23-28 Pucon, Chile. There's an erupting volcano to climb there, rafting, and all kinds of things like that.
March 28-30 Make our way up to Valparaiso/Vina del Mar, Chile
March 30- April 5- Valparaiso/Vina del Mar/ Santiago, Chile
April 6-10 Mendoza, Argentina area
April 11-14 Salta, Argentina area
April 14-15 travel to Sucre, Bolivia
April 16-18 Sucre, Bolivia
April 19-22 La Paz, Bolivia
April 23-25 backpacking in Bolivia
April 26-28 Lake Titicaca (Bolivia)
April 29-30 Lake Titicaca (Peru)
May 1-8 Cusco & Macchu Picchu
May 8-12 Lima- hang out with Ayla.
Then it is back to Miami and a few days hanging out with Susan.
Then to Indianapolis for a few days
Then to Chicago for a few
Then back to Portland on May 26

I'll have the same Vonage phone number 206.501.2135 and I'm taking a phone (provided by Nate) that I will be able to (hopefully) plug into computers at internet cafes to call.

Here's a pirate and a bat: