Global warming is bad, Mmmkay - 6 March 2009

Another easy day to recuperate. We had a private car to take us to the Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares.

We spent a few hours here, taking a boat ride that got us up close to the glacier and then traveling along a walkway where we could watch the glacier. I'm sure that watching a glacier sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry, but this glacier regularly breaks up - often spectacularly.

Here's a picture of the boat and glacier together, for scale:



The video below is cobbled together from Jennifer's shots of the best break-up we saw while we were there:


Afterwards we went back to El Calafate for a nice Italian lunch and a huge steak dinner. The restaurant had calafate ice cream for dessert, but since I'm not sure what caused "the tent incident" I elected to have the normal ice cream.

And we left with our tail between our legs and the rain on our faces - 4 & 5 March 2009

Jen woke up feeling much better today, so we tried to hike up to the Valle del Francés.  We made it about 30 minutes before the combination of illness and not eating caught up with us and then turned around.

If you're keeping score at home, we made it around the circle of Torres del Paine, but failed to complete the "W" route.  We went back to Refugio Pehoe, spent a little time reading, and then caught the catamaran back to Campo Torres.  On the way across the lake dark clouds rolled in, and we got rained on on our way out of the park.

We spent the night in Puerto Natales, enjoying some pizza and the next day took a 6 hour bus ride into Argentina to being our tour of Los Glaciares.  The bus was stifling and for awhile I thought Jen would have her revenge for the tent incident, but she managed to hang on until we got into El Calafate.

A late lunch at a crepe restaurant, of all things, and then lots of rest in preparation for tomorrow.

Well, she is only an Ox by marriage, after all - 3 March 2009

Turns out that Jen got sick 6 times from 4 am to 8 am, which is bad enough.  Of course they turn all of the lights off in the refugio at night, so she had to go out the door, down the stairs, and through a twisty-maze like hallway to get to the bathroom.  In true helpful-husband fashion I slept through the whole thing, only realizing something was wrong when I woke up to see her huddled in a pathetic heap in her sleeping bag.

Later (much, much later) we'll argue about who had to deal with the worse circumstances.

Basically I read all day while she slept.  The day was not without some comic relief, though.  Our snoring friends from last night moved on to the next camp site and were quickly replaced with a young German couple.  I say young - they were college aged which looks young to me at this point.

Then, there were a couple of ladies who poked their heads in.  First comment:  "I thought these dorms were separated by sex."  They spent the rest of the day out and about, coming back into the room around 11 pm.  Sadly I was asleep for this, but according to Jen, they got up into their bunks and then one of them said "It smells like FEET in here" between muffled sobs.

So maybe we're not having the worst time after all.

Nothing stops an Ox! - 2 March 2009

I'm convinced it was food poisoning.  Whatever was in the daily ration of meat smothered in gravy HAS to be what did me in last night.  So even though I'm not feeling good I insist on making the hike to the next refugio.

After a little lie down, that is.  I skipped breakfast since the thought of eating started turning my stomach, and about 10 am or so we headed out for Refugio Pehoe.  During my rest we found out that someone else was sick last night, so there's no way I'm staying here again today.

We do the hike, and about 2 pm I manage to eat a couple of pieces of bread.

Refugio Pehoe is spectacular.  It's large, spacious, clean, and has hot showers.  I clean up, and it feels so, so good!  Then I sleep, while Jen and Serkan have lunch and read.  I get up for dinner only to decide it's a bad idea when Serkan reads the menu.

One downside to the refugio - it's dorm-style.  So there's a couple that joins us in our room.  Turns out that they're the answer to yesterday's question:  Who on earth can sleep (and snore) through my bouts of distress.  I still slept pretty well, though.

So well, in fact, that I don't realize it's Jennifer's turn to suffer.

The Storm - 1 March 2009

WARNING: If you are appalled, offended, or otherwise just not interested in gross/inappropriate stories, you might want to skip this one. To paraphrase Mike Judge, this post should not be read by anyone.

No, really, this wasn't pleasant for me and probably won't be for you, either.

Oh, well, if you're still here then you've been appropriately warned.

I consider myself to be a modest person, so it's a bit of a shock to be outside the tent at midnight wearing nothing but my underwear. The more pressing concern, though, is why I'm currently spewing my stomach contents all over the place. You may recall from the last post that I put a plastic bag near my sleeping bag in case of disaster.  Unfortunately, when the time came, I wasn't able to get the bag open.  So instead of puking into the bag, I puked all over the outside of the bag - and the inside of the tent.  That was bad enough, but my head was at the highest point in the tent, and gravity worked its inevitable magic.

TANGENT:  Things unlikely to show up in a "Love is..." cartoon:  Love is screaming at your wife to "STOP IT!" when she cries while you're trying to clean the vomit off of everything in a tent.

Of course I couldn't be content to do it just once, so a couple of hours later, say 2 a.m. or so, we had a repeat performance.  This time I made it out of the tent and found different thoughts going through my head like:  Why me?  What on earth did I eat? and How on earth are the people in the next tent sleeping (and snoring like that) through this?

And just to top it off there was another bout around 7 a.m.  This time I only made it to the front part of the tent (foyer? vestibule?) - the part covered by the rain fly, but not the tent proper.  There was a girl walking by at the time and she just looked at me and went "Oooh!"

Not a good scene, all around.

The Calm (Torres del Paine Days 4 -6) - 27 February - 1 March 2009

The next three days went off without incident. We moved from Refugio Dickson to Camp Perros, with a rainbow to see us on our way:


When we got to Perros we had a moment of confusion:


When did we get back to Texas? Oh, wait, that's the Chilean flag.

From Perros (which is Spanish for the dogs, BTW) to Campo Passo - imaginatively named because it's the first camp after the pass (or before, if you go the other way). We've seen a lot of glaciers along the way, but the view of Grey Glacier is the most spectacular yet:

At camp that night our guide, Serkhan, made us a delicious meal of linguine con calamari:


From Campo Passo we moved on to Camp Grey watching the glacier and eating calafate berries along the way. A calafate is like a blueberry, only not as tangy, and with more seeds. It'll still stain your tongue and fingers, though:

We got to Camp Grey, where we camped in a tent but ate in the refugio, and climbed into our tent to go to sleep after dinner. I wasn't feeling well, so I had a plastic bag nearby in case of an emergency during the night.

The Exposition (Torres del Paine Day 3) - 26 February 2009

Even though it's day three, it's really only our second day on the trek.  Even so, trends are starting to emerge.

For one thing, we're too uptight about this trek.  We're used to hiking in Colorado, where you have to start early in the day so you don't run out of daylight.  Here it stays light until 10 p.m., so there's no hurry.  We're leaving camp about two hours before most folks.

Our porters don't appreciate our schedule.  Each morning the guide has to subtly wake them, or more accurately, roust them from their tent after we've finished breakfast and packed up.  They're supposed to pass us on the way, but usually don't.

Dinner at the refugio will consist of the following:

• Corn chowder soup (of varying quality, where quality=# of chunks of real corn)
• Random meat covered in gravy
• Rice
• Vegetables
• Bread

The portions are huge (which is a theme in South America) but the variety leaves something to be desired.

Lacing your trail mix with apricots is a good way to spend more time in the outhouse than on the trail.

Moving on... (pun intended)

This was the view of the mountains for most of the hike today. I especially like the light-colored area, surrounded by the dark mountains. It's like a caramel center in a nice chocolate shell.

Goin' crazy

I figured that since it was now uncool to be on facebook that I'd go ahead and join.  And since I was giving in to one of these new-fangled social services, I figured I'd go whole-hog and join friendfeed and twitter at the same time.

How I'm going to keep up with three more sites when I'm already a month behind on the blog is another matter, but if you're interested check out the friendfeed badge (on the right hand side).

Sorry about the colors, but a little ugly is ok in the interest of progress.

At least it's not the fire swamp (Torres del Paine Day 2) - 25 Feburary 2009

So much for expectations.  My concern that there wouldn't be showers turned out to be unfounded.  The refugio we stayed in last night was actually nice, with a large cafeteria, bunk beds, and warm showers.  I've gone from worrying about staying clean to worrying that I'm not going to be clean enough compared to the other hikers.

As for my concern that every day would be a 9-hour slog, well, that also turned out to be unfounded.  Today's hike was about 5 hours, and was easy.  Well, except for the part where Jennifer stepped in a "puddle" that turned out to be about 3 feet deep:

The porters showed up (including one to carry our stuff), took our stuff, and then took off. Evidently they do their own thing here, instead of staying nearby.

So today was relatively relaxing, stuff got worked out about the porters, and I'm pretty pleased. The only downside is that the mosquitoes at Camp Seron (where we're staying) seem to love me. The guide hit my back with a sleeping bag, and killed 9 of the little buggers.

How did I miss this?

And do you think Jen's up for going back to Australia to track them down for pictures?

Yep, I'm talking about omnivorous Meat Ants.

What have we gotten into (Torres del Paine, Day 1) - 24 February 2009

Ah, the joys of miscommunication.

When Jen put the tour of Patagonia together, she made sure to ask if a porter was included to carry our extra stuff.  On the two previous treks (Kilimanjaro and Everest) it was common to use porters.  In South America, though, that's not the case.  For Torres del Paine we could have carried everything (easy for someone using porters to say) but don't have the large backpacks necessary, so Jen set up a porter.

Or thought she did.  Our guide shows up at 8 am in the morning to pick us up, sees our backpacks and two duffels and asks how we're planning on carrying the duffels.  Oops!

Thankfully the first day we did a "day" hike up to the towers, and spent the night in a refugio, so there was an extra day to work things out.

Unfortunately, our "day" hike lasted about 9 hours.  This wouldn't have been so bad, but we just got off of the boat from Antarctica and we've gotten soft over the last month.  About 7 hours into it we were both ready to be done.

If every day is like this one, we're in trouble.

The towers, though, are spectacular:

In transit (Santiago -> Punta Arenas -> Puerto Natales) - 22 - 23 February 2009

Another couple of days of travelling before beginning our trek in Torres del Paine.  We left the Sheraton at Iguazu Falls plenty early to be sure to be on time.  So early, in fact, that we skipped the (free) breakfast.

The journal entry reads "No breakfast - Makes Chad angry!"

Another town (Santiago, again), another hotel.  This time, though, the Holiday Inn at the Santiago airport.  Surprisingly, not bad, especially on points :)

The next morning a lovely breakfast of Dunkin' Donuts followed by an early morning flight to Punta Arenas.  Then a 2 hour ride in a van (not down by the river) to Puerto Natales.  We met our guide for the trek, who ended up being from Turkey.  Yep, we're going to be guided through the South American wilderness by a guy from Turkey.

We spent the night in Puerto Natales and ended up in the Hotel Indigo.  This is the point where I digress to one of my pet peeves, namely the many different hotels I've visited that can't provide a method to keep the shower from flooding the bathtub.  There seem to be several forms of this particular stupidity, namely:

• Shower with no shower curtain.  This was relatively common in Asia, and was especially interesting when the shower head was pointed toward the toilet paper
• Shower with shower curtain, but leaking fixture.  The second most frustrating form, because clearly they understand the concept of keeping the non-shower parts of the bathroom clean, they're just not doing it

And the most frustrating:

• Shower that has chosen form over function.  This is the case at the Hotel Indigo (among other places).  The room is small, but has a clean, modern feel.  The shower has an overhead fixture, and is enclosed by glass on two sides and the wall of the room on the third.  Instead of a curtain or door, though, it is open to the bathroom proper where you step into the shower.  Of course when you take your shower lots of water manages to get out onto the bathroom floor.  The floor mat provided isn't up to the task and ends up soaked through and through.  Finally we end up sacrificing a spare towel just to keep from stepping in the puddle.

Of course tomorrow we start trekking, so maybe I should just be glad to have a shower.

Bonus, rambling post

So we're back from diving in the Galapagos and I'm binging on the internet.  In the hopes that I won't regret this later, here's what I'm checking out:

• Regrettably this says it's for kids from 7-13, and it seems a bit premature to buy one for our potential kids, someday.  In 1981, though, I would have loved it.  ("I thought they smelled bad... on the outside")
• Via a blog that I read (http://www.shelleyhodges.com) comes proof that by staying off of facebook I've managed to become "cool" - http://www.shelleyhodges.com/2009/03/facebook-is-for-old-people.html
• We'll be in Egypt for Easter Sunday, and it should be interesting to see what sort of arrangements are available for the Christian holiday in a Muslim country.  Of course I'm also worried about missing Peep season.
• And finally, proof that I'm not cool (as though it's needed) - I'm not part of the Google Voice Beta, in spite of trying to get in on Grand Central before Google bought them.  The thought of transferring a call between phones satisfies me in what can only be described as an abnormal way.

And that concludes this episode of embarrassing blog posts that will live on in perpetuity, thanks to Google.

You know where we are? We're in the jungle, baby! (Iguazu Falls) - 19 - 22 February 2009

I have a love/hate relationship with jungles. They're hot and sticky which I really don't like. On the other hand, they're teeming with insects, snakes, lizards, and all sorts of creepy crawlies, which I really, really like. Yep, here come the bug pictures.

First, though, a word about what we're supposedly here to see, Iguazu Falls. Never heard of it? Well, the good folks in Argentina were nice enough to put this sign together comparing famous waterfalls of the world:

And as this video shows, it's a big ol' waterfall:

But continuing my abnormal fascination, here are some things that really caught my eye:
Thousands of miles from home, and I'm photographing grasshoppers!


A helpful display of the bat...s near Iguazu Falls


Coati are related to raccoons, and look cute at first glance. In the presence of food, though, they can become aggressive!

A lizard we saw along the path - they're surprisingly fast...


Monkey in the trees


These spiders had webs all over the place on our jungle walk. Thankfully neither one of us stumbled into a web


Sadly, no Froot Loops were found nearby. I guess his nose doesn't always know.


And last, and probably least, a callback to dog-sized ants. Enjoy!