This evening I am flying back to good ol´ San Fran, but these last two weeks have been jammed with some of the best times of the trip. Traveling for extended periods of time requires you to expect the unexpected. You gotta prepare yourself for rough times while still maintaining openness to fantastic experiences, sometimes in the least likely of places. Traveling through the Argentinian heartland with little in front of me but big cities was something I had resigned myself to, not something I was attacking with the gusto of, say, hiking Torres del Paine. But sometimes all it takes [View Full Entry]

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What´s up all, My trip is winding down. For a few reasons, I will be returning a bit early. But the adventure has been pushed into high gear. Most notably, I´ve turned vagabond, hitching my way through the Atacama desert with a few friends. This is way more fun than it sounds. Anyway, the highlights of the last week and a half have been: - wandering the streets of Valparaiso. It is a port town, grimy, a bit menacing. But the narrow alleys and staircases on the hills above the docks are vibrant and beautiful. Bluntly political and unapologetically Marxist, the [View Full Entry]

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Hey all, It has been a massive letdown, but I have accepted the fact that I am not going to get into the big mountains around here. Without accompaniment, these mountains are too unpredictable and too high, and there simply aren´t any guides. No doubt they are on Aconcagua earning the real money during this, the height of the climbing season. I am relegated for the meantime to the hustle and bustle of Chile´s biggest cities. ----------------------------- Santiago I thought that Santiago would simply be a dirtier version of Buenos Aires, but I was wrong. Santiago has charm and b [View Full Entry]

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Hey all, Here´s what I´ve been up to the last few weeks. I haven´t done any writing, so I leave you only with these snippets and photos. Among the really cool activities have been: - hiking some cool hills near Bariloche - climbing a volcano. The first thing that you notice when you get near the top is that your eyes and lungs are mysteriousy burning. Then you see smoking rocks. They are hot to the touch. You summit. Once you´ve found the windward edge and the sulphur dioxide is blowing away from you, you hold your breath and run to [View Full Entry]

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Merry Christmas, everybody ! Christmas in South America is not quite so glam as in the US. There are just a few stores with decorations and none of the houses have lights. Even the atmosphere is more relaxed, as if Christmas were just a free day to hang with the family. How odd ! I have covered quite a few miles since the last blog entry. I was excited to travel up Ruta 40, one of Argentina´s classic road trips, akin to our Route 66. Supposedly, the scenery is amazing in its vast bleakness. I say supposedly because the bus I [View Full Entry]

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Hey everybody, Well, the last few days have been spent in the usual fashion: kicking it in spectacular mountain ranges. Are you guys getting tired of this yet? Should I spend more time in the cities? Ha. Anyway, this is all I have for you at this point. I left off at Torres del Paine. From there, I went north to Calafate, a backpacker hangout that acts as the staging ground for Glacier Perito Moreno. Moreover, it is the last place to buy decent food for hiking the stellar mountains near El Chalten. And by ¨decent¨ I mean sugary, nutrient-deficient, hyper-sterilized [View Full Entry]

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Hey everybody, I am writing from Puerto Natales, near Torres del Paine National Park. Honestly, my mind is somewhat blown from the insane mountains I have seen here over the last week; they may rank among the best I have ever hiked. This may be sorta disjointed, but I´m just going to write about a few of the things I saw and felt here. Cheers ! ----------------- The Torres I got up at 5AM this morning. Hurriedly, I packed my things. It felt good to start my legs pumping; they had cramped the night before due to the hours climbing with [View Full Entry]

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Hey everybody, I am in Ushuaia, which has termed itself the World´s Southernmost City. Puerto Williams, a podunk village just across the Beagle Channel, has a good case for being further south, though its claim at being a city is fairly dubious. Anyway, I´m gonna let them duke it out and I´ll simply claim to have gotten pretty goddamned far south. Over the past few days, I have done some of the best hiking I have done in a long time. In terms of scenery and accessibility, Ushuaia ranks very high for trekking. The terrain is amazingly variable, spanning the range [View Full Entry]

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We last left off with the fearless Mike crossing into Patagonia and the land of rugged coast. To give a bit more context to the scene, I should say that I am out of the verdant grasslands. Now I am in a desiccated land populated only by thorny bushes and the few creatures that can tough out this inhospitable place. Everything is grey with tinges of brown that, try as they might, just can´t seem to lighten the mood. The sun, though mild, is constant and it bakes the earth to a fine, chalky dust. There is not much here . [View Full Entry]

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From a few days ago: Today is a travel day. It started this morning at 5:15 on only 1-2 hours of sleep. I just couldn’t; the idea of striking into the mountains got my blood going: hopes, fears, practicalities. Now I am in a bus station on a seven-hour stop-off fighting to keep my eyes open. And prospects for a good sleep tonight are scant; I´ll be pulling into Sierra de la Ventana around 11PM and setting up camp (somewhere) in the dark. The countryside I saw today was simply massive. Flat, it extended interminably from sky to sky. The wind [View Full Entry]

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