Cuzco, Peru

The last of the epic bus journeys is done - 12 hours this time, past the wonderfully blue Lake Titicaca.

Cuzco is resplendent in grandeur. ´What manner of grandeur?´, you may ask.

´Post-colonial grandeur´, I would surely reply, quoting freely from the Catechism of Cliche.

Hassly for el gringo, though.
´Hey Mister, want taxi?´
´I have one, thanks.´
´Where you stay?´
´The Ritz.´
´When you go to Macchu Picchu?´
´I´m not.´

Today am going to rent a bike and find Inca ruins, keeping a special eye out for stone wall.

´What manner of stone wall?´, you are entitled to ask. ´Stone wall comprising unfeasibly large, irregularly-hewn blocks that fit together seamlessly´, I would likely reply.

Joined out...

...of all that big snowy mountain thing. For a moment I forgot my no-guide principles.

Went up to the base of the mountain and had a look, that was all I felt inclined to do after hearing stories from novices of climbing 50-degree hard ice with a single walking axe on the summit slope, up towards a guide belayed on a single axe.

They didn´t know any better.

If I´d have had my own gear with me, or could have rented 2 decent ice tools, I might have have gone.

Instead, lets go downhill mountain biking into the Amazon basin...




Turned out to be toadly awesome. 64km mostly downhill, from 4300m to 1200m, on decent bikes with disc brakes. Includes an infamous 40km downhill dirt section known as the Death Road.

Yikes.

Only 6 of us, mucho bueno campadres. At the bottom you have shower, eat madly, then back on the minibus to drive back up to La Paz again. Brilliant.

La Paz...

...highest capital city in the world, yet the smallest museums ever. Easy to do 5 in an hour, although set aside a whole 30 mins for El Museo de Coca.

Bolivia...

...the size of France and Spain put together, yet the country´s top crag is rubbish (http://www.geocities.com/msivila/Aranjuez.html). Mostly chossy conglomerate rubble, though a decent pinaccle gave a good FR5 solo.

You can combine a trip to the crag (14 km south of La Paz centre) with a visit to the Val de Luna, a maze of mud spires much like a monochrome grey Bryce Canyon. Makes for a pleasant afternoon´s escape from the mad bustle of the city.

La Paz, Bolivia

Arrived early evening after another epic bus journey - only 22h this time, but 3 changes and none of your huge bed-type seats. Never want to see a bus again. Found a decent hotel, en suite single for US$8 a night, and slept like a log. Now I feel brilliant.

La Paz is set in a huge gorge high on the Altiplano, at 3700m. You're rolling along an undulating green plain with dry stone walls (strangely, and mundanely, similar to the Flash neighbourhood of the Buxton - Leek road, except there are huge mountains up ahead).

A while after you hit urbanisation, the stunning sight of the huge, gorge-bound city, with the peak of Illimani in the background, pops out of nowhere. Amazing.

And all the old ladies wear tiny bowler hats.

Am feeling fit and up for something big and snowy, and have signed up for a fine conical peak called Huayni Potosi (another big moon behind it - the big-moon pics are not mine and I should take them off the site soon).

Bubbling mud and pink-eared llamas

Tour jeeps at the Bolivian border (4200m), with Toco behind.

Happy team ascending Corona

Corona (5300m)

Cerro Toco (5609m), The Whernside of the Andes...

Having found that hitching is easy (though vehicles few), and being totally through with guides, did hatch plan to climb Toco solo in a day from the valley. The pass road skirts Toco at 4200m, and the slope above amenable to ascent.

Worked perfecto: left San Pedro 9:00, back 18:00, shattered and slightly chuffed. Ascent 4.5h and (gasp) slow for the last 300m. Descent 1.5h, easy sand, gravel and scree.

What you need: water (lots of), eats, shades, hat, gloves, several layers, windproof outer layer. And the wind behind you. More or less what you´d take up Snowdon on a bright and blustery spring day.

What you don´t need: US$80 pp guide fee, car or truck, map and compass (viz will be perfect all day), waterproofs (it´s not going to rain), goretex or thermals (the air is so dry you can just wear cotton layers; wicking layers are redundant), big boots.

To climb without haste to avoid the falls. Only the steel nerves allow to surpass you fold and harshness of a risco and to control to the fear of a sudden loosening, one of the so many risks that exist in this sport of adventure that began in Scotland more ago than two centuries and that now extend until the heights of the Andes

And other babelfished gems on climbing in Bolivia and Peru...

The climber will find that the equipment required in most of the cases of scaled on rock is the basic one for a scaling of entertainment: Harness, slippers to climb, a cord to climb of 50 meters, security lugs, tubular tapes, 14 Express tapes and magnesium stock-market.

In Peru, the summit is not the goal. It only matters to go by unexplored and complicated routes. Much force and sacrifice in order to overcome the obstacles that the nature imposes to us. Maxima concentration to climb the enormous stones that prevent the ascent. In the Andean world an enormous potential for the practice of one of the sports of adventures exists that wake up greater emotions.

Other travel blogs seem to go on about meals and beds and travel tips and stuff...

Well, yesterday I ate several meals when I was hungry, and went to bed when I was tired.

I also took a tour jeep up into the Bolivian Altiplano, weird and wonderful high desert up to the north east of San Pedro.

Top geogga

Planet Earth´s crust is thin hereabouts, and mucho geothermal activity is evident...bubbling mud, hot springs, geysers, and hot air vents.

I´ve always wanted to see bubbling mud since I was a kid. They did´t have any on when I went to Yellowstone, and I wanted my money back. Plus, around here there is none of that ´Stay on the duckboard at all times´ deal, because there is no duckboard, or one-way tarmac road, or Visitor Centre or lard-ass Ranger acting like he owns the place and not you. You are free to tread dangerously close to any vent you like (even to throw yourself into one to rescue your hat, should you so wish).



That map again...

You're driving along dusty desert pistes at anything from 4000 to 4800m, higher than the Alps. Laguna Verde, Laguna Blanca, and at Laguna Colorada, gazillions of flamingoes, which are surprisingly good at flying although their legs look rubbish sticking out backwards. Carotene in the lake crustaceans makes them pink, and also gives us the wonderful pink-eared alpaca. Higher up the hillsides, weird hyrax type-things called vizcahca could be seen hopping about in the rocks here and there.

Also Les Rocas de Salvador Dali, a landscape of the paranoiac-critical incarnate.

Am well acclimatised, unlike my i-pod which graunched to a halt at 4300m. Erk alors! On retreating to a lower altitude it sprang back to life. Bueno.

Hundreds of scary little flower-people

Created entirely from dried flowers, seed pods etc, by one very patient Carlos E Garcia. Exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art, Mendoza, Argentina.

Local llamas posing for the camera. We fed some domesticated ones later on, and they are equally charming close up, and quite intelligent-looking too.

The llama´s widely cloven hoof, which gives them grip and pace on stony ground, does not fully guarantee its escape from fierce local restauranteurs. I am slightly ashamed to report that they taste pretty good, and not at all like chicken.

A guided tour that worked...

Unlike the ´climbing guides´, the tour guides around San Pedro are excellent. Our guide on this strictly tourist trip, standing opposite the authentic old Chilean lady whose small farm we visited, was fantastic, and really gave us a good time.

The old Chilean lady was almost blind with cataracts. She lives in the village of Tocanao at 3500m asl, where the light is as harsh as the winters. It´s a hard life. She, has a subsistence existence and no money for treatment.

She is 49 years old.
And she is now a little bit richer.

The company was really good fun, we were in it together with a mix of Spanish, French and English for all. There were no Krautalikes. The flamingoes were pretty cool too.

Invasion of the Flying Saucers

Corona (extinct volcano, about 5400m), the odd-looking bat-shaped peak on the right, was ascended yesterday by a ´happy team` of four, as as Lascar (áctive volcano, about 5600m, centre), our primary objective, was pouring out too much noxious gas...at least as judged by our humourless Swiss ´mountain guide´...who dragged the lowest form of human life to newly plumbed depths.

My contempt for this breed of wasters grows by the day, partly because they try to get away with murder, and partly because I don´t like being in the guide-client relationship. Though I say so myself, I have more experience, better mountain-sense, and more summit-hunger than 90% of these guys, I just don´t have the 4WD and the local road knowledge.

The truth was that he just didn´t want to climb Lascar again, having done so 30-odd times. Well, knobhead, it´s your job, and you have 3 clients who have paid, between them, 210,000 Chilean Pesos for a good day out.

I threw a bit of a wildy when he suggested we retire to the valley for a pleasant walk. What - driving for 3h up to 4500m just to have a breakfast picnic? I looked imploringly to his other two clients for support, but they were Austrian and closed ranks with their neighbour (the fools - they should hear what the Swiss say about Austrians behind their backs). At length, after some very stony silences, a second objective was agreed.

I wanted to summit, so I resorted to the only way to impress a Swiss - to be adversarial, go fastest and to bullshit hardest (turned out he was a rubbish climber and had done great big nothing in the Alps or at the crag). The other two tried to ignore me and spoke dialect German for the rest of the hike. So, dredging my memory for long-forgotten vocab, I pitched in, pointing out the best route in my judgement, and asking why we couldn´t have taken this or that route on Lascar, which we could see clearly that other groups were climbing by the normal route that our so-called ´guide´ had dismissed. Adequately cordial relations were resumed after an hour or two.

Yet, during 13 hours, Mr Swiss never once laughed out loud. It reminded me why I left Switzerland after working there for two years. Spoiled infants with no sense of humour, no interest in other people, a 100% ego-based judgementalism, and a complete inability to admit it when they are wrong? All nations have em, but none more than Switzerland. Nice chocolate though.

Corona was a brilliant mountain, more interesting in shape and in summit architecture than Lascar, and I had a fantastic day out in spite of the painful company.

Laguna Miscanti, one of the high salt lakes on the Altiplano in Chile at about 3800m. Even here, there is life...several types of duck, a lone flamingo, and some small lizards.

Yea, though I cycle through the Valley of Death...

...I shall have a way fruitsome experience. La Val del Muerte...about 2h round trip from san Pedro, and top-notch descent. Mostly hard sand, but some soft stuff in which ´tis impo to keep speed up to max, for to bottle it and apply brakes is to lose all momentum, and once stopped forever stopped. This is exciting, as front wheel is intent on skewing madly like mad thing. Hang on tight. Some good fast side canyons. Macc Forest?...imbibe your atrioventricular organ via the oral route.

San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro is brilliantly unspoiled, as yet. There are no chain hotels or shops, no 2-storeys or up, and the population, 90% Amerindian, seem to cope with the influx of tourists in a way that keeps the town going without spoiling it. You have trips every day to all sorts of places, yet even in the biggest ´supermarket´ there is counter service. There is only one ATM in town and it´s permanently out of order, and last night at 10:30 there was a full Easter parade along the dusty main street.

Castle Hill, NZ Weird landscape, boulders from outer space, frictionless and fingery problems

Golden Bay, NZ

Climbing guides? The lowest form of human life

They just want your money and an easy day

Today, tried to go climbing with local guy. Turned into farce. Met 8 am to go to prime crag at Socaire, but bus wasn´t running, so adjourn for breakfast. Talk of a second, rubbishy location at village of Tocanao. Bus at 10 am. Soon turned out he was guide and wanted - shock horror - payment!! - US$60, mucho gaspo!!. Was news to me. Have never paid guide to take me climbing in my life, ever ever ever, and have all kit, so what am I paying for exactly? (huff huff)...

Anyways, push comes to shove, am willing (reluctantly, huff huff) to pay for first location, but not the second. Bus goes on Fridays and Saturdays...

Postscript Sunday 15th April
Socaire (apparently good rock, but difficult access from San Pedro)
http://www.rockclimbing.com/routes/listArea.php?AreaID=1716

Tocanau (rubbish rock but relatively easy access from San Pedro)
http://www.rockclimbing.com/routes/listArea.php?AreaID=2440
Soloed a couple of easy rotes today, but then I was desperate.

American woman joined brekkie picnic in town square and acts as interpreter. Our acquantance, it turned out, has had an interesting life. Colombian, he fought in sorta Sandinista guerrilla force (or possibly armed drug gang) until had to flee about 12 years ago. After 10 years in exile in Chile he returned. Was back home for mere 2 days before Government special police turned up to whack him (tipico tactico: wade in, shoot suspects, leave bodies in situ). Legs it out of back door of Mum´s house while police zoning in on the front door. Now has political asylum in Chile.



Have signed up for this minor hump in a couple of days´ time.

San Pedro de Atacama, N Chile (near Calama)

What an absolutely amazing place.

Good job too, after a 24h bus journey.

Actually was quite enjoyable, the sleeper buses have hugely big reclining seats and sleeping is no problem. I had The Life of Pi to read, and amused myself in trying to find songs by cuddly old Nick Drake that don´t reference death in one way or another (surely not just his instrumentals).

San Pedro, at over 2700m, is an oasis town in the Atacama desert, surrounded by the incredibly colourful rocky landscape of the Cordillera de Sal on one side, and huge snow-capped volcanoes on the other. In between is a huge salt flat (the very occasional rivers around here have no outlet to the sea, so salt lakes and flats are numerous, complete with flamingoes. In that respect, if no other, it´s a bit like the Rift Valley in Kenya). The air is clear and the viz perfect, and there is tons to do.

http://www.gochile.cl/html/SanPedro/SanPedro.asp
http://photo.sanmedia.dk/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=4&pos=7
http://www.sanpedroatacama.com/
http://www.gochile.cl/html/ClimbSP/ClimbSP.asp

You can hire bikes in town, and there are amazing bits of desert, eg Death Valley and Val de Luna close by. After coming straight up from sea level I´m taking it fairly easy so far.

The Andes here start at about the height that the Alps are finishing. Might hike a volcano later in the week. You can potter up 5600 or 6040 m peaks on day hikes with no technical difficulty, just altitude is the problem.

Makes my altitude record seem a bit poor. Never bothered to record previous records before, but it was a bit of a talking point with other folks on Kinabalu back in Borneo. Now I´m curious and a quick google (for peaks I remember) results thus:

Coniston Old Man to Ben Nevis via all the usual stuff
Pic de la Coma Pedrosa, Andorra - 2942m
Klein Schreckhorn, Bernese Oberland - 3300m? (1985)
Monch, Bernese Oberland - 4099m (1985)
Aiguille de Geant, Rochefort and Pt? Grande Jorasses (1986)
Paldor base camp and some, Nepal - about 4600m (1986, HACE due to rapid ascent).
More Alpine peaks and a couple of 4km-ish Turkish summits 1986 - 1990
Point Margherita, Ruwenzori Mountains, Congo - 5109m (1991)
More Alps, Mt Whitney 14,496 ft (California, get metric dudes) and Pt Lenana, Mt Kenya - 4985m (1991 - 1995)
Lazy cragrat (1999 - present)

Hmm, looks like a new record should be easy then...

So, yesterday I went in search of Argie rock and found mere cheese. I bussed it out West, but missed my stop dreaming of babylon. Was forced to hitch in order to backtrack - been a while since I waved the magic thumb, but within seconds a gorgeous babe pulled over and I was back on the right track.

But where be El Craggo de Reputo? Eventually, a dry stream bed, dubbed Wadi Queso due to the spurious and holey quality of the rock, yielded some meagre bouldering and a 40-foot Hard Severe that was sufficiently scary to give a nice fulfilled feeling. An abseil anchor at the top indicated that the canyon is regularly traversed in descent.

Coldplay

Boring and pointless, or what? And in some song or other that keeps getting played around here, presumably off the excruciatingly dull 'X and Y' album, they snore their way through a guitar solo that is blatantly nicked from Kraftwerk's brilliant 'Computer Love'. Has anyone else noticed this?

Cheese Tips

Devotees of dairy produce will be relieved to learn that the fermented curd is widely available on both sides of the Andes, passing under the name 'queso'.

To obtain 'queso' it is necessay to locate a suitable retail outlet. In Andean regions, it seems that the pronunciation of the word varies from 'queso' to 'kaso'. But don´t let this undermine your linguistic self-confidence! In the event of a blank look, your 'queso'monger may respond to the alternative pronunciation.

The following phrases may be found useful, roughly in order of descending social acceptability:

Queso por favor
Yo quiero queso
Tienes tu cualquier queso?
Donde es el queso?
Pronto das me el queso, bastardo!

If you require cream cheese, 'queso de nata' is your man.

Interested in The Fall...

... but baffled by their prodigious output? Help is at hand...scroll down a little here:

http://www.visi.com/fall/news/fallnews.html

Some people, including my bro, maintain that all their stuff sounds the same.

But I say this: locate Hex or Slates and lock yourself in a room, listening to the words until intrigued. This may not happen, but if it does you´re on your way, and all that other stuff they call music will begin to sound all the same.

Anyways, this website is an inceredible thing. Have a look around.

For instance, here´s JULIA ON WHAT IT´S LIKE TO BE IN:

The first gig was in London, with a crowd of over 2,000. I'd played with What?Noise supporting the Inspiral Carpets with crowds that size, but not as the main band. I revised my book of Fall material that I'd compiled, from bootleg live tapes of the songs the group had been playing in their set over the previous year, which amounted to over 50. The set list wasn't decided until the last minute, as is normal with The Fall. I'd worked out parts for each song, and programmed synth settings. The song arrangements were like modern jazz, all done through what seemed to me like an indecipherable yet beautiful telepathy, that I was determined to learn, but knew there was no way I would crack it in a first performance plus I was sooo nervous...

Scary, eh? 75% of the gigs are terrible, by the way.

Reads

Home of the Blizzard - Douglas Mawson ***1/2
Rather dry narrative of the Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911-1914, in which the leader, Mawson, had a very narrow escape after his two sledging companions perished. Step outside the stiff-upper-lip with Cherry-Garrard´s ´The Worst Journey in The World´: Scott´s last expedition is simultaneously unfolding elsewhere on the continent, and the deaths, drama and soul-searching making for the best travel book ever.

Still Life With Volkswagens - Geoff Nicholson ***
How can you resist a title like that? Barmy pop-novel with no respect for anything really, except VWs.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel ***1/2
For 95% of this book you feel like you´re reading Gerald Durrell meets William Goulding. Then two things become clear: first, Hindus prefer colourful, imaginative stories to the truth simply because the truth is too boring, and second, you´ve been had.

Stupid White Men - Michael Moore *****
Moore is a regular yet supremely courageous guy who wakes us up to a thing we have become shamefully apathetic to: the behaviour of modern Western politicians. The US political class is running the country in its own interest while questions over 9/11 and Iraq remain to be answered. Very inspiring and funny, despite the odd inconsistency.

The Third Policeman *** and The Dalkey Archive ** - Flann O´Brien
I first read these yarns of surreal Irishry some time ago. They have not improved with age.

We Can Build You - Phillip K Dick ***
Starts off as a promising Sci-fi yarn in his ´Blade Runner´ mould, then turns into a dissection of hopeless, pointless love as a form of mental illness. You get the impression that (as was his wont, alcohol- and speed-fueled) Dick stayed up writing madly for days on end, and never bothered to check his output to see if it made any sense: there is no attempt to tie up all the threads (no Booker for this one, then), but there´s bags of imagination, truth and catharsis.

USA - John Dos Passos/Night Letters - Robert Dessaix
Didn´t finish either of these, the former through no fault of its own, as it manifested in a scruffy, smelly old American edition with no appealing features and illegible 6pt text. The latter, a handsome Picador volume, never seemed to perk up, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the ´Night´ of the title is a metaphor for imminent death by incurable disease.

Lonely Planet vs Rough Guides
LP guides look nice and have lots of pics. But you shouldn´t judge a book by its cover, right?

Saturday - Ian McEwan *****
McEwan's dark streak used to be wider than Lou Reed's, but now he's all grown up and there's a kaleidoscope of other colours too. He's possibly the only novelist whose output I've kept abreast with over his whole career, and this is his best book.

Wildlife - Richard Ford ****
An understated, rudderless, sidelong teenage shuffle through baffling parental behaviour. Fans of Raymond Carver look no further.

The Siege of Krishnapur - JG Farrel ****
I know nothing about the history surrounding this tale of beleaguered colonials cut off in the midst of an Indian revolt, but then it´s not really a historical novel, it´s more a comedy of manners in the face of hardship. Kind of unique.

This Accursed Land - Lennard Bickel ***
A narrative account of the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson's Antarctic survival epic in the early 1900's. A bit desperate to impress at first, Bickel eventually lets the story tell itself - a catalogue of mishaps, hardships and almost unbelievable lone misery.

Filth - Ervine Welsh ****
You get the impression here that Welsh has some seriously antisocial dispositions. A deeply unpleasant yet fascinating yarn with a brilliant ending.

An Equal Music – Vikram Seth ***
Pretty good romantic novel with much musical musing chucked in. Much shorter than ‘A Suitable Boy’, which would require excess baggage payments.

Brass – Helen Walsh ***
Racy but impressive chick-lit in the first-novel vein. Interestingly, if you substitute autism for sex and drugs, you have ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time`, although I’m not sure how that fits in with Will Shako’s 17 possible plots.

Love etc - Julian Barnes ***
I like Julian Barnes, he's smart, full of ideas, and here he does it again with the 3-points of view love triangle developed in 'Talking it Over' . But I feel shortchanged: it's too brief, and it cries out for another sequel.

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It - Geoff Dyer **
Kind of unfortunate title for a half-baked assemblage of semi-fiction. This could have been much better.

Heartsongs - Annie Proulx ****
Proulx hones her crafting of the Western short story. Impressive.

Bad Dirt - Annie Proulx *****
Proulx exceeds all expectations of the form. Brilliant.

The Limits of Vision - Robert Irwin ****
One of those picked for its cover. The evil ghoul of household dirt Mucor is held up to scrutiny by a housebound housewife, with the help of a clutch of geniuses of the Western world, very funny.

Ragtime - EL Doctorow *****
Very entertaining, fast paced, semi-historical New York yarn featuring uppety niggers, anarchism, and Harry Houdini. More ideas per page than most novelists even dream of, I suppose.

The Assistant - Berard Malamud ****
Poor-end Jewish New York, 1920's, seen through the eyes of a reformed but hapless character. Accomplished.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness - William Styron **
Embarrassed, autobiographical memoir of descent into severe depression in the pre-SSRI era. Depressing and anachronistic, especially as he names no names when it comes to the drugs that made his condition worse.

Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction - Damien Keown****
Does what it says on the tin. And for a subject worthy of the effort, unlike a sister volume ‘Postmodernism’, which someone gave me because they couldn´t adequately explain it, and succeeded in convincing me further of the increasing dissapearance, in a rectal direction, of the visual arts.

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks *****
Hugely compelling novel about WWI trench warfare, falling in love, and shagging.
Brilliant, although goes on a bit towards the end.

Charlotte Gray – Sebastian Faulks ****
Sequel to Birdsong: WWII, falling in love and shagging, but somehow not fully convincing.

The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire – Hans Eysenck *** but getting on a bit
Eysenck puts the boot into psychoanalysis in general, and Freud in particular. Freud had a vivid imagination and a persuasive case, but made it all up, and psychoanalysts have conspicuously failed to come up with any scientific evidence at all for his theories.

Ballooning over Everest – Leo Dickinson ****
A completely barmy and self-effacing adventurer and film-maker, Dickinson's book is as impressive as his eponymous film, which is required viewing. These guys were really out there.

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane. No stars, one black spot
A fourth-form essay about war, by the tiresome attention-seeker at the front of the class. Given much credence for depicting the realities of the American Civil War, despite the fact that the author was never actually in a war (well at least when he wrote the book), and now totally eclipsed by the real stuff of Hemingway, Orwell and many others. To my misfortune I was caught out in Malaysia with nothing else to read.

© bullybones, natch

Mendoza, Argentina

Crossed the Andes by frog (OK, it was actually a very comfortable bus) yesterday in search of something active to do for a few days. So here I am, amid the fertile land of the grape, the home of fine wines of the sort wot you can buy in Tesco´s.

The journey was interesting. It seems that, as you ascend in the Andes, you go from sparse mediterranean vegetation directly to bare rock, pretty similar to the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, but at twice the altitude. You could see Aconcagua from the road. The thought of climbing it crossed my mind, but it looks like I`ve missed the boat:

• 04/April/06 ACONCAGUA - All Routes
  THIS REPORT IS GENERATED FROM OUR GUIDE'S DALY REPORTS LIVE FROM THE MOUNTAIN, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE PARK'S RANGER STATION DAILY REPORTS. THE PARK IS CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, SO WE WILL DISCONTINUE THIS SERVICE UNTIL NOV. 15th, 2006, DATE WHEN WE REANUDE OUR 2006-2007 SEASON OPERATIONS. WE HOPE THIS REPORT IS USEFULL TO YOU ALL AND WE SEE YOU ON THE "HILL" NEXT SEASON!

Phew, that`s a relief. Last time I went high altitude mountaineering (seems incredible that it will be 20 years ago this year) I had a stroke. Kind of.

Reanude?

Anyway, I keep reminding myself whenever I get tempted by snowy peaks, even moderate-altutude Alpinism is 90% boring drudgery, 9% terror and 1% fulfillment (mostly relief at being still alive afterwards). Plus you get to some really amazing places, of course. If you´re really fit it takes less time and feels easier, but the percentages stay the same. Hardly the driving ambition that one needs to summit Aconcagua, you may think, and you`d be right. Except that, for all its height, the normal route up the mountain is virtually a path, with no technicalities and hardly any avalanche risk.

Proper mountaineers maintain that their high lasts longer the harder it is won. But as any hedonistic crag-rat fule kno, rock climbing has a far superior fun:effort ratio.

There`s some cragging around here, but I cant pin down the guidebook that I know (from the web) exists out there somewhere. The guys in the gear shop in Santiago seemed puzzled that I was looking for it in Chile, and sent me here. Well, here I am after that 7 hour bus journey and I still can`t find it, although there`s a juicy guide to multi-pitch stuff in the mountains on offer. But for that I need a proper partner and not just a random rock-jock hanging around at the crag.

Having a merely rudimentary command of Spanish would help. But it`s a bit late to start those night-school classes now, and learning on the job does tend to focus the mind admirably. Was it Voltaire who said "Communication is not a commodity easily elaborated from groping mispronunciation and random lengths of strained silence. But the language of charm extends beyond mere words." No, I hear you say, Voltaire was French, and would never bother learning another language.

Anyway, Mendoza is a really pleasant city, with wooded avenues and an air of northern European prosperity...I`d compare it to a nice, open Spanish city but I can`t think of one. More like Provence, perhaps. It keeps falling down in earthquakes, and in its current life it features a grid-like street plan put in place after a big quake in 1861. Perhaps I`ll desist from info-foraging, book some sort of hike in the hills for tomorrow, and take in the street-cafe ambience for the rest of the day. ...Two hrs later...crag located, 1 hour distant, in Potrerillos. Good walking too. Bus ticket purchased. Show me a country and I´ll show you a crag. Unless you´re called Thijs, that is.

Currently, this is my schedule: head back to Santiago on Friday and head for San Pedro de Atacama in N Chile (near Camara, the driest place on earth, with good biking and climbing) via:

• plan (a), an overland trip on a backpacker bus. Upsides: get to see plenty of Chile, possibility of meeting many fun and interesting fellow travellers. Downsides: endless hours on a bus, possibility of being stuck with a bunch of total assholes.
• plan (b), becoming ever more appealing, fly to Calama and take a short bus ride from there.
• plan (c): adopt plan (a) with parachute, ready to bail at any point.
• plan (d), go by bus all the way in one go. 25 hours. But the buses are really quite good.
• or plan (e), none of the above. The spontaneous "other idea" option that seems to creep in quite often.

Incidentally, life is not at all cheap in these parts. Budget flight operators are non-existent at present in Chile, and the national carrier LAN have a monopoly. The cheapest accomodation, sharing a dorm in a hostel, a reluctant necessity sometimes, costs about the same as in Europe (ie about 4 times the cost of a private bungalow in Thailand). Hostels can be OK, it all depends on how crowded they are and whether they are overbearingly youth-oriented happening scenes, or not. Of the general bunch, Youth Hostels (as opposed to other ´backpackers´), because they are generally not very trendy, are often paradoxically populated by an older crowd more interested in sleeping after midnight than partying. Basically I need somewhere with enough space and privacy to do the odd yoga headstand and read a book at any hour of the night. Plus about every 3 days, a space that´s approaching the comfort of home, unless I´m camping which is OK for about a week (I´ve definitely gone soft. It´ll be a Winnebago next time round, with a built-in washing machine). Last night I pulled a fast one: I got off the bus at 9:30 pm with a vague plan, but being surrounded by accomodation hawkers, I agreed to go to the YH and was given a free taxi ride. When I got there it was horrible: the only bed available was the wobbliest top bunk ever, in a tiny 5-bed room, no locker and dead grubby. So I wandered off around the corner to find a second hostel (not in the Lonely Planet, incidentally) which was clean, spacious, characterful and almost empty. For the same price, I had a huge 5-bed room all to myself. And a free breakfast was served, indeed. By a most decorative and alluring hostess.

Herewith, anyway/therefore, my emerging Top Tip for S America: use the Lonely Planet to find out where not to stay.

Santiago, Chile

NZ Postscript

Had a day climbing on the roadside sea cliffs of Golden Bay, which are a bit scrappy but worth a look. Dice amd I were now a well-tuned partnership, warming up on 17´s and taking it forth from there. We each led an 18 and 19, and fell off a pair of rubbishy 21´s that we were only doing to push our grade a bit. Then Dice pulled a block off the top while trying to retrieve the last difficult quickdraw. He came hurtling off the top of the cliff, taking a short but harsh (factor 2) fall onto a 2-bolt belay anchor when his handhold pulled. His Prussik knot stopped his fall (always use Prussiks when abseiling, kids). He was out of action for a few days afterwards with a painful kneecap and a limp that prompted questions around the campsite. He´s OK now. But as I has made the same abseil only minutes before and fretted somewhat about the rusty anchor, it was all very unsettling. I don´t trust fixed gear by the sea, especially after hearing horror-stories of bolt failure in Thailand.

Apart from that it was a great day out...

Incidentally Dice´s actual name is Thijs, pronounced Tice, not Thighs...anybody old enough to remember Focus´s Thijs van Leer´s yodelling in Sylvia is assured that his name was not made up.

Next day was rainy in Takada, but looked OK on the coast. I headed up to Farewell Spit, a 12 km sandbar that rounds off Golden Bay. Whales often get beached here. There were tons of black swans and oystercatchers mooching in the shallows as the tide went out. Amazing fact for the day, courtesy of the visitor centre: the bar-tailed godwit migrates from Alaska direct to New Zealand in 7 days. More here: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1742.html and here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524925.700.html

Then drove to Nelson, caught some live music, dropped in on the amazing Castle Hill boulders on the way back to Christchurch, got a parking ticket for parking (get this) the wrong way round on a city street...(somehow I neglected to pay up, but I have planned my defence: your Honour, I admit that I was a fool...I knew the risks of renting a compact, and I should have listened to the spotty youth who threatened me with "Hey Mister, give us a dollar or I´ll let the wardens turn your car round". Interpol are probably on my tail as I write, but I reckon I´ll be OK down here with Butch and Sundance)...and had a frantic night out with a mad dentist from Bristol and one of her patients who she had just bumped into randomly, involving contagious jigging in an Irish pub. I´ll sleep next day on the plane, I thought.

No chance: the 11-hour LANair flight was cramped and cram-packed.

Santiago

Determined to stay up til midnight (check out the town...disappiontingly like any of the scruffier and more industrialised Spanish cities), only now do I realise what a sleep-debt I had tallied up. Yesterday I slept for 18 hours solid. So much for the day I gained crossing the dateline. Only now am I waking up enough to decide what to do around here...

Immediate options include a foray to Mendoza in Argentina, perhaps with a quick look up the valley towards Aconcagua, highest peak in the Americas, en route. Then north to the Atacama Desert, and Bolivia. Maybe a quick nap first...