Next one...

Looks good that Lake Tahoe in March will be my next vacation...skiing! Again, after a couple years away.

Foods I Miss Already

Foods I miss from the vacation so far are:

Cherimoya

Apparently during our vacation, it was cherimoya season so we had things like cherimoya mousse, cherimoya juice, cherimoya sorbet, and straight fruit. It was wonderful, one of the waiters described is as a custard apple. If anyone knows where I can find some in the Houston area, please let me know. I'd like to make the mousse again (it was my favorite, but that may be because that was also the free drink portion of the evening at one of the nice hotels in Argentina.)Here's the Wikipedia explanation of what exactly cherimoya is---

Cherimoya ( Annona cheirimola P. Mill. ) is an absolutely wonderful fruit which is becoming better known in the United States . It is now produced in limited amounts in Southern California . It is thought to be native to southern Ecuador and northern Peru , and is related to some fruits in the same genus which grow in more tropical areas. Cherimoya was probably taken to other parts of the world hundreds of years ago, so it is especially well known in Asia as well as throughout South and Central America . It is produced rustically in many parts of the world, but it is produced in commercial plantings only in semi-tropical areas of Spain , Chile , Peru , California , New Zealand , Australia , and Israel .

Some closely related species are produced in more tropical areas. Atemoya is an interspecies hybrid of cherimoya and sugar apple ( Annona squamosa ). The fruit has some qualities of cherimoya, and grows in hotter, more humid areas where cherimoya cannot be grown, in Florida , Hawaii , Australia , and Israel . Guanabana ( Annona muricata ) is grown throughout tropical South and Central America . It is larger than cherimoya, but has more fibrous flesh, and a very tart flavor. It is better suited to processing, especially into drinks, than to eating fresh. Paw paw ( Asimina triloba L.) is the only Annonaceae species native to North America, in valleys in the middle and eastern U.S.



I also miss:


Corn Empanadas

They made these empanadas with a really thick crust with a kind of cheese grits tasting filling. They grilled them over a fire and it was fantastic.

Pisco

Overall, this makes a really good mixed drink. It goes with Coke; it goes with something that makes it like a margarita, but with foam on the top; it is really strong.

Lesser foods that I miss:

Chupe de centolla

It's like a cheesy seafood stew/casserole. Centolla is king crab and this casserole just full of cheesy goodness. It was my favorite thing I had on the visiting penguins day. Of course it was about 20 degrees in the city closest to Antarctica, but it was perfect after a really windy day.

Argentine beef

It really is as good as they say it is. They don't age the beef, it is just tender and juicy wherever you go. It was better the further south that you go.

Manjar/dulce de leche

People in South America put this on their morning toast. It's a lot better than Vegemite, which is what the British and Australians put on their bread. It's caramel.

A Couple More Pictures and Penguins...

On the way out of the country we stopped by one of the closest cities to Antarctica and saw some penguins! You would think that they would have this as a major tourist destination (i.e. easy to get to, etc.) but no, you have to travel 30 min. down a paved road, then 45 minutes down an unpaved road, followed by another 30 minutes of driving along a VERY bumpy beach. Then you have to hide behind these fortress like things because the penguins will (and trust me, they do) run from you if you approach them. We had one 12 year old kid with us in our group and he kept running after them and they would all leave and dive back in the water. We wanted to kill the kid by the end of the excursion. But it was cute how they'd ride the waves back in and waddle up on-shore.

The other pictures I'm posting are one of the neat shapes that mountains take in that part of the world-these are called the "horns of Paine". Also included is Nicolas, our fearless guide who led us on the hike we thought we'd never come back from.

A Picture from the Odyssey

This is the shot of the Massif after coming up that last hill and before we climbed the cliffs. (When we thought the end was near.)

Lost...in Torres de Pain(e) Part 2

O.K., don't read this second part without reading Part 1 first, you won't fully understand what we went through. I'm posting a couple of pictures so you have to go down and find the next part. One is my sister posing early on in the hike and one is of a guanaco (a guanaco is like a llama) and lots live here. We've actually seen more guanaco carcasses than live guanacos which is scary. It's like the killing fields here, they get massacred by pumas at night.

So on with the story. Here's a recap: we're on a day-long hike which is supposed to be around 5 hours that stretches into 14. We've had lunch, hiked and hiked and hiked and hiked and plotted ways to kill the guide who lied and told us it was easy. So finally we see Lake Sarmiento and we're SO HAPPY!! It's the largest lake in the park and has these distinctive calcium carbonate cliffs. Lake Sarmiento's supposed to be the end. But we have to go down the hill and into a valley and here's the big problem. We start going down this really long valley that leads to the lake and after hiking for an hour I start thinking, but don't we have to CROSS Lake Sarmiento where it separates from it's other half? But after going down the valley of death (there are THOUSANDS of guanaco bones here) I think, oh, we're following a path, SOMEONE knows how to get us back. Oh no. We come out at the opposite END of Lake Sarmiento and have to hike along the cliffs to get back to where it connects with the road. So we are literally clinging onto these calcium carbonate cliffs, climbing up and down for 2 hours to get back to where we have to get across. My palms are sweating even writing this, I can't believe I did it. We were on calcium carbonate, a path?! as wide as my shoe, hanging onto the rock wall with nothing but ocean about 100 yards down. You know how sometimes when you look at a cliff and all you see are those horizontal lines showing the different rock stratas? That's what we had to climb across for 2 hours. Already tired and having gone 17 km. My muscles were shaking. I thought I'd turn around and my sister would be gone, having fallen. And Nicolas, our fearless guide, kept running on ahead to make sure the path was safe because apparently at least part of the way we were following a GUANACO path, not a human path. It's about at this point in time where Nicolas comes back and says we have to hurry, we have to make it before the sun goes down. I know why... there are pumas that live around this lake and would probably love a human snack. It's also at this point where Nicolas confesses that we took a wrong turn at the swamp and he's so sorry that he's gotten us into this. I was just like, but you can get us out right? He said yes, there is a way. Finally we get around the lake and slide down a cliffside on our butts, ripping the hell out of our pants. Then we climb one final fearsome hill (still no path) and get on the half day path, that we've done before, finally! And it's dark by now and I am panicking. I keep telling Nicolas to slow down, we have to wait for my sister and that we need to all stay together. And I keep calling to my sister, hurry! She said later that she knew she had to kick it up a notch because she could tell I was in panic mode and that all I could think of was pumas. Finally we could see the van lights and I asked Nicolas to radio to have him blow the horn, maybe I was thinking to scare the pumas off? And he tells me, they don't have horns, they disable them because they can't use them in the park. Then right before we get to the van all these dark shapes come up to us and basically we're accosted by a family of nandu/yandu? The van driver said they are wild ostriches. What a crazy way to end the day. I drank 2 Cokes in the van and hugged the van driver (who spoke no English and I'm sure was totally weirded out by having this panicked American girl hugging him). When we got back to the hotel I hugged Nicolas like 3 times and thanked him for getting us out of there right in the nick of time after it got dark. Then I thanked God for getting us out. So 13 hours and 38 minutes later, we end our odyssey. Today I can barely move. My arms don't want to do any work since I used my poles all of yesterday to climb and my legs are all cut up from the calcium cliffs. So I'm on the internet today. Have a great day everyone! Be glad you're not lost in Towers of Pain National Park!

Lost...in Torres de Paine

So we've crossed the border and are $100 poorer in Torres de Paine National Park in Chile. It's a beautiful country with really dramatic mountain peaks that do not look like the mountains we're used to AT ALL. We're staying at the I would say luxury resort called Explora (Hotel Salto Chico) for 4 days. So we went on our first full day hike yesterday with a great guide named Nicolas. (More about Nicolas later, basically he saved our lives). It was SUPPOSED to be 17 kilometers. It ended up being 24 km, about 4 km. along the edge of a cliff.

The first part, basically everything until lunch went great. It was a walk to Lakal/Sarmiento, which are two lakes in the region. The first part was a little hard, about a 250 meter climb uphill. But they had warned us and we were ready. Then we walked on, up and down these hills until lunch, which we had after Lake Lakal. Lake Lakal was not the best looking lake in the region. Basically, it was formed when a glacier carved out a niche in the valley and is continually evaporating. After all the turquoise, gray, bright blue lakes we've seen so far, Lake Lakal looked like Buffalo Bayou. So we have this picnic lunch the hotel makes and all along the way we've been chatting with Nicolas, he just graduated from a university in Santiago (apparently there are something like 15 universities in Santiago). He loves being down here and exploring these hills. He's been down here 3 months and is just a totally great fun guide.

So after lunch is where our problems occur. We have to cross a valley which in this region means there's a stream running through it. So we get down there and it is like a swamp. We slog through all this marsh grass in our hiking boots (BTW, Nike makes a great pair of hiking shoes, trust me, they got me through this-they have been tested in the roughest conditions. But, they're going in the trash as soon as I leave this hotel.) Nicolas has to MAKE a bridge over the water with a dead tree. Now in reflection, this is where I should have started to be suspicious. How is a bridge going to be washed away in a little stream plus a marsh? So clearly, we've taken a wrong turn, which is going to continue to escalate. Plus we're not seeing any more orange markers, which mark the trail. But I don't notice this yet. Then we climb up this (I call it scree) slope, basically straight uphill--no path, but I'm still not concerned because Nicolas is still pushing ahead and well we're on this sedimentary rock so there's really nowhere to put a marker. That slope sucked-I called it the horrible hill. It was about 200 meters straight up. But we get over it and just go through about 4 hours of climbing hills and circumventing them and we're following a path (more on that later) so we're like, the guy who told us this was the easy day hike is a DEAD man and planning on how to kick his ass. Finally after crossing another marsh, we climb straight up another huge hill and at the top is the MOST INCREDIBLE view of the Grand Paine (aka grand pain) Massif and the Cuernos (the horns) of Pain(e) and in front of us is Lake Sarmiento (yay, that's where we've been trying to get to!) I'm actually going to split up this posting and stop here because the worst is yet to come....

Glaciers, etc.

Here´s a few pictures of the Andes, glaciers, etc.