All the way down South America

OK Blog followers, I know we’ve lost you due to inactivity but we’re going to give you a little glimpse into the last few months and then probably go into radio silence again.

Here's our picasa picture link if you just want to see our pics!  

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard

Our highlights have been spectacular, on Ginny’s first real dive in the open water in the Galapagos she had a Hammerhead shark swim right up to her, take a peek and swim off.  I had already been diving twice in this spot and not seen a shark, go figure, she went and one comes up and introduces himself!  Along with the Galapagos Sharks and White Tipped Sharkes, we saw graceful alien-like spotted eagle rays, sea turtles, tortoises, sea iguanas fighting and then having make-up sex, flamingos, and countless fish.  In another rare event, we got to snorkel with Angel, our host, and help him catch an Octopus, which continued to latch onto our arm with its suction for 30 minutes after it was dead.  We then cooked it up into an amazing ceviche, garnished with cold beer and popcorn.

To squeeze each day out of Ecuador before our 90 days expired we went to Cusco to buy a Panama Hat and run down to Vilcabama the “Land of Longevity” where the Hostel Iztchacumba exists.  This place is a German run Spa for $10 a night, with stone showers, immaculate rooms, phenomenal views, stupendous food, and an $18 dollar one hour massage!  If you ever go to Ecuador, it is a must stay. Here we took a horse back ride through the forest and hiked to a beautiful waterfall.  It was on this trip that Dan was hand picked to ride the "unruly" horse.  Being the biggest guy in the group, the guides wanted Dan to make the horse work a little harder on the ride since it had escaped the night before to have a little romp with one of the mares.  Lisa, you'll appreciate this: on this trip we ate the best mango ever!

We left Ecuador on our 90^th day, avoiding having to pay any visa fees, for Peru.  After 20 or so hours on buses, we caught a quick flight from Lima to Cusco where we were greeted by unprecedented rains that flooded the valley and wiped out the trails that lead to Macchu Picchu. While waiting for the rains to subside and the state of emergency surrounding us to cease, we spent our time in the lovely city of Cusco.  We went to a Coca Shop that demonized America and deforestation, claimed that America was stealing the coca culture from the Andean people only to selfishly profit from it via Coca Cola.   We bought some chocolates made with Coca from the man who ran the shop…..who behaved as if he was constantly on cocaine! 

After hearing that MP had been closed to tourists for three months, we decided that we would have to hit the Inca ruins on the way back from our trip.  Onward we went to the city of Arequipa surrounded by 15,000 foot peaks and home to a convent, more like a Citadel, made for only the wealthiest families chaste daughters.  From there we did a four day trek to Colca Canyon, the second deepest in the world.  On the 1^st day, it was 5 hours of straight downhill under sunny hot skies.  On the 2^nd day, it was 5 hours up, and an additional 3 more to see a majestic waterfall; on the 3^rd day, we climbed for 4 hours down where we saw other travelers for the first time since starting the trek and swam in a super cold pool which you could see the whole sweaty hot hike down, making the swim glorious!  Our bodies were quite fatigued and sore after three intense days of trekking throughout the canyon, and on our final day, our climb was straight up, 1000 meters and 8,000 steps later, (I counted to keep my mind off the struggle) we made it to the top in 2hours40 minutes!  Afterwards, we went to a restaurant, and our guide had Ginny dress up in the local dress, and man she looked gorgeous in that multicolored magnificence!

 

Chile was the next great adventure where we had planned to plunge from the north into the freezing Patagonian south via the driest dessert in the world and the Capitol.  However, Chile kicked us out early with its 8.8 earthquake felt in San Pedro De Atacama where we were asleep at 3:30 in the morning of Feb 27^th.  Due to the craziness brought on by the earthquake, we had to switch gears.  While in the Atacama Desert I went sand boarding while Ginny watched and I firmly solidified my desire to never to do it again!  After a 20 minute walk up the windy sand dune, carrying your board which you have to use a candle to wax before each go, to experience a 10 second tumble down, leaving sand stuck to all the sweaty areas,  and 3 days of sand in the ears, it was determined that ever going again was out of the question.  After sand boarding, we did get to see one of the most majestic sunsets of the trip.  God seems to have made all the mountains and rocks here with salt, even the dirt is a salt mixture. We saw the Tatio Glaciers at sunrise and swam in hot springs, which were anything but hot!  We went to the Salt Flats to see the flamingos fly, which Ginny and I didn’t even know was possible! Yes, flamingos fly!  They also do a Flamenco dance in order to stir up the microscopic shrimp they eat.  When we arrived at the largest salt flat, it was unlike anything we’d ever seen.  The super white, super flat, salt flats looked like a snowy/icy covered beach.  Here we took a great picture, "Ginny in the palm of my hand!" We swam in a lagoon that had 3 times the salinity of the Ocean, making us float like a fishing bobber!  We toasted to the beauty and drank our pisco sours while floating on invisible lounge chairs.  No matter how hard you tried to push your shoulders under the water, they would instantaneously pop back up!  It was wild!  (A Pisco Sour is like a margarita so salt immersion was very convenient.)

Argentina has been amazing!  We took a gondola to the high point of Salta to enjoy the green views and had one of our best meals in the square: a Malbec wine, cheese, and Filet mignon wrapped in bacon, (EVERYTHING is better with bacon), starting our Argentinean experience off marvelously! Cordoba was beautiful with the Che Guevera Museum and a cute little City called Alta Gracia.  Che was quite the Champion of the people.

Buenos Aries had us run into an older gentleman how worked for a pesticide company. Instantly upon asking him his profession he launched into his defense of the importance of his work.  “It’s easy for the people of Argentina to say pesticides are bad but they are not starving in Africa, are they?” He told us to be careful because we had USA stamps on our forehead on account of eating lunch too early…11 am.  He was very nice though. He informed us that we eat way too early in the U.S.  “What, you eat around 6pm or 7pm, right? Here, we don’t eat until at least 9pm, but more like 10 or 11pm.”  We didn’t stay long in B.A, but we will be returning shortly.  We left some of our luggage here, so we could trek with all the new camping gear we bought for the tundra!!!!!

We were greeted by the beautiful Patagonia winds the minute we stepped outside! Although we started our travels in Alaska, we didn’t set up a tent in Alaska, only warm cruise ship cabins.  There is something to be said about pitching a tent in 40 degree weather with high winds and sleep on a ground WITHOUT mats, waking up, walking 3.5 hours and being at the foot of massive peeks with mini glaciers at their feet, of which are feeding into two lagoons with gloriously turquoise water that tastes like snow, to make you feel nature at its best. It wasn’t just the fabulous Fitz Roy that impressed us, it was the huge black woodpecker, a lush valley spotted with lakes and a river running through it all, and chatting with people along the way, always speaking English with an accent.  Prior to our trek to Fitz Roy, we took a bus to see the Glacier Perito Moreno where we got to see massive calving into the glacial lake below it.  The Glacier face was upwards of 240 feet and to see the ice chunks crash down was unreal.  There was even a warning sign posted about 30 people dying from being too close.  We made sure to keep our distance, but we were all ears and eyes awaiting the calving glacier.   

Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine National Park

We were blessed with excellent weather! My Grandmother keeps saying that she’s praying for us and we haven’t had any major problems, but when one goes to Patagonia, knock down winds, rain, and possibly snow are expected. When we got to Natales, which is about 3 hours from the Park, there were wind gusts of up to 50 mph, pushing you every which way.  When we got to the Park, it was perfect! There was not a cloud in the sky!  We were graced with blue skies and minimal wind and it lasted until our last day.  The hiking was great.  The first day we headed towards the main attraction of “Torres del Paine,” which is the three towers three miles northwest of the first campsite.  It’s a nice hike that follows a river along the sides of mountains and through thick conifer trees, leading you to the side of a rocky mountain that you have to scale for 50 minutes before you get to the awesome towers, looking down at a glacial pool that bleeds off into a huge rushing river.  The water is drinkable and tastes just like snow! We stayed for an hour taking pictures, eating and drinking our plastic water bottle full of Bailey’s, which we brought to celebrate each time we made it to our goal!  Nothing like incentive to help you finish a climb! After our trek, we headed back to our camp site and made a crucial decision to forgo hanging out in our tent and head into the resort style hotel to have beers and a $20 plate of fries loaded with chicken beef and sausage.  We knew that it would be a few days before we could indulge, so we honored our first full day of hiking in style!  We went to our tent to go to bed where the birds had decided to eat the bread in the bag we had hung to a tree to keep the mice from getting into our tent in search of our food.  Sleep that night was interrupted with freezing cold noses and toes!  We woke up the next day and set out to conquer the "W" trek.

The scenery was breathtaking with the granite mountain walls standing tall, protecting everything below, the green perfectly shaped bonzai trees surrounding the lake with such contrasting colors no picture could ever do justice, the turquoise clear glacier water in the lifeless lake forming waves without anything solid detracting from the beauty of the translucent water, and the snow capped mountain peeks with their thundering avalanches, warning everything below of its powerful dominance,  made clear that nothing is more magnificent than God's amazing design.