Don't let the bed bugs bite

A proliferous bug that popluates warm climates is the infamous bed bug. Check out the carnage that they did on Jason's shoulder. Janice escaped with a minor number of bites. Incredulous as she is normally the one bitten.

Although they bite more than once leaving a line of bites behind, they don't itch as much as mosquitoes and are only really annoying in quantity.

After their attack on Jason we declared war and took their numbers down a bit, spending an hour hunting for them in the crevices in the bed frame. The hostel insisted that we move to a recently fumigated room after looking at Jason's shoulder, which was much better and we only got bitten by mosquitoes.

We're happier to be moving on to a cooler and hopefully more bug free climate in Bariloche.

Janice (from Mendoza)

P.S. The hostel where we were staying at picked up the war where we left off and fumigated our room. Hopefully we don't take any with us ........

Moving on up in the world

We arrived in Cordon del Plata and stayed at a small refugio for a few nights. Each day we hiked higher and higher following the dog "El Perro" who lived at the refugio. After acclimitazing for three days, we felt very prepared and ready to climb some big peaks in Cordon del Plata. We took more time to acclimatize than most people we met. Surely we would not experience typical altitude sickness symptoms such as loss of appetite, nausea, or headaches now.

Day 1: Trundle to our camp 1 with very very very heavy packs. Pass out exhausted. El perro follows us up, can't shake him. We decided not to feed him to encourage him to leave us.

Day 2: Make our way to camp 2, Janice got sick in the morning, but we managed to make it by late afternoon. El perro is still there after spending a miserable night, broke down and gave him some food. Hope he goes home soon.

Day 3: Rest day, do nada. El perro shivers as the snow starts to fall. Luckily some climbers that know him finally convince him to leave our sides and head back down. We are so thankfull that he is gone, not a fun place for a dog.


Day 4: Summit attempt on Vallecitos, start at 4 am. Janice gets sick on the way up, has to turn around. Jason summits without her. Make it back before it starts to snow.

Day 5: Rest day, move camp 400 m higher to keep summit attempt #2 short. Got to Hoyada, and winded ourselves building a huge rock wall.


Day 6: Summit attempt #2, near success. Janice feels unwell and turns around about 5 meters from the summit. Good enough.


Day 7: Winds become very strong in the valley. We were considering climbing Plata, but decided to call it quits. Janice had been sick for most of days and had had enough. Celebrate Christmass eve, Janice made Jason hot chocolate, Jason made Janice a fire with the only fuel in abudance, cow patties.

Day 8: Get down to the Refugio and enjoy a hot shower. Eat the remainder of our left over food for Christmas. It was so good that Janice fed half of hers to the dogs.

Now we are in Mendoza, recovering, eating gigantic quantities and Jason is sick .... again, but he is on the mend : )

Janice was so excited about being able to eat that she often ate more than Jason and made sure her diet included lots of ice cream, steak, and fresh fruits and vegetables!

En Espanol

After the first week of our trip, which we spent sick, we got crackin' on our Spanish.

We took a one week course with BA Spanish Program. It's been amazing how much we have learned in the last week. Getting a room in a house with native Spanish speakers who speak a little English has also significantly helped to speed the learning process.

While our little house wasn't as clean or as "nice" i.e. new and modern as our hostel (America del Sur), we liked staying at the hose as lot more. It was cosier, prettier, and we really enjoyed having more privacy and comforts that kind of made it like home with housemates that we got to know better than our hostel mates who often only stayed a couple of nights. Not to mention we had an amazing multicourse BBQ on the rooftop terrace with chicken heart/necks/liver, pork chops, 1/2 chicken, filet mingon, NY striploin and to finish it all off BBQ'd bananas, pineapple and mango. Needless to say we didn't move for a while.

Stay tuned for pictures with this post.

Now, we are off to Cordon del Plata to do some trekking in the mountains, just east of Aconcogua.

Chau,

Janice

A juicy steak and a not so juicy cemetary.

Janice isn't feeling too hot today after catching what I had a couple of days ago. I continue to be a sharing partner. ;-)
So I've taken it upon myself to spend the next while sharing a few photos from the city and the Recoleta cemetary in particular.
We started off the trip to Buenos Aires with a trip to a little steakhouse named El Desnivel (a steakhouse is called a parilla - pronounced roughly par-ee-zha; "zha" has a hint of a "j" sound in it somehow... haven't quite got that figured out just yet). A huge portion of juicy tender "bife de chorizo" (New York striploin-style cut) can be had here for 45 pesos (about 11 CAD). Not cheap by Argentine standards, but a cut like this in Canada would be $30 and up at any restaurant, and to get something of comparable quality I'd say you'd be looking at about $40-50.

The next morning we got up and wandered around, going to a steet market where vendors would be making things at the same time as they would be watching their things.

Then it was off to find the Cemetary in Recoleta. On the way, I spotted the huge obelisk standing tall against a sky of haze, which created a halo around the sun.

We also came across a beautiful park with the most amazing tree in full bloom. Most of the others are in a state of falling leaves/blooms but this one was standing up to all the non-believers and keeping it's blooms for as long as possible. I haven't found out what type of tree this is, but I'll have to find out at some point.

On the other side of the park there was a local football match going on. I couldn't help but try and capture an action shot.



After we finally staggered into the cemetary in the sweltering heat, we weren't disappointed. I kind of wish we would have gotten a tour through this cemetary, as I'm sure it would have made more sense but it was kind of cool and kind of eery to be touring through and looking at all the caskets and different sculptures. If you're ever in BA, it's definitely worth a visit.

Yes, I think this guy is actually in the casket....

We have arrived, 39 hours later ....

After all the delays, we arrived in Buenos Airies 39 hours after we left Calgary. We napped, had some food and water, and then went for a relaxing walk around the city. Restaurants here do not open until about 8 pm, so we had a late dinner at 10 pm at Delniver. The food was amazing! Home made spinach pasta, a large, thick juicy steak, a Russian meat and salad appetizer and half a litre of house wine. All for $33 US including a generous tip. Our future dinners will have to be more low key to keep to our budget, but it was a nice treat after such a long haul.

Testing Testing 1... 2... 3... is this on?

So I'm new to this whole blogging thing. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. But it took a heck of a long time before I caved. Like that means anything.... Sometimes I find it hard to take people who blog seriously. It's as if they think they're these amazing writers who should win a Pulitzer for writing about how much they love their cat or how much they are grossed out when they see someone in the car beside them picking their nose... or some random uselessness that.... I mean come on.... nobody wants to read about that crap. And look at you, reading about me ranting about people writing about useless things. 


The real reason that I caved and started this blog thing is that Janice and I are heading to South America for around 8 months. I figure this will be way more efficient than sending email updates to friends and family, and who knows, maybe some randoms will even stumble across this and have a laugh.... or perhaps cry at the atrocious writing that is the fate of an engineering background. Well, that's my excuse anyway. I'm a nerd, not an arts major. But I still flip a mean burger, just not at a restaurant.... well, yet, anyway.


We're leaving Nov 27 and will return around the end of July next year (2011). We've started to learn Spanish, and now I'm busy packing all the stuff around the house in preparation for leaving. I was pretty sure that we got rid of a lot of stuff last year when we moved but I still find myself cursing that we've got WAY too many things! We're like squirrels, burying stuff all over the place and forgetting where we put it. Saving things for that rainy day that never comes. Well, okay we're not that bad but I swear we have WAY more stuff than we need. If anybody needs anything for their house or knows where a guy could store a vehicle for cheap then let me know. I'll love you more.


Anyway, it's dinner time and I'm starving. And this is long enough for my first foray into the blogging world.


JW