NOT DEAD . . . Again

Greetings Readers,

Yes, there were more earthquakes in Chile today. No, we are not in Chile. Yes, we did feel them. Yes, we are all okay. Worry not dear ones! More info to come soon.

Love!

Morgan and Doug and Cynthia

Ushuaia Trek

For simplicity's sake I am going to pretty much transcribe my moleskin notes, with some minor changes, for you here so that you can catch up with what's been going down so far. This means that this entry will be both poorly written and unfunny. Please bear with me. Now the set up is thus: I am waiting alone in the Rio Gallegos bus station to catch my 36 hour bus ride to Cordoba so that I can hop on a plane to Chicago and hopefully charm my way into Northwestern. Without further ado I present idiot ramblings:

Sitting in the bus terminal if Rio Gallegos again. A lot has changed since my first night here. We left Bariloche with the intention of heading all the way south to Ushuaia and then working our way back north. And that's what we did . . . kind of.

We did make it all the way down to Ushuaia and did a few days of sitting around before getting our act together enough to begin our trek, Paso del Oveja. It was supposed to be a three day trek through the high valley behind Ushuaia. We opted to add on a trip to Glacier Vinciguerra on the first day. The Glacier and lake below it were beautiful. I think that was my first real glacier experience, that I can remember anyway. Unfortunately, it rained most of the first day and even though we dropped our packs in the bushes before we made our final ascent to the glacier, everything we had was wet. After the glacier we had to make a decision as to whether to try the harrowing pass over the next ridge and down to Laguna Encantada where we thought we would camp or to try and go back the way we came. Now, I should tell you the trail up was very muddy and slippery on our way up. And after all this rain it was very apparent that trying to go back down would be some sort of mucky mayhem I was not interested in. So after some initial hesitation and waffling on my part, we decided to go up and over.

The pass was without a trail and really consisted of us spreading out and looking for footprints or other signs of human life. Eventually we made it down into the forest although we were all already soaked. We continued towards the lake but when we came to the edge of the protection of the trees, Cyndi and I said NO. Doug dropped his pack and went ahead to check out the campsites at the lake. His report was dismal and we decided to continue down towards the path we would need to take tomorrow to continue the trek. Along the way we decided to camp on the side of the trail, not really kosher but it was a necessity.

We were all soaking wet and freezing so someone had the brilliant idea to try and start a small fire. We were not in an official park area so there was no clear direction as to the legality of this action. Cyndi was put in charge of fire making. Her skills up until this point were untested . . . except for a failed venture at the camp ground in Puerto Madryn. This time, she was a little too good at her job and she got a tad overzealous with the fuel. The fire she had manages to start in a dry patch under a large fallen tree got too big for its small space and began to catch the log above it. It was quickly decided that as nice as the fire had been for the first few minutes, we needed to put it out. We dumped out most of our water putting out the fire and had to roll the tree over to assure Cyndi that she would not be responsible for some sort of major forest fire incident. In retrospect, I'm not sure what we were thinking but at least we know Cyndi has some mad skills when it comes to starting fires is wet conditions.

While Cyndi was managing el fuego, Doug and I were preparing dinner. We ate hamburger patties, bread, cucumber, cilantro, and tomato with mustard and salsa de golf (a ketchup mayo combination that ends up tasting a little like thousand islands). Although, not in any hamburger like style, more piecemeal. It tasted amazing, probably not because of the actual quality but more because we were starving. It rained all through dinner and we decided that due to the weather and the untested quality of Cyndi’s new second hand sleeping bag the night would be better spent sharing a tent the three of us. We then delegated Cyndi’s tent as the stuff tent and began to make preparations for bed.

All wet clothes had to be removed prior to entering the sleeping tent so the protocol for entry became something like this: crouch down in entry way of tent, strip to underwear (maybe long, maybe not), fall over at least one to two times, try to scrape off mud and twigs accumulating on your butt, hand clothes out to someone who would run them to the stuff tent, stumble clumsily into the tent leaving all manner of wetness and dirt outside. Due to a situation with sleeping pads and a number of other factors, we decided that Doug should sleep in the middle. This worked out well for him in the end as you will soon see. We stayed up for a while playing guessing games and talking. It was so much fun, like your first sleep over away from home with no parents to tell you to go to bed. Unfortunately, it rained all night and because we were three people in a two person tent, Cyndi and I’s sleeping bags were pressed against the wall, and the condensation on the tent dripped through and got our bags pretty wet. Lucky Doug managed to stay dry.

During our slumber party powwow we decided to bag the rest of the trek since the rain wasn’t letting up and we had no way of getting our stuff to dry out. The hike out that morning wasn’t too bad but we had to walk a good part of the way back down the road towards Ushuaia. Waiting for the cab to come, we could smell the Sunday asados (large family bbq’s) being prepared along the way. The scent of roasting meats wafting across the way is pretty torturous when you are crawling out of the wilderness after a cold night but we continued on with visions of tenedor libre (literally, “free fork” or all you can eat steakhouses) in our heads.

So ends the story of our Ushuaia trek. More entries to come!

Follow-up videos.

I wanted to include this video of Doug Cliff Jumping in Mindo. enjoy

Strait of Magellan through Torres del Paine

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Bariloche and Trekking

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Bariloche Trek: The end of Day 2 and Day 3

Note: For Day 1 and Day 2 of this trek please see Cyndi's blog and Doug's blog.

Day 2: After a very long day with two arduous climbs and slippery descents we are all more than a little tuckered out. We were also suffering from grunger (grumpy-hunger) so severe we were functioning at the level of four year olds which should have precluded us from using matches let alone a temperamental and wholly unreliable camping stove . . . but it didn't. After fumbling with the stove for a while, and by a while I mean at least an hour, we finally got some water boiling.

Our plan was to make what we fondly refer to as "Sh** in a pot" or "stuff in a pot" depending on who is saying it. What this means is we probably collected a number of different canned items (in this case lentils and peas) some sort of carbohydrate (brown rice), meat (tuna), and some form of seasoning (a chicken and vegetable bullion cube) and cook it all up together in the pot. Well, the other times we have tried it, this has actually turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, the can of tuna we used was about the fishiest thing I have ever experienced, and I've spent countless hours at aquariums and gone scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef so that's really saying something.

It pretty much single handedly ruined dinner and if it weren't for the fear of starvation I think we probably would have thrown it out. In order to try and make it edible we doused it in chimichuri seasoning which didn't make it tasted good but it did make it swallowable. I ate only enough to stop the pain in my stomach. Doug and Cyndi tried to eat a second serving just to get rid of it and both gave up part way through. At least it was enough to let us fall asleep.

Day 3: There are only a few photos from this day. Mostly because we just wanted to get out of there and find some food. This is sad because it really was a beautiful day. Our exit included lovely waterfalls, a river crossing with rope and rock hopping, and leapfrogging with another group that included some of our friends from Hostel Patagonia. We walked down through a lovely valley along a clear blue river carrying the glacial waters down to the lakes of Bariloche. Some of the forest was beautiful thick pine and some was light bamboo with paper thin leaves (no pandas). Our bad attitudes and need to complain kept bringing us down and we really weren't enjoying our hike down. Everything we did was about getting us out of there and were losing sight of the experience.

It was getting extremely hot and we were becoming very uncomfortable. At one point, climbing

slowly down a sandy and dangerous slope Cyndi glanced over the edge down towards the river and said "Let's jump in." Now some of you may not know this but Cliff Jumping is becoming a clan tradition among the three of us so as soon as she said it we knew we had to do it. Our first jump (to right, that little pink blot in the waterfall is me) was the summer we met in Ecuador, during our visit to the cloud forest town of Mindo. Our most recent was this last summer when we took an expedition to Emerald Pools near Truckee off I-80 outside Sac-town. As usual, Doug went first after I headed down to scope out the depth of the jump zone (that's right, I'm the safety inspector. Yes, we have one of those. We're not entirely crazy). There are no photos of this jump because we had no bathing suits so we jumped in our skivvies. Needless to say, this family tradition never fails to bring us closer together and wake us up to the amazing world around us. And that water is soooooo cold!!!!

The rest of the hike was much more manageable after being cooled off by the river. This did not prevent us from getting lost at the end of the day when we could not find the town where we were supposed to come out. Tensions rose as we became more confused after happening upon an unmarked road. We reverted to our hot and whiny state. Luckily, we were able to hitch a ride in the back of a pick up to the nearest bus station back to Bariloche proper. While waiting for the bus we made a daring road crossing to get to a little Kiosko that sold cold water and Popsicles and we felt better after that.

All in all it was a very successful trek. You can check out my photos in the Bariloche and Trekking album on my shutterfly account through the slide shows I post every now and then. Another post coming soon regarding all the goodness that has gone on since that first trek . . . including a trip to the end of the earth, a failed trek, what is possibly the most beautiful park in South America, and a whirlwind adventure back to the Windy City, Chicago, my first grad school acceptance (woohoo!!!), and my first grad school rejection (UCLA can kiss my bum).

Loves!

NOT DEAD

Greetings Readers,

I do apologize for my extremely long absence. I am alive and well. I promise there are some serious postings and photos to come . . . most likely tomorrow. I will explain everything . . . maybe. In the meantime, please just accept my apologies and don't give up on the blog yet.

Hearts,

Morgan

Bariloche and Trekking

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A Quick Update

Greetings All,

Just wanted to let you all know that we are safe and well. Clearly our trek was pretty intense as it has taken me two days to drag myself across the floor to the computer to let you all know. I hope to be posting a more in-depth entry on our adventure soon. I will be covering the 2nd day dinner fiasco through our safe return. For the first part of the journey you will need to read Cyndi and Doug's blogs (I will provide links when I hear that they have actually completed their entries . . . we're all a little worn out).

At any rate, I will supply you with a quick overview of our upcoming week in case I am unable to get back to you.

Monday: Go to bus station, finagle some tickets from the bus company that we already bought them from online. Hopefully try and take make a trip up the gondola here in Bariloche to do the hike and see the vista they call the 17 Kilometer. It's supposed to be one of the best views around. If it's not clear enough for that, we will take a ferry to one of the islands out here that has a cinnamon forest. All the trees are very red in color and it was the forest that inspired the forest in the famous Disney classic Bambi.

Tuesday: Hang out until our night bus for Comodoro Ridavia (or something like that). Bus to Comodoro

Wednesday: Arrive in Comodoro at 8 am. Wait for our bus to Rio Gallegos which leaves at 12:30. Get in to Rio Gallegos at 11:59pm

Thursday: 12:15 am set up guard station in bus station, take shifts keeping watch, sleep when you can. 8:30 am catch third and final bus to Ushuaia (the southern most Argentinian city on the tip of Tierra del Fuego). Arrive at 8:00 pm. Find a hostel.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep you posted but travel days usually mean no interwebs. Again, I'll try and post on the trek soon and include links to Cyndi and Doug's blogs. In the meantime, enjoy some of the new photos I've posted on Shutterfly.

Love to all!

South America Adventure . . . So it begins

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One More Thing

Our last few days have been incandescently beautiful and extremely difficult due to a number of personal and family tragedies. I know the spirit of this blog is usually cheerful/comedic/completely and utterly ridiculous but I'd like to take this moment to encourage each of you to think about how fortunate you are. Life is precious. This is something that is too often forgotten. Treasure your loved ones and live your dreams. Here and now.

Peace and Love

B is for Bariloche, the most incredible place ever

Greetings Loyal Readers,

I apologize for the delay in posting. It

has been a pretty amazing week. I think my last post may have left some of you with the impression that I was not having a spectacular time. Allow me now to correct this grave misconception: this trip is the greatest thing I have ever done. There, that should take care of any doubt.

Now to catch you up. When last I posted Doug, Cyndi and I had narrowly escaped the clutches of the Piramedes midnight motorcycle monster and returned safely to Puerto Madryn. Very good. Having decided that our week was completely

shot, the three of us decided it was time to get the heck outta Dodge so we began to check on our plans to take a bus to Viedma where we would catch a train to Bariloche. Now, Cyndi and I were really, and I mean really, excited about the train. It was going to be our mental salvation. Our bus to Viedma was scheduled to leave around one. Luckily for us, that morning we decided to call the train company to check on the status of the reservations we had made. Turns out not only were there no reservations, there was no train. It was only running a few days this month and rather than let us know that our reservations could not be made due to lack of trains (or that there were no reservations in the first place) they chose to remain silent on the matter. As if the situation required any more stress, my wisdom tooth decided this would be a good time to begin its descent. Yes, that's right, I'm teething.

Naturally, this (being the train, not my wisdom tooth) caused a brief but fierce panic as we now had no reason to go to Viedma and no way out once we got there. Cyndi and I headed down to the bus stations to try and get our tickets refunded. Unfortunately refunds are not a common thing down here. We did however manage to change our tickets (with a small service fee) from Viedma to Bariloche. The only problem was there was only one spot on the bus that night, two of us would have to remain in it's Puerto Madryn and take the bus the next evening. Okay, a day is fine we figured and asked the agent to set us up for the tickets the following day. As she was making our reservations she noticed that we would be unable to make the necessary bus change in Nuequen and therefore would have to stay the night there to wait for the bus to Bariloche or remain in Puerto Madryn an additional two nights. We figured what's another two days at the beach?

It was decided, two of us would remain in Puerto Madryn and the other would go on a scouting mission to Bariloche. After much discussion over lunch it was decided that Doug would go on ahead and Cyndi and I would remain. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening swimming and enjoying the beach. Doug make his bus and Cyndi and I walked back to our hostel under one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (sorry, no pictures). Our next two days were spent resting up, enjoying daily trips to the beach and equally frequent trips to the heladeria (ice cream shop) near our hostel. N

ow, I should take this opportunity to say that our hostel was awesome, quiet, clean, and affordable. It is called Hostel Punta Ballena and I would recommend it to anyone. Also they had two amazing dogs that kept Cyndi and I company during our time there. Their names are Fanny and Julian (I think that was his name, I just called him Tank). I have tried to include a photo but it doesn't due the Tank justice. He was quite hefty.

Unfortunately, our time at the beach came to an end and it was time for us to begin to make our way south. On Saturday evening Cyndi and I made our way to the bus station and loaded up for our overnight bus to Nuequen. I didn't sleep much but was relieved not to miss our

transfer. The morning passed swiftly, watching bad movies and knitting (Cyndi is teaching me). The morning was spent driving through desert that was actually quite reminiscent of the Pawnee. By 10:30 we were seeing some hills and were able to identify a few rock shelters. Around noon we began to see water. Massive bright blue lacks, incredibly turquoise rivers clear to the bottom, and fly fishermen galore (Dad, you need to live here, we should just move here)!! Our arrival in Bariloche was breathtaking. Doug met us at the bus station and we walked to our hostel.

Bariloche is a lot like Breckenridge or even Vail but with the most beautiful lakes and way more impressive mountains. It was founded by the Swiss and is still known for chocolate and st. bernards, of which I still have seen none (St. Bernards that is. I have seen chocolates . . . lots and lots of chocolates, mmmm).

Our hostel here is incredible. Definitely the best one yet. It's a small family run hostel that takes its quiet hours seriously. The common areas and kitchen are locked around midnight and there is a separate entrance for travelers coming and going after hours. The family are wonderfully sweet and always around. Our heater in our room broke and within five minutes of letting them know, it was being repaired. The hostel is on the outskirts of the main town so you do have to walk 5-10 minutes to get into the main part of town, which is a ski/mountain tourists dream. For us that is of course perfect. It also happens to be one of the cheapest hostels in town. Oh and did I mention the view from the kitchen/eating area? It's pretty spectacular. Today we have begun to prepare for a three day trek. We leave tomorrow and will return on Friday. Expect more posts and pictures on Saturday. Also, I have posted a shutterfly album with many of my recent photos. Enjoy.

Love to all.

Penguins, Piramides and . . . Motorcycles?

Greetings All,

Today I'd like to talk about expectations and travel. Expectations can really make or break your travel experience. For example, we have spent the last three days and quite a bit of money to get ourselves out to the Valdez Peninsula, famous for Orcas who eat seals off the beach and rare right whales. Sounds pretty awesome right? Maybe in December. Right about now, the only town on the peninsula, Puerto Piramedes is a wasteland, there are no whales and it will cost you an arm and a leg to drive 70 mph down a gravel road, slipping and sliding the whole way, only to catch a fleeting glimpse of an ornery Magellan penguin as it waddles away to some more desirable location (See above).

Now, should you arrive at Puerto Piramides expecting a shanty-town instead of a campground, complete with all night drum circles and midnight motorcycle rallies, you will be thrilled with what you find there. You may even have the time of your life. It took some re-adjusting of our expectations but in the end Puerto Piramides was not really so bad. And, it certainly made our splurge on a hostel here in Puerto Madryn seem extra awesome (wifi and running water . . . both incredible luxuries).

Tomorrow we take a six hour bus ride to Viedma where we will catch a Friday train to Bariloche. Now there is something I'm excited about. Also tried to include photos of Doug, Recoleta Cemetery, and Sea Lions but the Internet is not working so well. Hopefully I can have a photo post tomorrow!

Until then!

Moving on Down

Greetings all,

I apologize for not writing so frequently but things have been pretty busy around here preparing for our jump off to Patagonia. We leave this afternoon (20 hour bus ride, yeck). In the last few days I have been getting used to life here at my hostel: the public bathrooms, the hot sweaty nights, and the all night parties that the Brazilians staying in the hostel have literally right outside our door until 7 in the morning. Now I must say goodbye to all of it, at least for now as we begin treking southward.

We leave tonight at 8:00 pm and will be taking a bus from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn. We will spend tomorrow night in Puerto Madryn and then head into Peninsula Valdez, a park famous for oodles of penguins and orcas that eat sea lions right off the beach. We should be in the park tuesday and wednesday. Thursday we will be busing to Viedma where we will stay until we take the train on friday evening heading to Bariloche in western Argentina (beginning of the Lakes District). I´m letting you all know in case I have no internet for the next week and am unable to blog.

I will try and post some pictures from my recent visit to the Recoleta Cemetery. It was incredibly beautiful and incredibly creepy.

Cheers for now!

G is for Gringo

For those of you who don't know, Gringo is an "endearing" term for white people/tourists/non-Spanish speakers/people without street sense/the other by Spanish speakers throughout Latin America. It isn't really offensive, it's usually just the truth so one of the important things about traveling in Latin America is recognizing and acknowledging yourself as a gringo. Gringo can be only skin deep or you can fool everyone with your looks and then open your mouth and prove yourself a complete and utter gringo.

The place I feel the most like a gringo is always in airports. The people who work in airports are usually pretty fluent in their native language and in English so you're gringohood status rests on whether or not these people choose to speak to you in Spanish. There's nothing more exciting than walking up to the ticket counter passport in hand just hoping to here "Buenos dias" instead of "Good morning." Should you be identified as a Spanish speaker you must then face the perils of carrying out a complete conversation in Spanish while retaining your non-gringo status. I was lucky enough to make it all the way through the check in to our flight gringo free when the lovely woman at the ticket counter requested to see my carry on items. I reluctantly handed my bag over and received a giant red tag reading "G" (see above). I guess I'm just a gringo after all.

It's been an exhausting few days. We left Sacramento on the 29th around seven pm. Our flight to LA was delayed due to snow in Portland so we didn't arrive until just after midnight. After picking up our bags we trudged to the international terminal and set up camp amongst twenty five other vagabonds in various stages of decaying consciousness. We may have managed a few hours of sleep before we began the long haul to Terminal Two to check in to our Aeromexico flight. The flight was sleepfilled and generally uneventful. The Mexico City Airport is kind of like being in a large white egg carton. The walls are covered in a sort of white stucco with pieces of quartz crystal which looks okay but is no good for leaning against.

Time spent during layovers can be the true test of a traveler's gusto. For an interesting list of things to do during layovers see Doug's blog at http://dougsouthamerica.blogspot.com. As for me, a few of the highlights of my layover include the following:

• Dodging cops on segways
• Watching "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" online
• Checking email at least 50 times
• Being used as a pillow by traveling partner
• Eating the peanuts you saved from the plane as a snack cause you're cheap
• Peeling and putting on layers of clothing to deal with insane temperature fluctuations in different parts of the airport
• Trying various perfumes at the duty free store

Needless to say, eventually we made it onto the plane and to Buenos Aires. So here we are, planning the next month of our trip and enjoying the freedom that is afforded only to those who leave there worries at home and explore the world with reckless abandon. Okay, well, that last bit may have been too much but it sounded good.

Until, tomorrow!