January 1, 2007 - Happy New Year from Bahia Inglesa

Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)

Happy New Year for 2007 from Bahia Inglesa.  This is an out of the way beautiful little beach resort on the Pacific ocean, on the northern coast of Chile at the Atacama desert.  Berg Adventures has chosen to start our expedition for Ojos del Salado and Aconcagua, the two highest points in South America from this spot.  Why not go all the way from sea level and start out the new year the right way on the beach.  That’s exactly what we are doing.                          

Claire arrived here yesterday, having traveled here via four continents in four days.  She left her home in Africa, spent a night with a friend in London, spent some holiday time with her family in Canada and then flew here to South America and came here and met us at the beach.

Jerri and Steve also arrived yesterday.  Klaus called me from Santiago and reported that his flight from Austria through Frankfurt in Germany and on into Santiago had been delayed so he was at the Radisson hotel last night, hoping that his bags catch him.  In the holiday confusion out of Europe he arrived without his bags.  The airlines are working on that and they know how to find him here at Bahia Inglesa and I think he will probably show up today with the rest of our team.

I’m looking out at the dry, dry beautiful landscape around this blue bay.  A lot of local people out enjoying the beach today, the sun is nice.  Last night we had a great little New Year’s Eve celebration with some local folks here at our resort.  We had a champagne toast at midnight and then weary from travel and excited about all the preparation and planning to get ready for our climbing, we all went to bed soon after the new year began.

Today we are just enjoying relaxing and excited about the team members that are on their way.  We’ll report to you how things go as we begin to collect the team and we prepare to go by four wheel drive vehicle up towards those beautiful high lakes in the shadow of Ojos del Salado.