Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch
January 22, 2008 – Acclimatizing through Chile and Argentina
Jan 22, and I am reporting to you from our hotel here at Puente Del Inca in Argentina. We are at about 2, 600 meters (8,500 feet). There are 12 of us together right now and as you probably gathered from the other dispatches, we are still waiting for Opus who is coming from Florida and Claire who is coming from her current home in Tanzania, via her original home in Canada. Those two will be joining us in a couple of days.
We are enjoying our acclimatization. We did what we usually do; we drove up to the pass, at 3,800m above sea level on the Chilean/Argentine boarder this morning. Our driver Rodrigo informed us that the road was open and if we wanted we could drive all of the way over into Chile and come back through the tunnel on a new paved highway. We thought that would be a great adventure and it was all at altitude, so that was our acclimatization activity for the morning. We were back at the hotel for lunch, and with the Bolivian guides most of the team took off and went hiking about 600m above our hotel. They just came back looking pretty sweaty and tired, a good day's exercise.
Everyone is looking good. We will be sleeping in the hotel one more night, and tomorrow at 10:00 am we are going to be picked up by our van again for a short shuttle up the road to begin our hike towards Aconcagua. We will be camping inside the park tomorrow night at the camp called Confluencia. Please stay tuned, as we will be reporting our progress and telling you stories about our adventures along the way.