Saludos a todos de Santiago,

Still alive down here in the old sur de america, and a lot has happened since I threw out the last grouper billy buddy so fasten your seatbelts low and tight across your lap and brace yourself for turbulance and a loss of cabin pressure, because we have a lot to talk about...

Arequipa is a cool little town with cute girls, wild rivers, and a couple big volcanoes. The streets are lined with tour oporators who cater to all of the advenure seekers who roll through and one little diamond in the rough--yep, you guessed it, a phenomenal Kebab stand. So after eating a record five Kebabs in one day, I went to sleep early so that I would be able to tear out of there at 5:30 AM with Doug, Ben, and Matty Nunterpanch--our objective: to climb Vulcan Misti. Agent Cody Banks stayed home because he was a sick puppy, and this 19,000 ft monster is not for the puppies. The tour oporators wanted too much money and we are on a tight buget, so we sqeezed them for as much info on the ascent as possible, and got a cab out of town.

The driver dropped us off and claimed that it was the closeset one could get to the volcano. The total drive took 25 minutes (we had heard that it would take 1 hour 20 min), but the greasy little cabbie was convincing, and as he sung every word to countless American eighties hits on the ride, who could argure with him....so off we went. Four hours into the hike we were finally getting out of the lowlands and had to start paying close attention to the route we took up the mountain. This was especially true because a thick fog was rapidly rolling down the face of the volcano. The fog got thicker, and soon we were traversing seemingly endless ridges and gorges with about ten ft of visibility. The altitude was already difficult, the packs were heavy (theres no water on the whole mountain) and the sandy terrain was slow and tough on the legs. But we knew we had to go up and thats what we did. 6 hours later we emerged out of the fog on a ridge high on the mountain just a couple hundred feet short of the snowline. We were all dead tired and the top of the mountain was still in the clouds, so we stacked rocks up for a wind shelter.

The rain loves us, and so as we began to get out the tents the sky opened up and we had to work quickly. We re getting good at this drill so 4.5 minutes later we were in the tents, hands about to fall off from the cold. The storm was violent, wind, hale, the works. But an hour later it was over and we emerged from the tents to see the major mass of snow it had left above us on the top section of the mountain. By this time, the sun was getting low in the sky and we were above all the clouds, hiding Arequipa below. As the sun sank lower, we sat and enjoyed the best sunset of the trip and got an epic photo session as the sun disappeared into the sea of clouds below us. We cooked a major dinner, and we would need it. The next day would be the longest of my life.

We rose at 1:30 am, bundled up with all the warm gear we had, strapped on headlamps, and we were off up the mountain. We climbed slowly and carefully as the incline got steeper. By sunrise we were hiking up steep slopes of snow. Now we could see distant lakes and mountain ranges. We had been told that we wouldnt need crampons, but they would have definitely been helpful. Hours passed, we were all struggling. For a couple thousand verticle feet, as we scaled the cone of the volcano, you would kick twenty steps into the snow and collapse, breathing hard. We only had one big bottle of water to share and as I turned to look down the glacier at Ben, it popped out of my backpack and went sliding down the steep slope. Before any of us even realized what had happened, it was four hundred feet down the slope. Helpless, we watched it disapper out of sight thousands of feet below. Now we were climbing without water, and drinking water is crucial at high altitudes, but finally we reached a ridge that looked as if it could be the rim of Misti, leaving a gentler hike to the summit. A couple of the boys were starting to feel like they had altitude sickness, no good. I hiked up over the rock outcroping that we were hoping would be the rim. As I came over the top, my jaw dropped. Another 700 verticle ft ice field jetted up steeply into the clouds. I told the boys the bad news through the walkie talkie and Doug and Ben, already dizzy with horrible headaches, took their walkie talkie and turned back for camp. I waited for Matt and we charged ahead, determined to bag the summit. "We re almost there" we told eachother. Two hrs later, the sulfer from the crater was flying down the mountain in the wind, gagging us, making it even harder to breath, but we knew we were close. We came up on the ridge and could see deep into the monsterous crater.

The problem now was that we were in the middle of the clouds, the wind was howlng at 60 mph and we had no visibility and no idea which way to hike the rim to find the summit. I radioed to the boys at base camp and told them we had made it to the rim, but didnt know which way to go. Doug said he thought we should go left. With no sign of it clearing, we went left and hoped for the best. The diameter of the crater is enormous and after hiking the rim for an hour with no sign of the summit, I was nervous that we had gone the wrong way. Then, all of a suddden, there was a momentary break in the clouds and high above us, peaking out of the storm, we caught a glipse of the fifteen ft cross that sits at the summit. There was no stopping us now. We split a Cliff bar for some energy, and two gruling hours later we reached the summit. The only view was down into the crater where archeologists had found the mumified bodies of ancent indiginous peoples. We were getting dehydrated and so aftter a high five and a couple photos, we started the careful decent back to camp. Matt and I debated taking a shortcut across the face of the enormous cone, but decided that with the poor visibility and the steepness of the snow we could either end up getting lost or losing our footing and meeting the same demise as the the bottle of water. Two hours later, we found the steep chute of gravel that led to camp and descended thousands of verticle feet in a very short time by skiing/running down the steep gravel slope. Down below, the fog was so thick that you could only see a couple feet infront of you. Ben and Doug gave us specific directions on the radio of how to find camp. Without the radios, we NEVER would have found them. We had bagged the summit and made it safely back to camp, but the day was far from over. No one had had a drink of water in many hours, and at high altitude, we were moving into a potentially dangerous situation. We had to get down and get back to Arequipa. So we grubbed a can of tuna and some crackers and were back on the trail.

We were doing well and making good time with a decent idea of our direction when the dredded fog moved in and consumed us once more. We traversed on a path that would disappear and reapear without end. Four more hours passed. We were all delirious and dehydrated. Finally, we came out of the fog, negotiated our way down a couple cliffs and we could see the road--or a road, but it was at least 4 or 5 miles away and it would be dark in an hour. Our only hope was to keep charging, with no water, camping another night was not an option. We trudged ahead and as we approached the road, we realized it wasnt the road we were looking for, but a dirt road that led out of a huge rock quarry. Hoping that it led to the road back to Arequipa, we climbed down a hundred feet into the rock quarry. It was getting dark. The only sign of life in the trench were a couple skinny dogs walking around. I was about to collapse. Then, out of nowhere, a truck came steaming out of the canyon. We flagged down the driver and he looked at us, four half-dead gringos with backpacks walking through his rock quarry, like we were aliens. I told him we were lost and needed a ride to the road. It was a miracle, he was going to Arequipa. We jumped in the back of the dump truck full of gravel, hoisted our packs in and rode all the way home.

When we returned to the tour operator who was going to take us rafting, the girl looked very happy to see us. We told here that Misti went well and we had a great time. Wide eyed, she asked if we had seen the newspaper. She held it up for us to see. Front page news: four different cars that were traveling on the road up to Misti (the one we never found) were robbed at gunpoint by a gang of bandits, the same morning we were up there. Basically, getting lost was the only reason we still have our packs because everyone traveling on that road that morning were stopped with roadblocks, torn out of the cars and robbed by armed men with masks. The fickle finger of fate sometimes comes in the form of a flabby cabbie. She also said there had been too much rain and that the river was extremely dangerous and closed for rafting so we decided to get on a bus and head for Chile.

After arriving in Iquique on the coast, we shacked up at a cheap hostel run by a family that loved us. The next day we rented a car and mashed south down the coast. We camped on our own little private beach, cooked dinner, did some surfing, and had another incredible sunset. The next mmorning on the way up the coast, I spotted a HUGE cliff jump into the ocean. We pulled of the highway and walked down to check it out. It was 70+ ft, you had to jump way out, over rocks and getting out was tricky because the waves comming in, crash against the rocks, so your timing had to be perfect. We all launched it a couple times and got some tight pics.

Next, we took another bus to San Pedro de Atacama, a little oasis town in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It has a bunch or bar/restaurants that keep open bon fires burning in the middle of open-air dining areas--really tight, unbelievable food. We stayed at a camping hostel--camped next to six cutties who were on vacation from Santiago. They made the mistake of showing us their case of pisco bottles (the favorite Chilean liquor), and you can imagine where that led. We partied hard with the hussies for a few days, and we moved on to Santiago.

The first day here, we went to a soccer game between two Chilean rivals. We sat on the side of Universidad de Chile, who swept the other team 3-0 with some spectacular goals. Even more spectacular were the fans--chanting to huge drum beats, throwing all sorts of stuff on the field. There were at least one hundred riot police on hand, equiped with tanks and shields, it felt like Boulder on Halloween. A cultural observation of the difference between here and the US. In the US, when a team is losing 3-0, the fans would be quiet and sulking. In Chile, the losing fans start bon fires in the stands, throw bottles at the riot police, and tear the wood benches right out of the ground and hurl them over the fence at the cops to retaliate as they re spayed with a fire hose. It was awesome, towards the end when it got really violent, I found myself watching the riot more than the game. When it was all over, the cops locked our fans in the stadium for 45 minutes until every last one of the losing fans was out of the vicinity.

And here we are. We met our guide for Aconcagua this afternoon, really cool guy. Tomorrow, we go to Mendoza, Argentina, and in two days we will be on the mountain, hiking towards base camp. We are all FIRED UP to say the least. 20 tough days of clibing lie ahead, we aint scurd. I love these guys, couldnt ask for a better group, good times. Wish me luck. I ll give you the low down when we get back to civilization. I cluv you all. take care and paz a fuerra.

Ross