The South Island

With all the traveling in our campervan, we haven't had much time to get to online and fill you in on our trip, so here's how we spent two weeks in South Island of New Zealand. Here's a map, so you can follow along.

Upon arrival, we put our priorities straight and headed for the wine region of Marlborough, to the town of Renwick in the northeast. The area is famous for its white grape varieties, especially Sauvignon Blanc, and we managed to visit two vineyards before calling it a day and heading west. Normally I would spend hours, or days even, visiting vineyards, but unfortunately I was the designated driver being the only one who could drive a manual shift, and I should mention that wine is way, way too expensive in New Zealand. A cheap bottle is $20!



Abel Tasman National Park was our next destination, located in the northwest of the island on the north coast. The place reminded me a lot of British Columbia in the summertime, with a nice coastal rainforest, and little coves with sandy beaches. The Abel Tasman track usually takes 2-3 days to hike along the coast, but we only had enough time for a day hike, and I can't wait to come back and hike the whole trail. A highlight for us was seeing a family of seals swim right by us in the shallows of the surf. I should also mention that we had an afternoon of fishing at a nearby salmon farm where we were able take home our catch. We couldn't wait, and had some fresh raw salmon sashimi, prepared by the farm, with one of the bottles from our winery visit. What an introduction to the south island!



From Abel Tasman, we headed southwest to the west coast, and to one of the prettiest drives I have ever done. Going from Westport to Greymouth was stunning. It reminded me a lot of northern California. We stopped to see the famous Pancake rocks, and the obligatory tour of the Monteiths brewery.



We then drove further south to see the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. They are massive glaciers, that are actually advancing at about a pace of 1 meter a day (which in glacial time is really, really fast). We ponied up the cash and did a full day hike on the Fox Glacier with Fox Glacier Guiding. What a great day. The weather was sunny, and we got to crawl through some caves and crevasses. I have been on a number of glaciers while climbing mountains, but have never really walked around an ice fall like this. It was also Julie's first time on a glacier and wearing crampons (ice shoes). It was well worth every penny we spent. If you have limited time, or more cash to burn, you can do a heli hike, which is a helicopter ride onto the glacier and then a hike. I'll be back to try this one day.



From Fox Glacier we headed southeast over the Haast pass, by beautiful mountain lakes, to the alpine town of Wanaka. Home of mountain guides, and not as touristy as Queenstown, we spent our two days trying to go skydiving. The weather stopped us from our first jump, but we did see a movie at Cinema Paradiso, a famously cool theater that is more like a living room filled with mis-matched furniture, and even an old car.



We ended up spending more time in Queenstown than we anticipated. It's actually not a bad place to rest for a couple days. There are good restaurants and shops, and every adrenaline sport under the sun. We finally went skydiving for the first time. What a rush. I think everyone should try it once in their lives. We jumped tandem style (attached to a professional) from 12,000 feet, and it gave us about 45 seconds of free-fall. For the first 5 seconds or so, you get that rollercoaster feeling in your stomach, but once you reach terminal velocity, it is like you are floating...but the ground is getting closer with every passing second. We jumped with NZONE, who were great. I also went bungy jumping off the 43 meter (141 foot) Kawarau bridge on the way out of Queenstown. I figured I came all the way to New Zealand, I might as well jump from the world's first commercial bungy site with AJ Hackett Bungy, the people who started this crazy sport.



I guess this is a good time to tell you that we kind of, well, crashed our campervan. It wasn't a bad accident, thank goodness, but we were shaken up nonetheless. Basically, we skidded off a narrow, curvy, wet road, and into rock. We weren't going that fast, but the right side (driver's side) was banged up pretty good, and for the next week we drove around with a door that didn't close all the way. What a sight. I would like to say for the record that this was my first (and hopefully last) accident. I'd like to think I am a safe driver. I've never even had a speeding ticket. But be warned if you are driving around New Zealand. The roads are tough, and according to the guy who rented us our van, 1 out of 3 renters have accidents. Also, if anyone was wondering about New Zealanders, we had two cars stop within minutes of the crash to help us change our tyre that was blown. One guy even dirtied up his nice clothes without thinking. That's New Zealand hospitality for you.



From Queenstown, I drove 'Andy the wreck' to Glenorchy and hiked the Routeburn track for two days. Julie stayed in Queenstown to take care of Australian visa issues. The Routeburn was fantastic, and as of May 1st the backcountry hut fee dropped from $40 a night to $10. Definitely the best time to hike. It was a little chilly, but worth it. Overnight the weather changed from sunny to a snowstorm, but mountains look so much better blanketed in white, don't you think? Again, I wish I had more time to do this hike. You really need 3 days, and another driver. All the good hikes in New Zealand seem to be a one way direction, not many loops. When I come back to this area, I am going to do the full 3 days on the Routeburn, plus the Keplar, Rees-Dart, and Milford Sound tracks, which are also really popular multi-day hikes.



After trekking, I picked up Julie in Queenstown, and we made our way north, first to the old gold rush settlement of Arrowtown, and then to Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. In 2001, I trekked across some valleys in Nepal, and a girl in our group kept saying how it reminded her of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Up until this point, I had dismissed the thought, but Mt. Cook National Park is as beautiful as the Himalayas, and I guess that girl was right. The tiny town of Aoraki/Mt. Cook is in the National Park and is surrounded by peaks and glaciers, and dominated by the Aoraki/Mt. Cook summit (Aoraki means cloud piercer in Maori). We spent another chilly night here, and did a great morning day hike by glacial lakes with stunning 360 views of the mountains.



Unfortunately we said goodbye to the national park and drove the 5 hours to Christchurch, which was our final stop in New Zealand. Christchurch is a really great city. If you were to blend Denver and San Francisco, you would get Christchurch, but with much less people. Approximately 338,800 people live in the city, and if you are looking for the next outdoor adventure place to raise a family, head here. Here are our photos (part 1 and part 2) from the South Island.

I said goodbye to New Zealand and boarded a plane solo, bound for Melbourne, Australia where I am currently waiting for Julie to join me. She is still waiting on her Australian work/holiday visa, but we hoping that it will come in time for her flight here next Thursday.

If anyone has friends or family in Australia, or knows of any fantastic jobs for a couple of months, please let us know. We miss you all, and really appreciate the comments and emails from home, so thank you.

Patagonia in Two Weeks: Chapter 1

Two weeks is the usual amount of vacation time that we get in North America, and we generally only get to take a week at a time. With one week, or two weeks if we are lucky, most people like to either relax in one spot, or try and cram so much in that you need an additional recovery period when you get home. I tend to travel too much in a given time, but our Patagonia trip was cut short by about a month, so we had no choice but to move quickly. Our reason is that we are coming back to the US for a quick stopover en route to New Zealand. Here is our guide on how to travel through Patagonia if you only have two weeks.

We started the trip on February 29th with a LAN Argentina flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. If you are looking to travel through patagonia, avoid January and Feburuary as this is the high season, and transportation and lodging is expensive. If you book ahead, flights are also a good option and sometimes only a little more than buses which can take you several days!


The city of Ushuaia, nestled on the side of the Beagle Channel (named after Darwin and FitzRoy's boat that charted these waters), is the largest city in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. It is the gateway for all the package cruises to Antarctica, and this is the main reason people visit the area (aside from bragging rights on getting to the southernmost city in the world). Belive me, we really wanted to go to Antarctica, but the 10 day cruise runs about $4500 per head, and is a little too steep for our around the world budget. To put it in perspective, that same amount of money for 10 days could last us 6 months in India!

We stayed at our favorite hostel to date, called La Posta, on the outskirts of town. The location wasn't the best, but to be honest, the downtown of Ushuaia is only one main drag filled with overpriced tourist shops and restaurants, and La Posta made up for everything with their large homely hostel. La Posta is family-run, and their son Lucas is a climbing and snowboarding fanatic with great tips on the area.


The first day we walked around town. The second day was spent hiking around lakes in the National Park of Tierra del Fuego, and on our last day we hiked up to the mountain and glacier behind the city that gave us a good overview of the area with stunning views. Both of us were glad to have visited Ushuaia, but if you aren't going on a cruise, and don't care about traveler bragging rights, then I would skip this city on your tour of Patagonia. The National Park is nice hiking, but it reminded me of southern Ontario where I grew up, so nothing really new.


From Ushuaia we traveled 12 hours northwest by bus into Punta Arenas, Chile, the main southern city and place you would most likely fly into, if coming from Santiago. It was a beautiful journey that included a ferry crossing over the Straight of Magellan where we saw some river dolphins! We liked Punta Arenas much more than Ushuaia, but only had two nights, and one full day to explore. The main reason we were there was to visit the Penguin colony on the Isla de Magdelena. There are times traveling when you spend a little more and realize that your experience was priceless. This was one of these times. The tour with Comapa took about 5 hours. Two hours each way by boat, and one hour on the island to walk around and watch about 100,000 penguins. Yes, that is correct, 100,000 penguins. It was one of the highlights of the trip for us, and well worth the $40 per person that we spent. As the crowd of about eighty people moved along with a tour operator, we hung back and sat down watching the penguins waddle about. You can get to about a foot from them if you are quiet. Here are my photos of Ushuaia, Punta Arenas, and the Penguins.


After Punta Arenas, we took another bus three hours northwest to the town of Puerto Natales, the gateway to the famous Torres del Paine National Park. Most people are familiar with the park from the iconic pictures of the three towers (or torres in Spanish). Our first encounter with the image was ironically enough in the Patagonia store in New York City. The main reason that people come to Puerto Natales is to visit the park, and hike the famous trekking circuit called the 'W'. The hike takes four days and three nights, but if you are like us, and only have a short time, you can see a fair amount in two days and one night. The first day we took an organized 'full-day' tour that shuttles you around to the main sights. Not my preferred method of sightseeing as you are hearded around like sheep, but it was the only way to get an overview in a day. The route follows the south part of park, and gives you views of Glacier Grey, the French Valley, and the Torres. I should mention that the wind in Patagonia is ferocious, and we spent a good part of the day fighting to walk short distances. At five o'clock, when the tour headed back to Puerto Natales, we got off on the edge of the eastern part of the park, and hiked uphill for about 4 hours to the campground of Campamento Torres. I should note that in Patagonia the sun doesn't set until about 10pm in summer, so we had plenty of daylight hours to hike. At 5:30 am the next day, I woke and hiked (or really scrambled) up the trail for one hour to the see the sunrise over the Torres. A mystical experience, you see these huge granite towers change colors from pink and purple to fire red. One of the best sunrises I have seen to date. Here are my photos from Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine.


If you come to Puerto Natales and want to hike the 'W', or the 'Q' (which is the backside of the park as well), I would recommend staying at either Backpackers Kawashkar or Erratic Rock. You can easily find a trekking partner, both give great advice on what to bring and how to trek, and Erratic Rock even holds a daily seminar at 3pm and rents gear. Word of warning, gear is twice as much as it costs in the US and Canada, so bring it with you or rent.

La Paz, the Death Road, and the joys of being ill

Julie and I have been in and around La Paz, Bolivia for about a week and half now. I thought I´d write this post while everything was still fresh in my mind and stomach. I´ll get to that last point a little later.

La Paz has really captured my heart. It´s one of the most culturally rich cities we´ve visited so far on this trip. Set at about 12,000 ft in the Andean plateau, the city spreads out down a valley and the surrounding hillsides. Illimani, a 6400 meter, snow capped peak is visible in the distance, and is breathtaking at sunset. The city is a mix of tradtional and modern more than any we´ve seen. Around 60% of Bolivians claim indigenous ancestry, and still keep to the tradtional way of life. As you move further down the valley, and along the main street called the Prado, you get beatiful colonial bulidings, high rises, and fancy restaurants.

We´ve been spending our week or so in the backpacker area around Sagarnaga street, staying in a pretty nice hotel with cable TV for about $15 a night. You can´t beat it. We´ve got HBO and all! We met up with Sonja, one of my sister´s friends who has been living here for a couple years, and explored the cool expat neighbourhood of Sopocachi where she lives. To be honest, we haven´t done too much sightseeing. We´ve just been relaxing, going to the movies, shopping, eating well, and sleeping tons. Here are my photos of La Paz.



Now I know most of you are wondering what´s up with the Death Road? The world´s most dangerous road, or Death Road for short, is a road that drops about 12,000 vertical feet, starting in the snowy mountains, passing through a cloud forest, and finishing in a rain forest. The Death Road part is really only half of this, but nutty tour operators in La Paz figured out a way to make a buck shuttling groups of mountain bikers up to the top of the road, and then letting them bike their way down. I´ve been on some sketchy roads in Nepal, but I have to say this one takes the cake. The dirt road for most of the time is the width of a big bus, and it´s for two way traffic. There are drops that can reach up to 3,000 feet off the side of the cliff as the road curves its way down the mountain side. Unfortunately there have been so many deaths each year from buses and cars going over the side. My bike guide mentioned 100 deaths per kilometer of road per year, but that sounds high. The good news is that the govenment finally built a new paved road this year for travelers headed to the Yungas in the jungles of Bolivia. So this means that the old road is left for all the crazy tourists, and some locals who still like the scenic drive. I should mention that about 5 bikers die each year on this road, so it´s not all fun and games, but it was fun for me. I had a great tour operator, with trained guides, so if you end up going on this, I highly recommend B-Side Adventures. Here are my pictures from the Death Road, but I´m not sure they really do it justice.

When it comes to traveling, you tend to overlook all the inconveniences that come with it. The idea of seeing new places, and cultures, overshadows everything. I remember telling Julie that we would get sick, but that it was inevitable, and we couldn´t worry about it. I had gotten really sick a couple times when I was in Nepal and India, but that was the fall of 2001, and I guess the pain had slipped my mind.

I had the idea that I wanted to climb another big mountain so Julie, myself, and our guide Miguel, set out on a two day trek to the base of Huayna Potosi, a 6088 meter (19,974 ft) peak. The trek itself was nice. The first day was easy, and we set up camp in a valley. The guide insisted that we have donkeys carry all our gear, so we trekked with our day packs. I felt really strange since I´ve always carried my own gear, but hey, this was Bolivia, and the cost was next to nothing. The next morning we woke up to three inches of snow that had blanketed the whole area, in a late spring storm. Somehow our donkeys with the porter weren´t around, but our guide assured us our stuff would make it. The day of trekking was a little tough because of the snow and altitude, but we made it over the 5100 meter pass that day. Julie had made it to her highest point so far at 16,700 ft. By the time we got to the base of Huayna Potosi the donkeys were nowhere to be found. Julie headed back to La Paz as planned, without her bag, and angry as hell. The bags finally arrived, along with my climbing gear, and I spent the late afternoon reviewing climbing skills on the local glacier. We spent that night at the base, sleeping on the cold floor of what seemed to be the washroom of a local electric company. After a freezing night, we woke and hiked up the mountain to the high refuge at 5200 meters, where we would start the climb that night.

These are where all the problems began. I´m not even sure if I had altitude sickness, but at the time, I was positive I did. I had just been to 5900 meters the month before, but altitude affects everyone differently all the time. I rested, shivering in my sleeping bag, getting worse by the minute. At about 6 pm, after six hours at the refuge, I told Miguel that I needed to go down. Mumbling, and barely able to stand, I said goodbye to all the other climbing parties who would leave for the summit that night. I was so embarrassed. I could barely walk. I felt intoxicated, and the trek down was steep, over loose rocks. I walked so slowly, too slow. I thought every step would kill me. It took me more time to go back down to the base than it did to walk up, and I had to rest every 10 minutes. In the dark we walked, and we made it to the same cold room I had slept in the night before. I collapsed, shaking with a fever, and tried to sleep.

The next morning, I took a cab back with Miguel and some others and collapsed in the bed of our hotel in La Paz. Julie found me a couple of hours later under the covers with all my clothes on, shivering as I had the night before. At this point I realized that it wasn´t altitude sickness, but some parasite, bacteria, or virus that had invaded my body. The sad thing is that I was relieved, as I was worried my body wouldn´t take me to altitude again, and there are so many other mountains I want to climb. All in all I was really sick for about three days. I couldn´t eat for 72 hours, I was running to the bathroom every 20 minutes, and I had a nasty cough that you could hear in the next neighborhood. Julie was my savior, and I don´t think I could have made it through this tough time without her. So I guess what I´m trying to say here, is that although traveling is amazing, this is something not to be envious of. Believe me, I´m on antibiotics and my body hates me right now. But I swear I will be back to climb this mountain at some point.

Even though this last part was kind of a downer, we really had a fun time trekking before I got sick. Here are the pics, look at how beautiful the Bolivian altiplano and Huayna Potosi are.

By the way, its Julie´s birthday tomorrow (Dec 10th), so please shower her with adoring emails, as she misses everyone, especially this time of year.

Living the mountain life in Huaraz

We had missed Huaraz on our last trip to Peru two years ago, and this time I wanted to check it out since it was highly recommended by several guidebooks. We had heard from other travelers that it wasn't worth going since it was the rainy season, and Huaraz had bad weather at the moment. I'm so glad I didn't listen to any of them. The weather was great, sun in the morning, and only about 30 minutes of rain each day in the afternoon. At least this way we could prepare for it.

Julie and I checked ourselves into Olaza's Guesthouse, where we had all the comforts of home. Actually, this was the best hotel we've stayed in to date, and it was still only $23 a night! The Olaza family are known all around town. Tito Olaza runs the guesthouse where we stayed, and his brother Julio is the most well known mountain bike guide in the area. I was lucky to get Julio as a guide all to myself, and I had a full day of incredible biking. It was some of the best single track biking I've done in a long time. We started at about 13,000 ft and descended 3,000 ft through old villages, pre Inca rock walls, and tons of sheep, cows, and barking dogs. All this while having the white peaks of the Cordillera Blanca mountains in the distance.


After 3 days in Huaraz, we rented some camping gear and headed further into the Cordillera Blanca. We went for two days and one night, and this was Julie's first overnight trek. We had done day hikes in NY State, and the Grand Canyon, but this was the first time she had carried all her own gear for two days. We chose the Quilcayhuanca trek since it was recommended by Juilo Olaza.


We hiked up a valley for about 6 hours on the first day, up to a beautiful plateau at 13,500 ft, where we could see glaciers in the distance. We had some rain setting up the tent, and got a little wet, but that was the only trouble we encountered. The next day I woke up and hiked further up the valley to a beautiful mountain lake, then we packed up camp and hiked back down the valley for 4 hours. Both directions, up and down the valley, were filled with grazing cattle, horses, sheep, and donkeys. We encountered a local farmer who told us that approximately 500 cows graze freely in the valley. I just thought I'd add this last part since a good number of my photos have cows and horses in them.

Here is a trail map of our hike.



All in all, we had a great 5 days in Huaraz and the surrounding area. I highly recommend a trip to this area any time of year. Here are my photos from biking and hiking, so you can decide for yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving from Peru

Dear Friends and Family,

We wanted to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and let you know that we are thankful to have you as our friends and family. While we travel, it´s your emails and photos that keep away our bouts of homesickness.

As many of you have requested, here is our very first video post. We apologize for the low quality, but we've been having difficulty uploading large videos from internet cafes. If you are receiving this message as an email subscriber, please click on the title of the post, or go to http://www.globestompers.com/.

All the best,

Jared and Julie