October 5-7, 2003 Fred didn't feel like playing cards, or he would have taken us all Things have been going well down here in the southern hemisphere. In fact, I guess I haven’t written for a while because not too many things have gone contrary to prediction. The buses we get on seem to be able to go the entire trip’s distance without having to stop and pour water over the burning balding tires. With Sam’s shaggy hair and ever thickening beard, and my unfortunate habit of talking to far too many people on the street, we have definitely run into a few strange characters, but that is to be expected. Anyway, the kayaking in Cuzco was great. Two other tourists went along for the trip. One was from England and the other from Wales. I’m very careful to specify that one of them was not English. They couldn’t speak much Spanish so by default I became the translator. One of the local boys, whom we were teaching how to play cards, asked where the two guys were from. Since the Spanish word for England was right on the tip of my tongue I said they were from England. Arlo, the guy from Wales, understood enough of what I said and replied: “I know one thing for sure, I’m damned well not bloody English.”Then I kinda laughed because this type of talk is exactly how the English are sometimes portrayed. That made things even worse. I told Arlo that I knew he was from Wales but did he really want me to try and explain that to this kid. He said he did. I did my best to explain where Wales was and how it was connected to England but I’m sure the kid understood. Anyway, we had taught this kid how to play Tonk (a game usually played with monetary stakes on the line). However, he sure didn’t have any money, and truth be told, neither did I, so we decided to play for entertainment value alone. We quickly found out that Tonk doesn’t have much entertainment value without money on the line so we taught the kid how to play hearts. I did my best to explain the different strategies of the game. Unfortunately, the kid was a pretty quick learner, or I was good a teacher because the damned kid kept me from shooting the moon after only playing three hands! I knew he had caught on when he let out a big laugh watching me put down a 25 by my name and a one by his. Arlo was happy as well because he had given the kid the heads-up on my intentions after seeing the cards I had passed him. That’s what I’m here for, improving international relations through card games. Maybe I should head to North Korea? I left the Apurimac River valley with a few more friends, quite a bit of kayaking experience, a cold I caught from the English guy, and numerous mosquito bites. Sixty-seven on my right arm. I think the other arm was pretty similar and my legs were up there as well. I would have liked to have had an exact count, but what kind of loser counts all the mosquito bites he receives? OK, so I’m a big dork, I never said I wasn’t. I also got what I called my rubber-band wrist sensation. No amount of push ups or water skiing could have ever prepared me for how sore my right forearm would be from the kayaking. Whenever I would rotate my wrist you could feel the tendons rubbing together and they felt like a rubber band stretching to breaking point. It went away yesterday (more than a week later) after the jarring from the constant digging in of ice axe must have put the tendons back into place. Anyway, Sam and I flew back to Ecuador and headed to Riobamba, which is our base for mountain climbing since it is the closest big town to Mt. Chimborazo. This was on a Friday and the following day we headed to the hills. This, of course, was a Saturday but not near as lugubrious as the previous. We were excited to start the last phase of our acclimation and we pretty easily ignored the fact that we were missing college football. We stayed in this cooperative community at a place called Casa Condor. Our food for an entire four days cost $20. Lodging was $5 per person. Anyway, we did some day hikes and basically just breathed the thin air. We went to bed by 7:45 every night because it was dark and there was nothing else to do. We woke up at 5 a.m. because the dogs were barking at the herds of sheep that were being sent out into the fields for the day. Sam has this alarm clock (which we never seem to need because one of us always wakes up before the thing is supposed to go off). This clock has a thermometer on it. We put it outside to see how cold it was and it wasn’t out of our sight for more than three minutes and it was gone. The only one around was this little kid. I went to him and asked about the clock. He became very defensive and said he didn’t know anything about it. He could see I wasn’t going away so he said perhaps a dog had jumped up and snatched the clock off the four-foot ledge. I said that was definitely a good possibility. Then he decided to go with the story and said that his dog was very bad and was always taking stuff and hiding it near his house. He then walked straight down to his house and reached into the straw thatch roof and came up with the alarm clock. There, he said, the dog usually likes to bury things in our roof. I asked the kid to keep an eye out for any other dogs that went after our stuff. He said he would do his best. Later that night the community had a meeting to decide some things. The kid was standing next to his dad and I was waiting my turn to ask where Juan the guide was, as I needed to talk to him. The kid was very nervous and you could tell he thought I was going to tell on him. I gave him a wink and he looked like the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders. I had a friend after that and nothing else turned up missing. Guess the dogs found other things to do. Our last day in Casa Condor we went to Templo Machay, which is supposedly a sacred temple of the Incas. It’s actually just a naturally occurring cave on the side of the massive Chimborazo. Our guide had a strange way of staring at you without really looking at you. He would do this for five-minute increments whenever we took a break from hiking. Suddenly, I just wasn’t all that tired. A 30-second breather would do. This guy was off-key. Not as off-key as Diego, our jungle guide who had had malaria three times, but still strange enough to make you want to end the hike as quickly as possible. The next big thing was our final hike. The peak was Carihuairazo. It’s the sister peak to Chimborazo but only 5,020 meters. Still taller than anything in the continental U.S., it’s nonetheless only a stepping stone compared to Chimborazo. It has a glacier on it so it was good to strap on the crampons and the ice axe and do some real training. The summit was a little tough because we had to scramble up class-three if not class-four sleet-covered rocks and ice. Sam and I made it to the top without any altercations. We had a good rapport with our guide Eloi and he said we had a good chance of making it to the top of Chimborazo. This brings us to last night. We went to a sports bar/pizza place. The night before we were treated with watching Pudge Rodriguez drive in the winning runs against the Giants. We had seen earlier in the Internet cafe that ESPN would be showing the Auburn v. Tennessee game. We were so excited we could hardly contain ourselves. We couldn’t wait to see some college football. Even if it was the SEC, anything would do. So, we get there early. At 6:30 a special presentation on the shooting of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Swimsuit Calendar came on. Good news, right? It’s obviously a 30-minute filler before something else comes on and besides who wouldn’t want to watch Dallas’ finest parade around Mexico in swimsuits? Sam and I are enjoying some Ecuadorian Pilsner and munching on what Sam called the best popcorn he’s ever had in his life. At 7 more good news, a rally car special in Italy. This is great, nobody could stand to watch this junk for longer than 30 minutes. If all goes well the pre-game will start at 7:30. Then it happened, the TV showed Chile and snow-covered mountains. Then the next thing I know I’m watching women’s downhill snowboard racing. It was awful! I mean who races downhill on a snowboard? I was very depressed. I don’t want you all to think all we think about is football. For instance, the other day we were sitting on the side of a road waiting for a car to come by so we could hitch a ride. Sam and I were arguing about international relations and the U.S.’s role as the hegemonic power (Drs. Samhat and Hartman-Mahmud would have been so proud!) Things were heating up and lines were being drawn in the sand, but just then a pickup truck with an empty bed (a true oasis of a sight) came by. We flagged him down and huddled down below the cold wind. Speaking of international relations. I’m not sure how many of you follow the news. I’m not talking about the type of news that would inform you of the latest trouble how a central Kentucky pet-store owner has been accused of feeding cats to his boa constrictor but about what has been going on Bolivia. It seems we got out just in time. Just last week more than 2,000 tourists had to be given a military escort to escape the town they were in. The workers’ party has declared war on the president of Bolivia. I told Sam not to worry, if things get bad here we can always seek refuge in our neighboring country to the east, Columbia. Ummm, maybe that’s not such a great idea after all. No seriously, Ecuador is very stable and very friendly to tourists both in the city and the countryside. We’re not in any danger. That’s enough for now, as my rubber-band wrist is starting to tire. We leave for Chimboraz tomorrow morning. I think we’re ready and I’m confident we can make a good push for a summit bid sometime on Tuesday morning. Wish us luck! Hasta, T.J. ’03 and Fred NEXT | BACK