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We splurged on the high-end wine tour today, and I have to say it was well worth it. We caught a small bus with our guide Jose and 3 other couples for a 30-minute trip to Lujan de Cuyo, the oldest wine region in Argentina with over 1000 wineries. We toured and tasted at the first two wineries — both fantastic — then had a 5-course lunch at the third winery with wines paired to each course. The meal was outstanding, and we had a lot of fun getting to know the other couples on the tour. One couple from Honolulu, another from Atlanta, and another from Europe. We wrapped up at a final winery and promptly fell asleep for the ride home. Just another siesta.

Barrel room at Alta Vista, first winery of the day:

Pulenta, winery #2:

Second course served on a plank from a wine barrel:

We’re off to Santiago de Chile tomorrow. It’ll be country #16 for me (Drew), and something like #28 for Leena. I can’t beat her at anything… except golf, maybe.

Thanksgiving started with a 5:15 alarm to make the trip to Mt Aconcagua for some trekking. It’s the highest peak in the world outside of the Himalayas at close to 7000m. We met our guide for the day, Mario, and caught a quick cab to the bus station.

The bus was surprisingly nice. We were on the top floor of a double decker. The seats were plush and reclined way further than any coach airline seat. There were bathrooms on the bus (though we didn’t make use of them), and even a kitchen. We slept for most of the 4-hour ride.

We checked in with the park rangers and set off for Confluence Station. We started around 2900m and climbed for ~3 hours to 3400m. The altitude kicked our butts! Leena had some nausea and I had a killer headache, both early (and mild) signs of altitude sickness. We later learned that you should stay 2 days in the base town to acclimate before you start climbing. No time for that!

Mules cross a river by the trail:

We had a 4:30 bus to catch home, so we started down about 2p after lunch. We got back to the ranger station at 4:20 and learned that the return bus no longer stopped there, but stopped in town. We started down the highway on foot. It was all downhill, but after 20 minutes we weren’t even half way.

What if we miss the bus? Is there another today? Do we have to try and find a place in town? Mario started looking back every time a vehicle came down the highway. We all did. I didn’t know if we were looking for the bus (to try and convince it to stop?) or trying to hitch a ride. A police car comes into view, and Mario puts out a thumb. He stops. So here we are, hitching a ride on a main highway with the local police. Of course! He was super nice and dropped us at the bus stop. Even though we were 10 minutes late, the bus hadn’t arrived. It rolled in half an hour late – Argentina time!

As we get off the bus, Mario continues chatting with the girl he sat next to. They start exchanging info — I say to Leena, I think he got her number! Sure enough, he comes over with a big smile. He says her parents are Nepalese, but raised her in France. He has her number.

We flew from Buenos Aires to Mendoza on viernes. We had a bit of trouble with the ride to the airport. We’d arranged for a 9a taxi the night before, and called at 5 after 9 to inquire. After some confusion about the arrangements, we were told it would be there in 5 minutes. They signed off with “take it easy!” We called again 10 minutes later and were assured it was just a block away. By 9:30 we were told that the car was there waiting. When I assured them it was not, the English got suddenly worse and I was told something about how the police wouldn’t allow a pick up there and that there would be no ride. Fortunately, the hostel got a car for us in 15 minutes and we’d built just enough time in the schedule to make the flight.

Mendoza’s a beautiful town a few hundred kilometers east of the Andes. We spent the first afternoon arranging activities for the next three days. Day one – today – we hired a local driver to take us wine tasting. We started at the largest producer in the region, La Silva. We took a tour of the winery including a museum with tools used for making wine going back to the 16th century. We tasted a single Malbec. The second winery featured a sparkling Chardonnay and a flight of 3 Malbecs. The third winery had a beautiful balcony overlooking the vineyards.

We tasted a Rose of Malbec, Tempranillo, Syrah, Malbec, Cabernet Savignon, and a blend. Good thing we share each taste! The final winery was a small producer who only distributed through their tasting room. They featured Cabernet Savignon and Malbec.

Tomorrow we’re off at 5:30a to hike on Aconcagua, the tallest peak in the world outside of the Andes. We’ll just hike to a base camp – nowhere near the summit! Then we’ll do some more wine tasting on day 3 and head off to Santiago, Chile for a couple of days.

We learned today that LAN pilots (domestic airline) went on strike today, but the strike only lasted half a day. All of our domestic flights are on LAN, so hopefully everything goes smoothly!

¡Hola y buenos dias! The trip down was smooth, which is to say, flights were on time and uneventful. Sleeping on a red eye is more like intermittent napping for me; I think Leena did a bit better. She awoke to see the moon set over the Andes a couple of hours before we reached Buenos Aires.

We got a few shots of the Andes (the flight path traced the west coast of South America as far south as Buenos Aires before turning a la izquierda para la última hora).

We’re staying at a hostel in the San Telmo neighborhood. We arrived a little after 10a, then took off for a few hours since official check-in is 2p. We explored street markets in the neighborhood and sampled the local brew Quilmes in one of the oldest bars in Buenos Aires.

After check-in, we enjoyed a nice siesta and were glad to have set an alarm to keep it to just 2 hours. We set out on foot to explore the neighborhood some more, and grabbed dinner at a spot the hostel recommended. As expected, plenty of meat to choose from.

Day two started later than expected — we slept right through breakfast at the hostel. Oh well. We explored the Recoleta neighborhood today.

Evita’s grave:

We went for the 7 peso ($1.75) copa de vino de la casa. It looked promising!

But, it tasted like a cheap glass of wine.

After many miles on foot, we made it back to the hostel just 10 minutes before it started pouring. Tomorrow, we’re off to Mendoza to explore wine country and find some of the good stuff. ¡Hasta luego!

And, we’re back! We’re getting ready for the trip to Argentina and Chile in a few weeks and thought we’d fire up the blog for an update.

Here’s the story on the latest house project. We desperately needed to paint the trim on the house. I suppose we could have done just that. But we also wanted to paint the body of the house. The body with the awful aluminum siding. Here’s the “before” view.

Off came the siding, revealing wood shingles beneath. They were in decent shape overall — we ended up replacing about 20%. But that was hardly it for the prep work. The roof needed some work since removing the aluminum siding exposed some gaps. The wood shingles had staples EVERYWHERE from the aluminum siding. We replaced concrete backer board around the base of the house with decking material. It’ll last forever, and can’t get water damaged.

There was also extensive repair to the front porch. Our contractor Kevin (highly recommended Portland people!) did a ton of awesome carpentry, and talked me into running some new electrical for stair lights. It’s always fun to tie into knob and tube wiring and crawl around under a porch. But, yes, Kevin was right — it was worth it.

The painters then scraped the peeling paint. Since it was likely lead paint, there was an abatement process. After weeks of prep, the primer finally started going on.

Finally, we were ready for the final coats of paint. We had debated colors for years, and blue had been the leading candidate. But we couldn’t find many blue houses where we liked the shade, and almost all of them had tired looking paint. It doesn’t seem like blue ages well. Leena noticed a bunch of big corner houses painted brown. It doesn’t sound too exciting, but the more we looked, the more we liked. And we also noticed that we preferred houses with DARK trim and a LIGHT accent color. We really had to work to convince the painters that this is what we wanted — they said that almost every house did the reverse. Sure, but it’s our house. Even then, their first pass at the accent was with the dark color. They had to redo it. Anyway, here’s a few shots of how it turned out!

The Southern Alps meet the sea along the west coast of New Zealand’s south island, and the resulting landscape can be spectacular. Such is the case at Milford Sound. The soaring mountains abruptly meet the sea. Mitre Peak rises just over a mile high straight out of the water.

Milford Sound gets an unbelievable 6+ meters of rain a year. Even Portland doesn’t reach even a single meter. It’s the second rainiest place on the planet. Waterfalls emerge from everywhere. As you can see though, our run of good weather continued. Another fine day for a 2-hour cruise.

As we reached the opening of the sound to the sea, we were met by a thick blanket of clouds.

Here’s a look back into the Sound and its blue sky.

From the ocean, you can’t really see the opening to the Sound. Captain Cook marked this as a Bay in his log and never discovered the Sound.

With the extreme rainfall, the Sound has a layer of silty (dark) freshwater on its surface. The lack of light fools marine life into thinking the water is much deeper than it is. Many sea creatures normally found only miles deep are relatively near the surface here. Along with Doubtful Sound a bit up the coast, it’s the only place on the planet with this phenomenon.

We snapped a few parting shots of the Southern Alps as we drove back to Queenstown.

Day 3 was an easy day, all downhill. We had less than four hours of hiking to get through before meeting our 2 pm bus pickup. We started back into the forest heading towards the Routeburn Flats. About half way down, we came to a “slip” that crossed the trail. Heavy rains in 1994 had caused a landslide that opened up some great views.

We got to navigate six swinging bridges on Day 3.

We broke for lunch at the Flats and had a guest photographer snap one of us.

Here’s a look back up at the Routeburn. Unfortunately, there’s only a sliver of the falls visible from the Flats.

A view downstream; different waterfall.

After the Flats, the Routeburn tumbles towards the next valley.

A glimpse of the next valley as we neared the end of the Track.

A parting shot at the finish!

Sleeping in a hut shared with 40 people isn’t the greatest, especially with the inevitable chorus of a few snorers. But as we stirred and started out of our bunks, an excited hiker asked if we’d been outside yet. No, not yet. He then gushed that the day was fine and perfect. Sure enough, bright blue skies greeted us.

We hit the trail after a breakfast of porridge (that’s oatmeal to us). I’d noticed the night before that the swollen lake was spilling over the trail for about a 100 meters about 200 meters from the hut. We stayed in our flip flops for that in the hope that the trail would stay dry and give our shoes — still a bit damp from the day before — a chance to dry out. The water was cold as expected, and got close to 2 feet deep in parts. It was a good move — we started uphill soon after and had dry feet all day. I made Leena take a picture of me as we climbed just to prove that I too carried some stuff. (And good thing I brought a running fleece to be highly reflective on the trail…)

After climbing most of the first hour, the trail abruptly broke out of the forest and above the tree line. It was like coming out of a tunnel.

A look back down at McKenzie Lake — you can see the roof of the Hut just left of center at the bottom of the frame.

After an hour and a half, we came around a 270 degree corner with awesome views in every direction. We’d finished the bulk of the days climbing.

We had a decent view for our picnic lunch. Leena soon after…

We reached the Harris Saddle just past noon. It’s essentially the midpoint of the track and the high point as well. There’s a side trail up Conical Hill. I left my pack with Leena at the emergency shelter and scrambled up another 700 vertical feet. A shot looking up at the top — very steep trail!

On this perfect, fine day, the views were spectacular. In the distance you could see all the way to the Tasman Sea. The small white horizontal line in the middle of the frame is the surf breaking on the beach.

The view back to the east.

Glacier fed lake as we headed on from the Harris Saddle. The Routeburn river tumbles out of the lower end of this lake.

The trail passed a huge boulder left behind by a glacier. Note that the trail goes through the opening at the bottom right of the frame. To give you an idea of the size of the rock, no, I didn’t have to duck to get through…

After hiking down for most of two hours, we got our first view of the Routeburn flats. Between us and the flats is 900 vertical meters of cascades and waterfalls.

We stayed for night two at the Routeburn Falls Hut, situated right at the tree line just below the first series of waterfalls. A view from the “back yard”.

Feeling a bit hot and, uh, sweaty, I took a dip in the falls. Sourced mainly from glacier runoff, the water was just a bit cold!

A view from the “front porch” of the Hut as night decends. Since we near the 45th parallel (south!) in summer, night came really late — this shot was taken right at 22:00. Interesting that Portland is just north of the 45th parallel in this hemisphere.

Wow. The Routeburn Track was the highlight of the trip. It’s a 32 or 39 km trail (we’ve seen conflicting info on the length) through New Zealand’s Southern Alps. It’s typically done over 3 days and 2 nights (our approach), though some folks run it in a single day (the record is 2:48!). There are bunk houses with beds and mattress pads to stay in at night with separate communal cabins with water, gas stoves and tables. A bit of a step up for us “car campers”, but not as tough as pure backpacking which would include hauling a tent, pad, stove and much more water.

We started Day 1 with an 8am pickup in Queenstown and a 3 1/2 hour drive to the Divide. The Divide is the lowest crossing point of New Zealand’s Southern Alps and the West end of the Track. The driver on the way out was full of great information. For starters, this was the 14th straight day of rain on the track, and he told us to expect to see some unhappy folks at the Divide waiting to be picked up (you can walk the track in either direction). He seemed a bit concerned about us as he dropped us off. Have you done anything like this before? Do you have rain gear? As he left, he gave us four throat lozenges. How nice.

It was a steady rain for the whole drive down, and the sky got darker and darker as we approached the Divide. Good times! Upon arrival we noted that there indeed were 15 or 20 very wet and not so cheerful backpackers waiting to be picked up. We bundled up in our rain gear, loaded up the packs, and got ready to go.

With all the rain, there were creeks and waterfalls everywhere. The path itself served as a creek bed quite often. Waterfalls tumbled across.

After a wet first hour, we came to Lake Howden. The skies cleared for a bit. There’s a hut at the lake, so we unloaded and enjoyed some lunch.

Soon after Lake Howden, we came to the Key Summit side trail. It’s a one-hour return hike to a summit (of course), but we passed. We were barely below cloud level as it was, so no great views to be had.

Another hour in was Earland Falls, a 178 meter waterfall. The path crosses the falls just a few meters from the base of the falls. The waterfall seemed to flow straight out of the clouds — we couldn’t see anywhere near the top. And as we turned the corner and got close to the falls, the power was tremendous. The falls were at peak level after all the rain. We only got within 20 meters or so of the falls before turning back to take the flood detour around the falls. It was misty enough that visibility went to zero, and the wind was enough to make balance an issue. The detour was no picnic either as we scrambled up and down rock ledges and got completely soaked in the process.

Ten minutes further down the path provided a view of the falls. We waited 10 or 15 minutes for the clouds to lift enough for this view.

After a few more kms through forest, the path opens to The Orchard. The dense beech forest opens up for about 400 meters with trees that look like fruit trees.

After five hours on the trail, we arrived at Lake McKenzie Hut for the night. We changed into dry clothes and were glad to see the forecast for the next 3 days: fine and cold.

We flew to Queenstown as our launching point for tramping on the Routeburn track. As you can see, it’s a gorgeous lakeside mountain town in New Zealand’s Southern Alps.