Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Pucon, Chile (January 15th - 20th 2016)

Friday, January 15th 2016

Today we took our first long bus ride of the trip. It was supposed to be 11 hours, but ended up being more like 12, which is a long time to be sitting in one place all day. We wanted to see what it would be like to ride all day instead of all night. We usually take over night buses to save time and money, but we wanted out of the city and also thought it might be nice to see some of the scenery along the way. The ride wasn't too bad, but the scenery was really not too interesting, lots of agriculture, mainly grapes, other fruits, corn and tree farms. We read our only reading material, guidebooks, and we watched Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 and took naps. It wasn't too bad of a ride. However, during one of my naps I received two bed bug bites! 

It was after 10 when we arrived to Pucon, but we were in need of some exercise, so we happily walked the 15 minutes away from the center to our hostel, Bravo Pucon. I usually book ahead on hostel world, but all of the popular places were already taken. Since Pucon is such a busy place everything books out way ahead. We thought we'd take a chance on some place different without many reviews. We were greeted by a young girl who brought us to the upper level of a two story cabin in the backyard of another house. Not really sure if she works here or not. We were placed in a room with 3 bunks that has a sign on the door that reads manager. We had been expecting a dorm with 4 beds. It appears that we were in the room of someone who resides here permanently, most likely the manager! Feels quite strange and awkward. Before bed we went for a walk into town and back which took us about 40 minutes. And now as we try to sleep there is a group of rowdy young Chileans drinking and singing and just generally being obnoxious right outside our window in the back yard! Ear plugs cannot mask the sounds. We are regretting choosing an off the gringo trail location!

Saturday January 16th 2016

As soon as we woke up, we were on the wifi looking for somewhere else to stay. On HostelWorld, you pay a 15% deposit to reserve a place, and we had reserved this one for 4 nights,  but at $12 per person per night, 15% isn't much of a loss and we are willing to accept it in order to stay some place better, closer to town and not filled with noisy party animals. They were up all night! Mid search the owner arrived and was so incredibly friendly! He explained he had been gone yesterday for his sons college graduation and that we had been placed in his room because HostelWorld had overbooked the place. He insisted on moving us downstairs to his private double room for the remainder of our stay at no extra cost. He was so friendly, energetic and charismatic that we didn't have the heart to tell him we wanted to leave, so we agreed and moved into the room downstairs. This room is on the other side of the house from the backyard partiers, but we can hear every movement from upstairs because the only thing separating the two floors is a single layer of two inch boards. The noises seem exaggerated, as if the people upstairs are jumping and running around and just deliberately trying to be noisy!

Today was cloudy with a comfortable temperature and light breeze. We took a walk through and around town and checked out the beach of Lake Villarrica. It's called a black sand beach in our guidebook, but it was more like black pulverized volcanic rocks and it was difficult to walk on. We contemplated swimming but in the end decided it was just a bit too cold and we didn't want to deal with sharp microscopic rocks on our bare feet afterward. 

<Many sunbathers and exposed thong butts on the beach today despite the cool, cloudy weather!>
<Hydrangeas grow like weeds here!>

<On our walk around town we spotted the most gigantic eucalyptus tree we have ever seen!>
<Top of the giant eucalyptus.>

Instead we went for lunch at a place called École. It's both a sustainable/green hostel and a vegetarian restaurant. Lonely Planet says it just may be the best vegetarian restaurant in Chile, so I was very excited. Usually vegetarian restaurants have a good selection of vegan items, but almost everything on this menu has cheese or eggs and it doesn't really seem modifiable. It was also a rather short/limited menu, with not too many options, but I still managed to find and the few things that interested me. Mushroom ceviche sounded neat as did an eggplant and quinoa salad dish, but they happened to be out of both of those! I will never understand that about restaurants down here, why they bother to have printed menus when they are often out of many of the items. They should just write out a daily menu on a chalkboard or whiteboard. So with our further limited options we just got a veggie soup and salad combo. The portions were small and just ok, kind of plain and bland. I hope to go back perhaps on our travels back north towards the end of the trip and hopefully have a better experience. If that is the best vegetarian restaurant in Chile, then I won't be having many exciting meals in my future.

<Soup and salad at École!>

After lunch we booked a tour to climb Villarrica Volcano. This volcano is easily visible from town when it is clear enough and is the main reason for so much tourism in Pucon. It sits within Villarrica National Park, which is popular for hiking and multi day trekking. The volcano has the perfect conical shape that you'd think a volcano should have and it is considered one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It actually erupted last March. We were just across the border in Argentina when it happened and we could see the smoke and ash in the air. Climbing the volcano is very popular in summer and in winter skiing and snowboarding are popular. After the eruption the Chilean government shut down all activities on the volcano and the nearby towns were evacuated for a short while. It wasn't until November, the beginning of summer that it was reopened for activity with much tighter regulations. To climb the volcano you must go with a guide and each guiding company used to be able to take 24 climbers, but now that number has been cut in half. Now that each company can only take 12 people, the prices have gone way up. It now costs 75,000-85,000 Chilean Pesos to climb the volcano, which for us with the current exchange rate, that is equal to about $115USD. We are happy to pay the money for a guide, since you can't hike it without one, and they provide transportation to and from and all the necessary mountaineering gear (ice axe, crampons, day pack, waterproof jacket pants and gloves) as well as gas masks for volcanic fumes, should they be needed and equipment for sliding back down the mountain after the climb!  We chose Summit Chile as our guide company. It's owned by a professional Chilean climber who is famous in the climbing world, Claudio Retamal. By the time we were booking the tour it was already 2 PM and too late to book one for the next day, Sunday, so we settled for Monday instead.

On the walk back to our hostel we stopped at a few of the many different produce stands and picked up foods for dinner. I got fresh cranberry beans, yellow bell pepper, purple fingerling potatoes, tomato, avocado, a piece of squash and a bunch of strawberries. We also went to the grocery store and got apples and rice cakes. For dinner we had a simple dinner of the Andean potatoes (purchased in Santiago), avocado, bell pepper and tomato.


<This is what the inside of the cranberry bean pod looks like. It was nice to have fresh beans! They are similar to pinto beans.>

<The inside of the beautiful little Andean potatoes! I LOVE potatoes!>

Sunday, January 17th 2016

Today we visited El Cañi (con-yi), a private forest preserve. It was formed in the early 1990s when a farmer learned that the forest above his farm was of interest to loggers, he along with other concerned conservationists got together the money with the help of Ancient Forests International, and bought the land. Soon after, it because the first private park in Chile. Within it is one long all day hiking trail (20 km/12mi round trip) through old growth coihue (koi-way) or evergreen beech trees and arucaria or monkey puzzle trees. We unfortunately didn't get a very early start. Since today is Sunday the first bus wasn't until 10:30 and it's a half hour ride to get there. Upon arrival you must pay the entrance fee (CH4000/US6) and listen to an orientation speech. By the time we started hiking, it was 11:30, and that's a hot time of the day to begin a hike. The hike starts down in the bottom of a valley and climbs for several hours. The first few hours we weren't even actually inside the preserve and had to walk on a dusty switch backing dirt road through farm lands and livestock pasture for about 2 hours before reaching the park limits. Luckily a lot of this was in the shade, because it was hot! I was starting to think the hike sucked until we got off the road and into the forest where the the trail leveled out. Suddenly we were surrounded by trees, first ancient coihue, and then arucaria, some of which are in the range of 2,000 years old! The under brush was made up mostly of a local type of bamboo called quila, but there were also many flowers, the most showy of which were red mountain orchids, some type of orange columbine and orange alstomerias.  The trees were so enormous and beautiful. We kept stopping to admire and photograph them and felt so glad that this area has been protected. Since our first trip to South America in 2012, we have been wanting to see monkey puzzle trees in the wild. (We think they are called monkey puzzle cause the branches look like monkey tails, especially with the way they slope down from the center of the tree.) This was our first time seeing them as a forest rather than landscaped specimens, and they are truly amazing, there's nothing else like them and you can't help but feel when you look at them they you've gone back in time to when dinosaurs roamed the earth. This type of tree has been around 200 million years and is considered to be a living fossil, they are perfectly adapted to thrive where they grow. They grow above 1000m where they receive the necessary snow that allows their seeds to properly germinate. After about an hour walking through the forest we reached a cluster of small lakes situated below some cliffs and a rocky summit perch. Another 45 minutes later we were at the top enjoying views down onto the lakes and monkey puzzle trees and well as dazzling views of the surrounding mountains and 4 perfect cone shaped volcanoes. We found a nice big slab of rock to sit on for awhile and had a peanut butter, banana, avocado and rice cake picnic. We were very lucky to have clear, cloudless skies and no wind. On the way back down we walked a small circuit around the lakes through a forest densely populated with monkey puzzle trees and noisy Magellanic Woodpeckers. We got the feeling most people skip this section, but as true connoisseurs of trees, we were real glad we didn't! Getting back to the trailhead was a bit of a rush. By the time we made it back to the road, we'd been out on the trail 9 hours and barely caught the last bus back to town. If we ever go back it would be great to get an earlier start and spend a longer more relaxed day there. Camping is available near the top at the lakes, as well as swimming, and both of those activities would have been fun!

<Jeffrey standing amongt the quila or bamboo in the beneath the ancient coihue trees.>
<A massive old tree that was almost destroyed!>
<A flower that I think might be in the same family as columbine.>
<I think this flower is called red mountain orchid.>
<The orchid grew in wonderful carpets all over the forest floor and tree trunks.>
<Coihue and quila.>



<Just when you think you're in the most pristine of wilderness, you spot some cows!!>
<Arucaria or monkey puzzle.>

<Monkey tails!>
<A view of the mountain where the final view point was. This was after already having walked for 3 hours, and mostly uphill.>
<Sitting of a long fallen monkey puzzle truck in front of a full and majestic monkey puzzle in its prime!>

<Monkey puzzles are really neat to see from below!>
<View of 3 volcanoes and the lakes from the top. Left to right: Volcán Lanin, Volán Quetrupillán and Volcán Villarrica (the one we will be climbing).>
<Big round seed cones of the female monkey puzzle tree. They look neat from above too!>
<A 4th volcano visible looking the other direction, Volcán Llaima.>

<Many nice lichens draping the trees in the arucaria forest, this is supposed to be a sign of purity within the forest, according to the park brochure!>
<This is the biggest and oldest of all of the trees we saw, must have been around 2,000 years old, pretty incredible! It doesn't look nearly as wide at the trunk or as tall in the photo as it is in person. It was quite the impressive tangle of branches!>
<Laguna Negra and the rocky cliffs of the view point. This is where camping and swimming were an option.>

Monday, January 18th 2016

Today we climbed Volcán Villarrica. We had to be up early, 5:15, get ready, eat (oatmeal), and then walk the 20 minutes over to the excursion office, arriving by 6:30. The sun was rising as we walked into town, and we spotted many young people still up drinking from the night before! We were given lots of gear to use for the day, a large day pack, two types of gloves, gaiters, a waterproof jacket and pants, helmet, crampons, an ice axe, a snow sliding disk, and a gas mask. Once all of our gear was packed up we loaded it into the back of a pickup truck, and 10 of us piled into a van for the ride to the base of the mountain. It was probably about a half hour ride total. First though town and into Villarrica National Park, continuing from there onto a dirt road and eventually above tree line to the ski center. The ski center is located at 4,600 feet. From there we took a chair lift up to the 6,000 foot level, which left us with a climb of 3,300 ft. At this point our group of 10 was split 7 and 3. The smaller group was a Chilean family who would complete the tour in Spanish with 1 of the 4 guides, while the rest of us received the tour in English with the remaining 3 guides, one of which was the owner and famous climber, Claudio. We had a pretty strong group except for one overweight and out of shape Swiss guy who showed up in a leather jacket and jeans! We had been made to believe that this would be an incredibly strenuous day and had often heard from others and in reviews we have read that this hike is the hardest thing many people have ever done. But for us it was fairly easy. It may very well have been the hardest thing the Swiss guy ever did! We traveled single file with one guide in front and two along the side on the downhill side. The guide in front kicked out and hacked out with his ice axe steps for us to walk on. We were on the snow from the moment we got off the chair lift, and we just zig-zagged back and forth like that the whole way up, all the while using the ice axe for stability. I had never used an ice axe before, and it was really handy, like having your own personal railing to pull your self up and to lean on for stability. Every so often we took a break, but never for long. Our guides were really great, especially Claudio, who had a very amusing laugh and seemed to have the same views as us on all things nature and sustainability related. As snacks we brought along bananas and a liter sized container each of boiled purple fingerling potatoes with spicy barbecue dipping sauce. For strenuous activities at high altitudes it easier for our bodies digest carbohydrates (vs proteins or fats), and the potatoes and bananas did a fine job of fueling us! I can't wait to have more potatoes on future hikes! After about 3 1/2 hours, we reached the summit crater. There is a small area of exposed snow free volcanic rock at the top that extends a few hundred feet down, but the rest of the route was all snow. We didn't need the crampons at all, but we heard that the previous day they used them the entire time. We also didn't need our gas masks, the air was clear, thanks to the wind blowing the gases the other way. The rocks at our feet were mostly black, but some had streaks of iridescent blue and gold, they were really pretty! The crater itself was quite massive and made up of rocks of all colors. We estimate it was maybe 1/4 mile across and quite deep as well, maybe several hundred feet. We could hear and feel rumbling coming from beneath, and we were even lucky enough to see some small explosions of lava down in the hole. We are glad we did the climb today instead of yesterday like we'd originally wanted because no lava was seen yesterday, they had to wear the crampons all day, and we are also told the air was really toxic and the gas masks were need yesterday as well! We also got clear warm weather, we feel very lucky! Unfortunately since the climb is so popular, we had to share the mountain with over 300 others and the time at the top was taken in shifts, with each group limited to just 5 minutes! The time went far too quickly. The view was lovely in all directions, with mountains and volcanoes, lakes and rivers as well as clearly visible paths of old lava flows. From the top getting back down we flew down the mountain with no more breaks. It only took about 45 minutes as we slid down on our butts via snow chutes using the plastic sledding disks we were provided with. They are specially made just for this activity by local companies and are molded into exactly the shape of a butt with a small handle extension that goes between the legs and clips to a belt at the front, so that its hand free. It was incredible fun sliding down, the ultimate sledding hill! Back at the bottom we enjoyed more potatoes and lots of water and sunscreen. Even with many applications of sunscreen and lots of sun protective clothing, being on the reflective snow for hours under some of the strongest sun on earth, you feel pretty fried. The ozone layer here is quite thin. It was about 4 PM when we made it back to our hostel and although the hike wasn't exhausting, being in the sun was, and we spent the rest of the evening lounging and napping. It was also incredibly hot on the long walk back to our hostel, 34 c. This rendered us further unable to muster up the energy for anything else. Apparently all of Chile is in a heat wave right now.

<On the chairlift bright and early.>
<Looking back down at the massive crowd waiting for the chairlift. Pucon townsite and Lake Villarrica in the background.>

<The long in the snow along the top right of the hill are a few of the many snow chutes.>
<Mmmm purple potatoes!>

<Our guide Claudio is the one with the orange helmet.>
<Jeff admiring the view.>
<Crowds near the top waiting for their turn to summit.>
<The crater.>



<Looking East toward Argentina at Volcán Lanin, the summit of that volcano is in Argentina, but the mountain sits right on the border.>
<The snowy white part in this panorama is a glacier.>

<Somewhat blurry, but gives you an idea or what the rocks looked like. They were very light and full of air pockets.>
<Jeff going down one of the first chutes. It reminded me exactly of water slides at a water park!>

<Jeff in his custom snow sliding uniform.>
<One last look up from near the base of the chair lift.>

Tuesday, January 19th 2016

Last night was our last night at our hostel Bravo Pucon, and although the owner is very nice and well meaning, it's just too far from town and too noisy, so we are moving to a better place. We had planned to start a trekking and camping trip in either Villarrica National Park or Huerquehue (Where-Kay-Way) National Park (which is an hour down the road leading to the Argentinean border) but it is just too hot for us to think about walking all day loaded down with heavy packs. We have decided we will save these two treks for March (equivalent to September is the US) when its perhaps a little cooler and also when there are less tourists in the area. There are also many great hot springs in the area, but those are also too hot for us to think about right now! February is the biggest travel month for Chileans and we definitely don't want to be here at the peak time as now is as much as we can handle. There are so many cars that's it's difficult to cross the road and when you leave town for activities and come back, you get stuck in slow moving stop and go traffic on the inadequate 2 lane highway coming back to town. I can see why this is such a popular place though, it's truly an outdoor wonderland, we could spend weeks here. We had though our original hostel booking of 4 nights might be too much, but it's definitely not enough, that's why today we moved to Chili Kiwi Hostel, a great traveler run place on the lake front with a treehouse for us to sleep in! At reception they have a book of optional tours and activities that they go over with each new set of people that checks in. We didn't think we'd be interested in any of them, but we ended up booking two different activities! So we spent the afternoon riding boogie boards down white water rapids on a nearby river. This turned out to be more of an extreme sport than we had expected and was quite intense at times! They call this activity hydrospeed and you literally lay down on a souped up boogie board, that about 5 layers thick and has a dug out section for you to lean into on your forearms, then you put on a helmet, flippers and a wetsuit and away you go over the rapids all the while kicking and swimming as if you are using a kickboard. We caught some good air a few times. Jeff unfortunately had a bad headache during the whole thing, we think from excess sun exposure the day before. (No photos of the hydrospeed, as it was a wet and wild activity!)



After a bit of rest in the treehouse we decided to go out to dinner. We chose Trawen because it's highly rated on Tripadvisor and also well liked by Lonely Planet. It is also listed on Happy Cow, because I think it used to be a mostly vegetarian restaurant, it unfortunately no longer is, however, we still loved it! They have the only certified organic garden in the region and they use it to produce salads and other veggie items for their menu. They brought us a lovely basket of warm whole grain bread with a puréed carrot, tomato and garlic dipping sauce. I had a fresh juice and I nice big salad with lots of fresh lettuce, avocado, quinoa and garbanzo beans. There weren't many options for me on the menu, most everything had meat and cheese, but I was very pleased with what options I did have. Jeff got an gigantic mushroom and onion empanada as big as a dinner plate and a hummus plate. We were both so pleased and refreshed after our meal and can't wait to go back. 

<We got two free pisco sours using a coupon from our hostel. They are Chile most traditional drink, pisco a a type of brandy distilled from grapes. They taste a lot like margaritas. My orange juice had ginger and rosemary!>
<Delicious fresh food, but the presentation of the salad was a little impractical! I spend a lot of time making the display into something edible!>
<A doggy friend came to rest by us as soon as we sat down and left when we got up to go.> 
<You have this view of the volcano from just about anywhere in town.> 

Wednesday January 20th 2016

Today we did the second tour we booked with the hostel, canyoning they call it. (Apparently only the US uses the term canyoneering.) We were picked up by a minivan at our hostel and stopped at a few others along the way to pick up more people. We took a 45 minute ride to the river, going past El Cañi and close to Huerquehue National Park near the Argentinean border. We parked in the yard of some farmer with whom the company has some sort of agreement. There we suited up in wetsuits, helmets, climbing harnesses and butt sliding pads and walked a few minutes down to the river. We spent the next few hours swimming, floating, sliding down rocks and jumping from (up to 20 feet high) boulders into pools below. Rappelling down was an option for anyone who was too scared to jump, but everyone jumped. I was deemed the most fearless jumper with the best form! We also got to do one zip line of a high boulder and into the water that the guides set up with climbing ropes. It was all so much fun and the river was gorgeous, many big smooth rocks and boulders, with many of them being a long continuous piece creating excellent slides, kind of like Slide Rock State Park in Arizona, but even better. The water was quite cold and refreshing and so clean, clear blue and pristine. We were surrounded by a lush forest of bamboo, ferns, lenga and coihue trees, in addition to lots of flowers and mosses. Our guides were really cool, one from New Zealand and the other a Chileno. There were 8 others on the trip with us, a ginormous German man who barely fit the wetsuit, an Australian guy, a Chilean couple and an obnoxious group of 4 young Israelis, 2 of which wore GoPros on their helmets. (GoPros really annoy me for some reason, when I worked at Mammoth, my least favorite people were the ones who got on the bus with a GroPro attached to their heads!) They kept detaching the cameras from their helmets to take pictures, then struggled to put them back and held up the group a number of times. When we reached the last jump of the trip, one of the GoPros was passed by way of sliding down the boulder to the friend waiting at the bottom to catch it and capture an "epic" mid air rock jumping photo. But sadly the GoPro slid though the guys hands and fell to the bottom of the deep pool!! They spent a while looking for it to no avail and finally one of the guides decided to be nice and help and after multiple attempts swimming to the bottom finally found it. I hope those fools learned a valuable lesson! (We did not take along a camera and don't have any photos of the canyon tour).

<View from the field where we put on our wetsuits.> 

Back at the hostel we set up our tent for camping in the back yard. The treehouse was only available for a night and we were lucky to get in at all, because usually this hostel is 100% full. We hadn't known about the camping, but we're glad it's available because we can stay here and continue to use all of the facilities. This is a really great hostel with a nice backyard containing a semi open air kitchen and lots of seating. And there's a second kitchen inside the main building, so it never gets too crowded. The really great thing though is that they make all the drinkers stop drinking and go to bed or leave the hostel and go out at 11, so those that want sleep can have it. 

Tonight the hostel had a beer tasting in which we got to sample 10 Chilean beers. It was run by Jeremy, and his girlfriend who are from the US and both work at the front desk. Jeremy has a recreational interest in beer and a lot of knowledge to go along with it. He arranged the beers in just the perfect order for tasting. It was quite fun! There is a lot of German influence in the beer down here from the many early German settlers. My favorite beer was one brewed with the roasted seeds (piñones) of  the arucaria or monkey puzzle trees. After the tasting we had a nice big bowl each of Mexican seasoned black beans and brown rice courtesy of the free box in the kitchen. Topped with avocado, cucumber and tomato, it was a great meal.

Thursday January 21st 2016

<In our attempts to avoid the white bread and high fructose jam of most hostel breakfasts, we have been eating big bowls of oatmeal with fruit piled on top.>

Today we packed up our tent and stored all of our stuff in one of the many available lockers and went out kayaking on the lake for a few hours before our afternoon bus ride. The hostel has 3 double kayaks that they rent out for the reasonable fee of CH5000 each ($15 USD total) for 3 hours. We explored the shoreline of a small peninsula occasionally beaching our kayak to swim. The peninsula is the area of town where all of the fancy condos and homes and accommodations with private beaches are located. There is a law, however, that the first 6 meters of beach is public to anyone arriving by kayak, so we could take advantage of the best beaches in Pucon without the price tag that usually goes along with them. The water is crystal clear, clean, cool and refreshing. All the while we had great views of Volcán Villarrica. Three hours was just enough time to tire out our arms!



Back at the hostel we packed up and left with all of our stuff. We stopped for a late lunch on our way to the bus station. We chose Trawen again, since we enjoyed it so much the previous time. This time we both had fresh juices and we shared another big salad, a grilled veggie sandwich and a veggie empanada. We also got more lovely bread in the bread basket, one of which was bright yellow from the pumpkin mixed into the dough. It was another great meal.

Now we are on a 5 hour bus ride to Puerto Montt, the largest city in the area. It is also a bustling port and commercial hub. It is where we will get on the Navimag Ferry on Saturday, a 3 day journey through the Chilean fjords to Puerto Natales in Southern Patagonia. This area is not reachable by roads, unless you cross the border into Argentina. We are very excited for this trip, as it's one we've been interested in since our first trip to South American in 2012. The Chilean highway, or Carratera Austral, as it's know ends further to the north in a very small town called Villa O'Higgins. This is a place we will visit in a few weeks by hiking across the border from Argentina, as we work our way back North.

 

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for solving the puzzle of the monkey puzzle trees for us. We have been intrigued by them as we've occasionally seen them in our travels. We wondered what those were. I think they are the same trees we see. There are a few of them in the rolling hills above Milan. I don't know if it's 1000m there. Maybe 800. I don't know. But they are in yards of the nicer houses. So we assume they are planted, and not native. They look beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a Brazilian variety of the monkey puzzle tree that does well in warm weather and doesn't need the elevation. We have seen those in Santiago and Buenos Aires. They have a slightly different leaf/branch structure, but in silouhette they look the same. Also the elevation thing is just for reproduction, I think they do well landscaped in many different areas, we have seen them in Oregon and Washington.

      Delete
  2. As I remember, you had issues with Israeli tourists the last time you were there. Is my memory correct? If so, what is it with those guys?
    You don't like GoPro? I thought you might. Maybe a drone?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They have all just gotten out of the army and are looking for freedom, so they leave Israel and travel for months at a time, sometimes up to a full year, so they are ultra budget travelers. This means they are always overwhelming the kitchens at hostels cause they don't go out to eat so much. They are also all young and travel in large groups and are noisy and messy and seem to have no concern for others around them. I guess when you are no longer young, young people can be annoying!

      As for the GoPro, I haven't liked them since they first became popular when I was working at Mammoth. Perhaps it's more the people that use them that I don't like, and the "epic" things they want to do with the GoPros!

      Delete
  3. Love seeing your pictures and knowing what you're up to! What an adventure!

    ReplyDelete

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