Well, this was certainly the worst day of the trip so far, mainly because of lack of sleep.

It all started when I boarded the plane in Lima this morning, hoping to get some sleep on the way to Santiago. First, it turned out I was only two rows ahead of the smoking section, and the passengers behind me wasted not a second after the no smoking sign went off, to light up. Then, I’m beginning to think God has put a singing curse on me. Seated directly across the aisle from me were a group of musicians, who felt so good about going to Santiago last night, that they spent the entire flight singing and laughing and clapping their hands, pausing only when they were served breakfast. Blissfully unconcerned about all the passengers around them who were trying to catch a few winks on the way, they kept us all up.

Upon arrival in Santiago, I discovered that the city is two hours ahead of Lima, so instead of a seven-hour layover, it became a nine-hour layover. I wandered around the airport for a while, trying to find a quiet place to lie down, but the best I could find was a metal bench on the second level of the airport, which turned out to be near a large metal door which slammed very loudly every time someone went through it.

I spent nine hours in that purgatory, but finally the flight to Mendoza was called, and I boarded it with bleary eyes. The flight itself is just a hop over the Andes, and in a half an hour I landed in Mendoza, caught a taxi to the hotel, and was ushered into my room. But as soon as I had taken my first shower in two days, I heard a knock on the door. It was one of the guides from Summits, Chris Keen, telling me to hurry downstairs to meet the others in the group, and take care of the climbing permits. I dressed and hustled down to the lobby, where the others were waiting.

My first impression of them is that they are all older than I am, and that they all seem to be pretty regular people. I guess time will tell.

After the permit process was finished, Robert Link, our main guide, gave us a brief speech, and we were released. I took advantage of the opportunity to find a long distance place to call Vilma, but had to make two tries because of a busy line at home. After the third try, I asked the operator to break in, only to be told that there was a data transmission on the line. Vilma was using her modem! I called again on my office line, and she picked it up, and we talked for about fifteen minutes. It was so good to hear her voice, especially because we won’t get another chance to speak until I get back down off the mountain. It’s going to be a long time, and I hate it. But I only can blame myself for that.

I went back to the hotel for a two-hour nap, and fell asleep right away. No need for a sleeping pill.

The group went out for dinner tonight, and upon getting back to the hotel, I discovered I had a mild case of diarrhea. I’m going to pop some Lomotil in hopes of nipping this thing in the bud. What fun.

That’s about all I have to say for now. I’m bushed and I’m going to crash.

Mendoza to Puente del Inca

I slept pretty well last night, and woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm went off at eight. We met down at the lobby at nine, and wandered over to this swank hotel called The Plaza for breakfast. We all sat around a large round table and got to know each other a little better. I sat between Robert, a British physicist who lives in Santa Fe and works on magnetics, and Steve, who owns a scene shop in Pasadena. I talked mostly with Steve, who seems a bit taciturn, but not unfriendly. The day before, as we were sitting in the lobby, he made a point to disagree with something I had said to one of the other climbers, so I wasn’t sure about him. But he seems OK. We talked a bit about business, but didn’t really get to know each other well enough to let our hair down yet.

After breakfast I wandered over to the money changing office to change a hundred dollars into pesos, and then made my way back to the hotel to pack up my stuff for the bus ride to Puente del Inca, where the climb really begins. It didn’t take very long to get repacked, but I think the real test will be when we divide the gear up for the mules the day we actually start the trek in.

The bus showed up at noon, and we loaded up to go. Soon thereafter we wound our way out of Mendoza, and out onto the high desert surrounding the town. Within a half hour, the highway began to rise into the foothills of the Andes. What little vegetation there had been disappeared, and the reddish-gray dirt became the most noticeable feature of the terrain. The highway skirted the Mendoza river, which ran fast and silty. Robert told us that last year, after the climb, the group did some white-water rafting in the river. It seemed to me, brown-water rafting would be more accurate.

After a while we noticed snow on the peaks in the distance, and entered sort of a broad spot in the valley where the town of Uspallata nestled. We stopped there for lunch in a small cafe, and by this time the conversation was getting a little livelier. I sat near Robert and Loren and Mike. Loren is a medical equipment salesman from Minneapolis, real friendly and talkative, and Mike is a lawyer who works on the 11th circuit court of appeals in Atlanta. He is a very gregarious and talkative guy, with a sharp wit and a real wicked sense of humor. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun exchanging barbs with him.

After lunch we stopped at a shoe store so that some of our group could buy some cheap shoes to use when crossing the rivers. I already have some Tevas with me so I stayed on the bus, but the ones who went came back with these goofy Chinese slipper things, which immediately became the butt of jokes.

Finally the bus pulled out of Uspallata, and we began the last leg of the journey to Puente del Inca. But after we had traveled only about five miles, the driver pulled over to the side of the road, and we all looked up to see what was wrong. The driver and Carlos, our Argentine coordinator, came back from examining the engine and announced that the fan had broken, and that we had to turn back to try to get it fixed.

We staggered back slowly into Uspallata, where we were dropped off at a roadside inn, while Carlos, who assured us that the problem would be fixed in a half an hour, and the driver went off in search of a mechanic.

So we sat down again and ordered some Fantas, and continued the conversations from lunch. A half an hour came and went, and there was no sign of Carlos and the bus, so we ordered a beer. And then another, and another. The conversations started getting more animated, and despite the setback in our progress toward the mountain, it was an opportunity for us all to get to know each other in a very relaxed setting. My impression of everyone so far is quite positive, no head cases or assholes. The only one who worries me a bit is Connie. She seems like she might turn out to be a bit prickly, but that might be only because she’s the only woman in our group, and could be feeling a little uncomfortable. Or it also could be that she is still suffering from the cancer that caused her to miss going to Aconcagua last year. She has obviously undergone chemotherapy recently, if the thinness of her hair is any indication. I’ll just have to wait and see how we all get along.

The afternoon wore on, conversations waxed and waned, the sun began to set, and still no sign of the bus. The jokes about the bus began to get a little more pointed, and I could tell that even though Robert was laughing too, he was not happy about the situation.

Just about dusk a minibus from the same company as our bus pulled up, and for a minute it seemed our delivery was near, but when Robert talked to the driver, it became apparent that the appearance of the minibus was only coincidence, and he was not going to be our salvation. Robert and the driver continued their negotiations, and as it began to turn dark, the upshot was that this driver would take us up to Puente del Inca, and the bus and our gear would follow whenever they could.

Just as we were all loaded aboard, and started to drive off, our original bus finally drove up behind us. So we all bailed out again and got back on board the old bus. By this time it was dark, and whatever scenery we might have seen was hidden behind a curtain of black.

The final leg up to Puente del Inca was touch and go. It turns out that, in order to repair the bus, the mechanic had removed the smaller fan from the air-conditioning system and installed it in place of the larger, main fan. It worked, but the engine temperature hovered at the red line the entire trip.

Finally, at eleven o’clock, we reached our destination, the hosteria at Puente del Inca. It’s a fairly modern lodge, with rooms that hold six beds each. We dropped off our bags and headed to the main dining hall for a late supper. We were all pretty wasted by now, what with the late hour and the massive quantities of beer some of us had consumed, so there wasn’t a lot of conversation. All of us sort of slept through the course of melon and ham, then soup, but when they served steak and french fries, I excused myself from the table and went to the room to get a head start on a good night’s sleep. I knew that a steak would sit in my stomach all night long like a piece of pig iron, so there seemed to be no reason to delay.

The others turned up maybe twenty minutes later, and in no time we were asleep in our bunks. We were nine hours late, but we had made our first destination. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. However, I must say that we all handled it with good humor. Of course, this really wasn’t much of a test, but I believe this bodes well for the cohesiveness of the group.

Puente del Inca

I’m sharing a room with Robert, Mike, Loren, Connie, and Steve. The first night was spent without incident, and the sharing of the bathroom went smoothly as well, with all of us getting up in order of urgency, and no one seemed to be put out by anyone else’s bathroom habits. I was the fourth one to rise, and tried to get through the opening festivities of the day as quickly as I could, even though the shower head came off in my hand when I tried to adjust the direction of the water stream.

We met in the dining hall at nine and I wolfed down the usual tea and toast for breakfast. I must say that even though I haven’t totally gotten used to the Argentine eating schedule, I seem to be doing OK with it. This morning I still found myself with a bit of the runs, so I popped another Lomotil, and I hope to have this thing cleared up soon. Knock on wood. I have climbed in that condition before, and it’s an experience I don’t want to relive.

After breakfast we all met out behind the hosteria, and began the task I had been dreading since I first started making up gear lists back home: dividing up my gear for the climb. I had hoped to hike up to base camp with just my day pack on my back, but when Robert announced that we would be carrying our sleeping bags and pads with us, I knew that my plan was done for. There would be no way that I could put anything else into the day pack if my massive sleeping bag had to go in there too. It barely fit into the sleeping bag compartment of my big pack. So I had to come up with another plan, and was in the middle of tossing things from bag to bag when Robert strolled up for the gear check.

He went through all my gear, piece by piece, making sure I had everything that had been listed by Summits as essential equipment. He asked whether I had actually used my shoes and pack before, just to make sure I would be used to them and not dissolve immediately into a mass of blisters. He checked my down parka, and head lamp, and made sure I had enough sunscreen. I wasn’t happy about being the first to be checked; I knew the others were watching to see how I measured up, and to see whether their gear would pass Robert’s test. But I made it through just fine, and went back to piling my gear around, trying to get everything I needed in the right bags.

It took about an hour and a half before I had things shoved into the proper compartments, and I lifted my pack to check its weight. I guessed it weighed about thirty pounds or so without water, but that included my video camera and some batteries, so I wasn’t displeased. It was more weight than I wanted to carry to base camp, but I wasn’t carrying anything that I considered extraneous, so I left it at that.

The sun here is intense, so rather than risk another sunburn, and wanting to conserve my sunscreen as much as possible, I went back to the room for a little nap before lunch. Though I didn’t actually fall asleep, it did me some good. I figure I need all the rest I can get.

We had a great three course lunch, including dessert, and afterwards gathered at the base of the valley opposite the mountain to do a short conditioning climb. We crossed the actual rock formation, shaped like a bridge, for which Puente del Inca is named. It sits a little below a small thermal spring, from which a sulfurous stream of hot water spills out over the ground. The resulting accumulation of minerals has formed a smooth, mineral-coated structure which spans the Mendoza river. It looks a lot like a cave formation with stalactites hanging down over the rushing water. Just above the bridge are a couple of small pools filled with warm water. Robert said that after we get back, they are a great place to go to wash away the aches and pains.

The walls of the valley rise steeply behind the thermal springs, and a narrow zig-zag trail heads up the side of the scree-covered slope. We followed this trail for about an hour, with Robert checking our rest-stepping, and pressure-breathing techniques. It will be very important for us to do both techniques well, as they will help us conserve energy, and avoid altitude sickness. The trail was very dusty, and the air was hot despite the 9,000 ft. altitude. Several times we crossed small gullies, and the loose dirt under our feet threatened to crumble and send us tumbling down into the valley below.

When we reached the end of the trail, we stopped and turned to see Aconcagua for the first time. We had a full view of the south face, and it was an intimidating sight. A small cloud crowned the south summit, and we could see that the wind was blowing hard on top. The mountain looked massive, and though we won’t see the side we will be climbing for the next few days, I had a hard time visualizing myself making it to the top of such a giant.

Tomorrow we begin the trek to base camp, and though I’m excited and eager to begin, I have a lot of misgivings and worries. It will take a lot for me to overcome them. I know I am as prepared as I can be, but the task ahead is without a doubt the hardest physical task I have ever attempted. I am determined, not necessarily to reach the summit, but to do as well as I can, and to come home safe to Vilma.