Skiing

Avi & all 3 kids spent a week in Les Menuires, together with Na'ama who came from LA and Amir, Rakefet, Ido, Tal and Tomer who came from Israel. They had a lot of fun even though Avi fractured his shoulder and pulled a ligament in his knee, so he skied only for 2 days and came back wearing a shoulder brace and a knee brace.

La Suizandina

As expected, we had no internet, and we lived to tell the story despite the withdrawal symptoms. So here is what I wrote off-line:

Loquimay, 3-25

We woke up to a glorious day - deep blue sky and no cloud in sight.

After the promised hearty breakfast (interesting musli with poppy
seeds and lots of other stuff), we drove to where we planned to ascend the Loquimay. The minute I saw the gravel we would have to deal with I became very suspicious, and after 45 minutes of stumbling in something which resembles coarse sand (every footstep went a few centimeters down), I decided on a strike. Anne & Avi continued to walk for another 30 minutes or so - to the ski lift, and then we stumbled back to the car (I considered another strike but it would have been no fun to stay forever in that barren moon-scape).


We drove down with a Swiss guy, Nicholas, who needed a lift back to his car (he also decided not to climb, but his 3 companions pushed on). He is a geology & geography teacher who also digs for dinosaur bones occassionally so he gave us a very interesting explanation about the composition of the pumice and basalt rocks we saw, and also some dinosaur stories. They are staying at Suizandina too, so maybe we'll see them later.

We drove down to Tollahuco - a park about 60 km away. The last 35km or so were on an unpaved road but the car took this bravely. We first stopped by some thermal pools and then continued to search for a waterfall. After walking for more than an hour through a beautiful
rain forest we turned around without finding it as we wanted to go
back on the unpaved road before darkness fell.

We stopped in Curacautin - a fairly large town and sampled a few of
its stores searching for food for tomorrow.

Now we are back in the guest house - showered and ready for dinner ina couple of minutes.

Conguilio, 3-26

Another wonderful day - a few more clouds but pleasant tempreatures - ideal for hiking.

After the same hearty breakfast we drove to Curacautin, and on to the natioal park Conguilio, in which lies the lake of the same name and a few other smaller lakes and lagoonas. The trip took about 1.5 hours on unpaved roads, but most of the time the roads were in decent shape.

The park is extremely well organized and maintained. We first stopped in an information center with a lovely display of the local fauna and flora, and then on to the start of the trail. We walked for about 8km through the forest with occasional views of the lake. The ascent was not too steep and the views were just lovely. The local trees are very different from what we know - in particular a very old species of tree - aracaulia (supposedly has been around since the dinosaurs). They have spiky branches shooting out from a spiky main trunk. The spikes are arranged in spirals around the branch (sometimes also around the trunk). Some of the trees were covered with moss which seems to choak the trees.


After a quick and windy lunch with a beautiful view of the lake we
went down to the car and continued towards Laguna Verde. We aborted
before arriving as we were driving through a lava field with lots of
sharp stones which seemed too dangeros for the car. We did look at
another laguna which seemed haunted - lots of dead trees around it and forboding lava fields around.

Anne and I are weaned from the internet rather successfully but Avi
needed his fix after 2 days of abstinence, so we stopped in Curacautin at an Internet cafe - decent speed and about $0.55 for 30 minutes. Not bad. All non-Internet places were closed as it's Sunday so we will need to replenish our fruit supply tomorrow.


That's as far as I got in Chile. By Monday morning I had a terrible cold so we spent most of the day driving around - we went over the Andes pass up to the Argentinan border, visited beautiful lakes, and saw hardly a soul - but did see lots of cows, horses, sheep, goats and chicken. It is amazing how sparse the population is. At some point we were flagged down by 3 girls who needed a ride to the village next to our hotel! (we were about an hour away at that point). As their English was not quite as good as our Spanish (!) we are not quite sure what they told us but we think they are from Santiago - working as comntemporary dance teachers in the local schools. Anyway - they were charming and we parted with kisses at the end of the ride. Part of the drive was through an old converted railroad tunnel - which is a very odd experience.

Tuesday morning we packed up and made our way leisurely to Temuco to catch the 5pm flight to Santiago. We stopped in the local arts market but even Avi hardly found anything to buy there - Chile is really not a shopping country.

The flight back was long but uneventful and we slept quite a lot. Was great to see all 3 kids at home together, and by now (Thursday night) everything is completely back to normal. Was a great trip!

Rain

Not much to report about yesterday except that it rained cats and dogs. We hung around the hotel all day. It did clear up pretty much by early evening so we took the boat from the hotel to downtown, walked around a bit and ended up in a nice pub/steakhouse for dinner. More pisco sour, a steak and fish. Was very nice.

The rental car is supposed to arrive here soon, and we will go to the next stop - Suizandina. Probably no connectivity until we are back.

Villarica and Pucon

Yesterday we had a very nice 'conference outing'. The buses left at 12:30 and luckily we were on the good bus - the one where they remembered to load the lunch bags. So we ate our sandwiches on the way and arrived at the base of the Villarica volcano around 3pm. The volcano is active and we saw lots of puffs of smoke coming out of it. We explored a volcanic cave and took a short walk in the forest, crossing a canyon on a hanging bridge and passing directly above a volcanic hole with smoke coming out.

We took the bus back down to Pucon which is a very cute and very touristy town - reminded us of place like Aspen. We strolled around town for a while and then had a very nice dinner in a hotel before driving back to Valdivia.

Valdivia

Dinner last night was very nice and lively. We started with a pisco sour, a cocktail which even Avi rather liked (not enough to get his own but we shared). Most of us had fish in various preparations - Chile is not known for its food but this was much better than expected.

This morning I explored Valdivia - and don't have much to report. I walked for about 5 hours and have probably visited most streets in town at least twice. I did go to the Historical Museum which I 'finished' in 10 minutes walking slowly and decided to forego the Moden Art Museum whose main claim to fame seems to be the nice views from its windows (the views were nice enough from the garden of the adjacent Historical Museum). But the people were friendly and my Spanish is improving by the minute. I even shopped for 1 marzipan bar. This area is famous for its marzipan - as it was settled by many German immigrants duing the first half of the 20th century. I like authentic German marzipan better but it was not bad - much better than the local arts and crafts in the market which were rather pathetic. I don't think we'll spend much time shopping here.



Today is overcast but I got a sunburn nonetheless (the hole in the ozone over the southern hemisphere...) - and the tempreature is just right!

Chile

New travels:

Eyal arrived Sunday morning from Seattle to babysit Yuval, and we left a few hours later for Valdivia, Chile. It was just under 24 hours door-to-door: JFK-Lima-Santiago. After about 3 hours in Santiago we caught the domestic flight to Valdivia which turns out has a stopover in another small town (whose name I already managed to forget).

We took a cab from the airport to the hotel - the weather seems wonderful, a deep blue sky and everything looks very green and lush and lots of water.

We have a great view of the river from our room and we met a bunch of friends here already. In fact we are going out with some people for dinner in a few minutes - hope we don't collapse into our plates...

More tomorrow.

My (Edna) Last Day

This will be short - have to go for my last Chinese breakfast. Judes and I went to the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven yesterday with Jason. I forgot to bring the camera.....

We had dinner with Andy, Frances and 3 other Chinese professors. Lots of food, some of it quite good. The host gave me a doll dressed in a minority costume at the end.

Off to Princeton! Judes will leave tomorrow and hopes to meet Yuval in the airport before he takes off and Avi will be back on Sunday.

E#mail from Eyal (April 26)

today is the 4th and last of the rest days in bc, tommorow i will go up with dan, max and kuy (the german friend) to carry some food up to camp 2, and then continue up to camp 3 and start fixing ropes obove to camp 4. its a lot of work planned, but hopefully we feel good and manage to complete the task. the sherpas should be be up a couple days after us to help doing this job.

i think that we will stay on the mountain for about a week, and then
come down for the final rest before the summit attempt. i will probably go down to one of the lower villages alonge the trek to rest more properly, and the come back to try the summit.

Beijing - April 25

First - all the latest posts from Summit Club mention the Seder Eyal celebrated at basecamp! http://www.everestnews.com/Summitclimb2005/everestnepal2005uaa04252005.htm (look at Mike O'brien and Maximo Kausch dispatches. Eyal even seems to have added a sentence to Mike's report).

After brekafast in the hotel and a cappucino in our favorite cafe we were picked up by Mr. Song and taken to the CS department in Chingua University. It's a brand new building in a very new part of campus. Andy's office is huge and very stylized and impressive. But then he took us over to see "Avi's office" - it's the office which is reserved for Mr. Li, hte riches man in Hong Kong who donated the building and it is a spectecular suite - we will definitely take photos of Avi using it....

Judes and I took a cab to ashopping center (basically an indoor market), and to our great suprise we spent about 6 hours there and shopped until we dropped. Very uncharacteristic!

We met Avi in the cafe around 7 and had a nice leisurely (western) dinner, and then collapsed into bed.

Today Judes & I are going with Jason to the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven and Avi will continue toiling away in his magnificant office. He enjoyed talking to the students a lot yesterday.

Hangzhou 

Hangzhou 

Hangzhou - April 24

After gorging ourselves at breakfast on the hotel's verandah looking at the beautiful garden, we postponed our meeting with Xu to 12 as we decided we'd much rather stroll in the park by the lake than have lunch. All of Hangzhu was hanging out at the park - lots of families and everybody was eating. Even so the park remained spotlessly clean.
We were struck again by how few children you see and how each child has a whole retinue of doting parents and grandparents with it. That was a bit sad but the whole morning was just lovely.

We did go with Xu to one more Budhist temple, also in beuatiful park-like surroudings. The whole area was mobbed and it was amazing to see how many people burned incest and prayed. This is a 1600 year old temple but most of the statues were destroyed during the cultural revolution and were renewed since. Very big and ornate but exactly my taste...

The airport is very new and impressive. The highway leading to it winds through miles of new developments - all the houses are very similar, in bright pink and green colors with odd structures sticking out - very Disnelandish.

Jason waited for us at the Beijing Airport and it felt like meeting an old friend and coming back home. We went out for a non-Chinese dinner which was not bad at all. Today Avi is going to the University and Judes & I will explore some markets. We decided we need a guide-free day...

Hangzhou - April 23

We had a Pessach miracle - we got off the train in China - in fact the city looked very rundown and ugly around there, went to lunch in a downtown restaurant (nothing to write home about) and then went for a couple more kilometers and were transported - either to Swtizerland or to heaven (the saying here is that there is paradise in heaven and Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth).

Our hotel is extremely fancy and is located on the shore of the Western Lake, which has the most beautiful and meticulously groomed park around it. The place swarmed with people (mainly Chinese tourists) and not a scrap of paper on the ground! And the lay-out and gardening are really unbelievably beautiful - they city must emply thousands of people to keep this huge pak (probably larger than Central Park) so well groomed.

We took a boat ride on the lake which we would have enjoyed more if the woman who was blaring away into a megaphone on deck would have fallen into the lake - her group looked quite unhappy too.

Then we continued to a tea village and plantation (where they have the 'best green tea in China'). The view around there is amazing - steep mountains covered with tea bushes and dotted with people picking the leaves. It is of course highly commercialized and the only way to get rid of the young woman who gave us tea and demonstrated things was to buy 1 can... But the scenery was definitely worth the investment.

Close by we looked at the Pagoda of Six Harmonies, and then returned to the hotel. Our guide here is Leon (Xu, pronounced Shoe) - nice and has excellent English - he spent 6 months in Madison Wisconsin as an exchange student.

We took a walk along the lake to find a restuarant and ended up in a strange place - an exquisite tea house in a very Japanses looking setting. They had a buffet there with very unusual buffet things like nuts and candy, but also noodles and eggrolls and such and the whole meal was dirt cheap. We still do not understand what kind of place this really was but it was very nice and tasty and different from the regular Chinese meals.

And finally - there is a partial photo of Eyal on SummitClimb: http://www.everestnews.com/Summitclimb2005/everestnepal2005uaa04232005.htm

Eyal called! (not us, though...)

From an email from Miryam:

"Eyal called me just now to wish Chag Sameach. He is fine, has been up the mountain for three days to acclimatise, is now back at camp for a rest. The same procedure will be repeated once more, then the real climb will start."

This made our day! Chag Sameach to all! (a.k.a Happy Passover).

Suzhu - April 22

Breakfast was less delicious than in Shanghai but we ate a lot nontheless (we are a bit fed up with Chinese food by now, and it's easy to find western food in the breakfast buffets). We started the Suzhu exploration at the Garden of the Humble Administrator. Turns out the Administrator was not humble at all, in fact he was a very powerful and rich man, but his humbleness manifested itself when he designed and worked the garden. In any case, it is a very large3 and beautifully laid out graden and residence, with lots of gems such as beautiful plants, pavillions and corridors with interesting
windows allowing tantalizing views into the garden.

We asked Alvin to add a side trip to the Silk Museum which got good reviews in the book and was really very nice. This caused a small blowup with the driver who tried to bill us exoiberantly for his time, which was ridiculous as he was engaged to drive us around
for the whole day anyway. But all is well that ends well....

We continued to the Silk Factory where Alvin passed the baton to his
girlfriend Anita - a 23 year old student who might become a guide too. (He had a medical examination.) This friendship is apparently unusual as he is 9 years older. Alvin has a constant sad expression on his face, even when he attempts jokes, but Anita was very lively and bubbly. We continued to a restaurant and ate some of the local specialities - most notable was the lotus root stuffed with rice and some beef with bitter green unidentified stalks.

Next we went on the canal in a motor powered glass enclosed boat. Suzhu waterways are very pretty, and we spent the time thinking of Hebrew songs to teach Anita (we did not get very far but she sang a Russian song iwth a very familiar tune).

We continued to the Garden of the Master of Nets - this is to commemorate the fisherman who saved the owner's son who fell into the canal. A much smaller residence and garden but also very beautiful with the bonus of a nice courtyard and a decent cappucino machine in the bar! The guards had to throw us out of the place forcefully at 5:30 when they closed.

We went to see the streetlife on the aptly named Street in Front of the Temple (the temple was a Tao temple but it was closed already), and then to the hotel to put down our stuff.

Anita had told us that it was the opening of the Silk Festival and there will be festivities on the river which we decided to attend. This was a slight misunderstanding as Alvin had invited us to meet his family and we misunderstood him, but were forgiven.

We took a cab to the Center and then stood on the bridge for an hour looking at the floats on the river and the fireworks. These were rather tame, but seeing the multitudes of people on bikes, motorcycles and on foot moving across the bridge, and the different soldiers and policemen guarding the place was extremely entertaining. It's really impressive to see thousands of people crowded together, all in a good and cooperative mood, joking with the soldiers and having a very good time....

We had a short night as we had to catch the 7:24 train to Hang-zhou. I am writing this on the train - another people-full place - everybody eating, or sleeping and/or talking - and a general sense of satisfaction. We'll arrive in about 2 hours.

Coffee in Garden of Net Master 

Train to Hangzhou 

Suzhu Canal Ride 

Zhouzhang and us 

Zhouzhang and us