Our Andes Adventure

Well, we are just back from a quick day and a half adventure out into the Andes. We started out at 10am on June 10th. Took the subway to almost the end of the line (south), then a taxi up to San Gabriel (de Maipo)... we then convinced the cab to take us all the way up to the refugio (Lo Valdes), which was quite a feat, since the road was in pretty bad shape. Lo Valdes is a wonderful alpine cabin that houses mountaineers (and adventurous neices, aunts and babies ). It is a lot like Deetjens inside (for those of you that have been there) and is powered by generator (that goes off around 10 pm). They have great food- and after lunch and a dinner of argentinian beef, we hit the sack...only to be awakened early in the morning by two cats that decided to check us out...we were apparently on their play route, as they ran over both of us several times while they were chasing each other. One actually came and sat on Gage (he didn't seem to mind...unlike me!). Gage was up early wanting to play and talking... I set the headlamp on the bed next to him and it was really cool watching him first notice the shadow his hand was making, then learn to move his hand around and entertain himself with baby shadow puppets... Breakfast was yummy and we spent another gloriously sunny morning on the terrace. The rufugio has two dogs that were both very nice-- one of them was very attentive to Gage. Any time he made a sound, she was up and right beside him, making sure all was ok. He didn't seem to mind. One big event for the trip was the sighting of 10-12 Andean condors on the way up to the refugio. The area had gotten over 3 feet of snow a few weeks ago and some livestock had died in the fields (that was kind of creepy). When we approached, I initially thought-- ostrich? emu? The birds were GIGANTIC. Apparently, after feeding heavily, they need to rest for a while, as they are too heavy to fly. They were all just sitting there, kind of spaced out evenly on the field... looking like big statues. It was really cool. The refugio was (thankfully) run by an Englishman, which made life easier for us (no, my espanol has not improved). Altogether, it was a super cool trip - and Gage really seemed to be knocked out by the mountains. He just kept looking around and around...and he loved the subway! He thought the doors opening and the people coming in and out of the train was hilarious...I will publish some short movies to the blog in the nextday or two. Now it is time for some rest...