Why I DETEST Buying A Car.

[This is a long one. And it's a rant. You have been warned.]

It’s fair to say that negotiating is a regular part of life. Some people do it for a living and some people avoid it at all costs. I’m probably somewhere close to doing it for a living based on different roles that I have had over my career, not to mention when I was negotiating for a later curfew in high school and in college.

Background

My Dad negotiated my first car purchase when I was 19. Before that, I drove a hand-me-down that varied between whatever car my brother trashed along the way. Then I moved into Manhattan and the need for a car ceased until I had a temporary stint in the Bay Area in 2000. I got creamed when I leased my BMW in Palo Alto. No doubt about it. Spanked. Hosed. Bamboozled. You name it. I didn’t know enough about the mechanics about how car sales worked. Fortunately, when my stint in NorCal ended prematurely, BMW wanted my car so bad that they essentially paid me to get the car back so they could resell it for an exorbitant price. Whatever.

Fast forward to 2003 when I moved out to Seattle and needed to acquire a car. I didn’t want a BMW because even though I loved it, I felt they nickeled and dimed on so many of the packages. I mean this is a luxury car brand and power seats weren’t included in the base?! So I went to Volkswagen. They assigned me a female salesperson and truthfully she was as much of a shark as anyone else, even with me reading “Car Buying For Dummies”.

I wanted to lease (mistake) and committed pretty much every other dumb error you could do (i.e., this is what I want to spend per month). The worst part was the signing process where they said it would take an hour and it took three. I had already returned my rental car and Marc had dropped me off at the dealer so I was on an island, or so I thought back then.

The Finance team at Carter VW in Seattle jerked me around with delay tactics and other BS. I would complain to Sales while I was waiting and I didn’t exist anymore. I was passed over the wall. I could tell you that I had my Jetta for almost 10 years. I LOVED that car and yet I still tell people that Carter VW sucks and doesn’t respect your time.

They would call, email, etc. I’d tell them why I’m not interested each time and they would say that things are different. Yeah, right. Car dealers are nothing if not predictable. They still use the same crappy tactics. And they are in denial that the model is changing…. Maybe they should talk to yellow cab drivers who thought their model was unassailable.

Trade-In Current Car

Fast forward to the past couple of weeks. We decided to trade-in our Ford, which had incredibly low mileage and was in top condition for a 2012 car. We sold the VW to a friend a few years ago who was in a bind. We received a letter from Ford, which I also verified with our dealer, that they were willing to pay up to 110% of Kelley Blue Book (KBB) for our vehicle.

I make an appointment and show up with the car. I did my research on KBB and NADA with conservative estimates for what Ford could offer me. I also had a trade-in value estimate from where we were buying our new car. I figured out the tax implications, etc. Bottom-line, I knew the number Ford had to give me to make the deal happen.

Of course, they lowball me. I expected that. What I didn’t expect and what caused me to just walk out with saying “thanks for your time” was that when Bill Pierre Ford gave me the number they wanted to pay, I grabbed my phone because I had NADA and KBB pulled up. The salesperson says:

"Don't bother getting the information from your phone. The info there is always wrong. What I have from Kelley from my machine is correct."

Oh really? I get that you weren’t going to go with the number that KBB said on the higher end but to call KBB’s website into question with the hopes I wouldn’t check it and just accept your number? Wow. I guess this intimidation tactic must have worked before? I tweeted at KBB and of course they politely said that the salesperson was full of crap.

The end result of that was that we didn’t dislike our Ford. We just wanted something different and until that salesperson, we had nothing but positive things to say about Ford. Yeah, not anymore. The trade-in happened at an attractive price where we bought the car, so all’s well that ends well - more on that in a bit. But Ford is dead to us.

Buying The New Car

I was pretty confident about what I wanted to buy – make, model and most of the options – but I wanted to test drive it obviously. One of our close friends recommended test driving a competitor so I did that first.

I went to BMW after making an appointment. The salesperson kept trying to tell me on the test drive that the options that I was interested in were not that important. Oh ok. Thanks. I guess I don’t know what I want at all because “you know what I want”. Maybe it’s because you have the perfect vehicle in the showroom for me to buy with the options already in place. Gosh, I'm so smart (not really).

I told the salesperson I would follow-up as I was checking out the nearest competitor. He responds by saying that the car I “want” is priced at XXXXX MSRP. Hmmm. I ask is that what he is offering the car at because his email is vague except for the dollar amount and MSRP. The response is “Oh, of course I wish I could sell cars at MSRP but that isn’t realistic so we sell the car at MSRP with X% discount.” Ah right. Make me pull stuff like this out of you. Don’t just give me a number to negotiate with. Now we’re done because you actually attempted to sell me a car at MSRP and you want to sell me a car with features that I could care less about. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HATE BUYING CARS. NO RESPECT FROM DEALERS SO IT’S CONTENTIOUS, DEFENSIVE, OFFENSIVE SIMULTANEOUSLY!!!

Now off to test drive the car I want. I had put in some data and was already quoted an “internet discount price”. It’s getting close to the “end of the year” where new models are coming in for 2016 plus we’re close to the end of the month. We get a price on the trade-in, which was probably helped by Ford’s “strong interest” in my car. Get some things negotiated and within 24 hours, we have a deal.

But it’s not smooth sailing because our salesperson tells me that even though we (THE CUSTOMER) have a time crunch that he may not be able to get us through Finance as quick as we would like because they can’t predict “end of the month” traffic. More BS. So then I go on Twitter to warn our new dealer what happened to VW when they screwed me on my signing time frame.

Magically, everything gets sorted but our dealer wants feedback and to make the survey say “10, 10, 10”. I say that when someone has an appointment and you don’t honor it that it is unacceptable. He gave me a bunch of excuses why that happens but ultimately it is the typical “You’re making your internal logistics problem MY problem. I don’t care. Fix it.” Stop worrying about your survey scores. It was almost as nauseating as a former manager at Microsoft telling the team how to fill out the annual MS Poll. Yes, this happened.

Takeaways

I still have a couple of things to sort out but ultimately this ended up pretty well for us. That said, I feel like buying a car is like signing yourself up to fight with someone because ultimately car salespeople aren’t interested in a win-win. They are interested in doing whatever they can to rip you off. That is what I learned. 

I'm not saying that I am an expert in buying/selling cars but I can tell you that the whole process was exhausting/frustrating and that's what these dealers count on. This time, I was more prepared, secured a better deal, etc., but these people just want to extort what they can from you. We encountered a bait and switch situation with Lexus in Bellevue, so we will never buy a Lexus from anyone again.

When Tesla and other companies like Beepi start gaining more momentum, I can’t wait for this business model to go down. Kind of like yellow cab drivers extorting passengers and having horrible customer service. J

WWC 2015 vs. 1999 - Differences.

The town where Lisa and I grew up was very soccer crazy. Most kids played in the local league growing up at one time or another. I never even gave it a thought that it would be possible to make a living as a soccer player. Then 1999 changed the game for so many, and it looks like 2015 is the result of all of the hard work of the '99ers.

We recently had the opportunity to attend the Women's World Cup Final in Vancouver, Canada - a quick drive from Seattle. Lisa, my sister, and I have been working on this for just over a year and while good planning always helps, we had some luck along the way. This luck manifested itself with the USWNT making it to the final and then being right above the goal where they would score their 1st 4 goals.

The game was shocking in a good way, given how the 1st 20 minutes or so played out. The crowd was at 95%+ USA fans and it was loud. In short, it was awesome. We rented a house in Kitsilano, just outside of the main downtown core, which made it easy to walk in and out of the city. Marc and I even went to yoga at a sibling studio of the one we go to in Seattle. How times have changed (at least until Marc is back to 100%)!

I thought it was worth discussing the differences between what my viewing experience was in 1999, when Lisa and I attending the opening match for the USWNT in NJ and watched the final in a bar in NYC, and what it was over this past month in 2015.

In 1999, it's safe to say that the players were marketed as "All American girls" in the sense that they were pretty, athletic and feminine. A couple were mothers so they were deemed "the ultimate soccer moms", which was good. Most of the attendees I saw in person or on TV were either people like me (women who played when they were younger or current playing in rec leagues) or young girls who were currently playing soccer in youth leagues. 

The only men you typically saw (outside of the WWC final at the Rose Bowl) were likely fathers taking their daughters to matches. I am pretty sure that no men's clothes were available for sale for the Women's World Cup. The market wasn't there. When Lisa, Keri (a long-time friend of ours) and I watched that final in 1999 at that bar, we had one TV on the match. The other TVs were on MLB and other assorted sports going on that day. By the time the match went into OT, 90% of the TVs had been shifted to watch USA vs. CHN. And it was loud. Unfortunately that momentum did not translate to success in a US professional league for women.

Fast forward to 2015 - 16 years later. If you go to the Nike website, you can buy men's and boy's gear that commemorate the US Women's National Team. This is definitely progress. The other major observation was the demographic of attendees of the USA matches. Many, many more men. Lots of boys. The American Outlaws have had huge showings at USWNT matches and it was no different at the final. They are awesome.

On our current WNT, we have stars who are openly gay and no one seems to care. This is fabulous. We have the Moms, which is great. What is even better is that a new focus is in play that the women are talented players with tremendous athleticism and skill. Yes, we have players who are capitalizing on their looks to snag more endorsement deals. Given the pay disparity between men and women for the World Cup, I have no issue with that. But those players who may not have received endorsement deals in 1999 are starting to receive them now (Abby Wambach). And those players are role models to the youngsters playing on local teams. Everyone is different and it's ok to embrace who you are.

The women's game is growing. Parity is improving. You saw England and Australia make great runs this year, and many of those players have other jobs (READ: non-soccer) that help pay the bills. Here's hoping that the success this past month translates into improved compensation and more opportunities for those ladies.

Oh and we had a great time with the #teamof8 in Vancouver. Many much needed laughs. 

Go Eat The Freakin' Cupcake!

Yes, I said that. 

Just eat the freakin' cupcake!

While we tend to eat relatively healthy, sometimes we have been known to indulge here at Chez Beck (see pic on left). If you follow us on Facebook, Instagram or have been a guest at our house, you'll know this. But we try to eat relatively healthy most of the time. 

This post isn't about throwing healthy eating out the window. It also isn't meant to feel bad for us. It's about living life and not taking things for granted. Ever. 

The past 4+ weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind at Chez Beck. A pretty unpleasant one at that. We had a most unexpected and a very serious health scare that required immediate attention. Details aren't necessary but needless to say, it demanded putting everything on hold to focus on the situation at hand and the uncertainty that went with it, which was considerable (and on some level, still is).

OK, back to the cupcake. When an email was sent out to a small group of people as events were unfolding, a joke was included that someone could help by stopping at Cupcake Royale, a local shop in Seattle, to pick up some cupcakes or shakes for Marc and Jill. 

The percentage of those people willing to head to Cupcake Royale on our behalf was pretty astounding! It prompted some thought as well. So the next email that went out included an update on the patient and exhorted all of the recipients to go eat the freakin' cupcake because life is short. Clearly the joke touched upon a nerve that people were in need of a cupcake!

The great news is that things are getting better. Much better. We are cautiously optimistic and continue to progress forward everyday. This is due not just to the perseverance at Chez Beck but also due to the incredible support we have received from our families and our friends during this time. We are so lucky. Oh, and a great medical team to boot.

Marc and I have this little tradition that we do at dinner every night. Yes, every night. We always toast to something positive. It can be something as inconsequential as a household bill not being as high as we expected to getting great news on the health front. You name it. We've covered it in the daily toast.

We encourage y'all to find something positive to celebrate everyday with the folks in your life. The longstanding tradition has helped a great deal during these past few weeks.

And don't wait for an excuse. If the opportunity presents itself...

GO EAT THE FREAKIN' CUPCAKE!

Home Cooking, Neil Gaiman and Some Recent Reading.

Since we returned from our trip, Marc and I have been focusing on home cooking. After eating out constantly for almost a month, it was a welcome change to eat a bit healthier and have some more variety.

That said, we got roped into a 'mac n cheese' competition of sorts with some friends so I tested out some recipes last weekend from "The Modernist Cuisine At Home" cookbook. Plus it was Passover, so I whipped out one of my faves from John Besh - Creole-Matzo Ball Soup. 

This resulted in about 6 hours of total cooking last Saturday, which I felt the next day at yoga (BTW, I just finished my 38th straight day of yoga today - go figure). The combo of the 2 'mac n cheese' recipes and the soup made for an "interesting me

al" that night but whatever. It was mostly done so I could watch the Final Four with Marc, so I was happy.

Given that it was Passover, I was excited to make a soup from scratch since I had a bunch of bones from when we smoked chicken on the Big Green Egg. Matzo ball soup can tend to be bland, which is why like the one from Besh. Matzo balls are pretty easy to make - chicken fat, matzo meal and some eggs. I didn't have enough chicken fat, so I had duck fat on hand to use - shocking. Hey - give me credit for not using bacon fat since it was Passover, ok?

The 'baked' version (left side of above pic) from the book was more on the traditional side in terms of prep. Grate a bunch of cheese, parboil the macaroni, throw in some milk and a couple of other things. Then throw it in the oven. I worked out a kink or two in the process and look forward to showcasing it with our friends in May.

The 'fat free' version (right side of above pic) was very different in the sense that you used a sous vide to create "cheese water". This is done through putting grated cheese and water together in a vacuum sealed bag and throwing it in a sous vide machine. After cooking, the water from the bag is filtered out and that is what ends up in the dish. The cheese can be used for something else but is no longer needed in the dish (hence 'fat free'). The creaminess was made through pureeing cauliflower and it was actually pretty good.

Marc forwarded me a great interview with Neil Gaiman on "Raising Readers, Fairy Tales & More". Highly recommend it as more kids get engrossed in the digital age and maybe don't read books as much.

I finished the book, "Always Running: La Vida Loca", last week. I was a bit disappointed based on the reviews saying how great it was. I just felt it was a bit light on substance and had much more potential to tell a more compelling story. Oh well, I had a good string of books for awhile so I was bound to come across one that I didn't enjoy as much.

After finishing that book, I started "Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine" by Maximillian Potter. Marc and I have travelled to the region that they are talking about in the book so it's good to know where they are talking about and how far places are from each other.

Malbec, Mojitos, Monica Lewinsky, Savings Crisis=Gender Crisis, #HeForShe, Women Being "Likeable" and Homeless Youth

Things have been busy in Beck land since our return from #PatagoniaCaminada. While most of this post deals with mostly current events that are fairly serious, we consider ourselves lucky that we get to learn more about these issues and asked how we can contribute towards fixing these problems.

We had to consume the final wine we picked up at duty-free in Argentina when we had to dump Argentine pesos, so we had a Malbec tasting with some friends the other night comparing ones from Mendoza (Argentina) to the US. It was fun and then I tried to recreate an Argentine Mojito that we had at Oviedo in Buenos Aires. I am not a mixologist, so while the creation was ok, it needs some work on my end. Of course, we paired the Malbecs with steak because that seemed to be very Argentine!

I had the opportunity to attend 2 events last week that really hammered home the importance of being genuine when presenting to an audience. The 2nd one was for an organization that I was previously heavily involved with and have gone through a significant reboot. It was Sallie Krawcheck, the Chairwoman of Ellevate, that hammered the point home of the savings crisis being a gender crisis.

The basics - women earn less then men, women outlive men, and women do not earn social security contributions by being a "stay at home mom". Ellevate, formerly 85 Broads, is trying to change the dialogue about this and I am pretty excited about it. It seems timely given other initiatives around giving women more of a voice. I heard Sallie speak on Friday morning and she was candid, self-deprecating and thoughtful in her responses to questions from the small gathering. I was absolutely pumped after meeting her!

Currently we have the Ellen Pao lawsuit against one of the oldest and most respected venture capital firms out there. Much of the testimony is around "how likeable" Ms. Pao is and that the feedback was she was either too pushy or didn't speak up enough in meetings. It's a common problem for women but the concern is that will male dominated industries shy away from hiring women so they don't have to deal with being more respectful to members of the opposite sex? This is in spite of evidence that companies perform better with women in senior executive positions. Remember when Obama said to Hillary in their early debates that "You're likeable enough, Hillary"? Does someone want to define "likeable" as a characteristic for a performance evaluation?

Speaking of the Clintons, the first victim of cyberbullying - Monica Lewinsky - gave a FANTASTIC TED talk on bullying. Admittedly, I mocked her back in the day and in looking back, not a proud moment for me. She talked about why she decided to speak out now and one of the people she mentioned was Tyler Clementi, a young man who committed suicide because of cyberbullying by his college roommate.

Emma Watson continues to put herself out there around testifying at the United Nations for the "#HeForShe" initiative. She continues to draw many kudos for her advocacy to change the dialogue. Clearly her social activism from being Hermonie Granger has translated into something much more significant.

The other event I went to last week was for YouthCare, one of the top non-profits in the Pacific Northwest. They focus on teen homelessness, which is a significant problem here. Many reasons exist for this and I had the opportunity to learn about this issue in more detail in co-founding and being the Executive Director of Upower. I wish it was "just homelessness" but it expands to so many other areas, including sexual exploitation to children as young as 12 years old. 

YouthCare arranged for a surprise guest speaker to talk to the 1300+ people in attendance at the luncheon. He is better known as Macklemore, but also known locally as Ben Haggerty. Like Sallie Krawcheck, his remarks were candid, self-deprecating and thoughtful about his own struggles and his luck with his family being instrumental in changing his life for the better. He talked about how many of the youth served by YouthCare do not have that system and why the work they do is so important. More needs to be done and we'll leave it at that.

One of my goals from when we returned from #PatagoniaCaminada was to read more books and not be consumed by the 24-hour newscycle. Last week, I finished "All The Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. Well I started it last week and I couldn't put it down so it was finished in about 4 days. It's fiction but anyone who has read any non-fiction works from that timeframe can do some extrapolation on their own. Get it on your Kindle or at the library if you haven't read it already.

About the Wine We Tasted on #PatagoniaCaminada....

One of the topics we were consistently asked about during #PatagoniaCaminada was about the quality of the wines that we tasted along the way. As with the #AustralianWalkabout, we focused on drinking wines from either Argentina or Chile during the trip. In particular, we tried to focus on Argentine wines in Argentina and Chilean wines in Chile.

Malbec is king in Argentina. At least that is what you hear outside of Argentina. Our experience supports that. Now they do produce other Bordeaux type grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and some Merlot, but Malbec is the main varietal - particularly in Mendoza. We tasted a couple of wines from Patagonia, which is way south of Mendoza, and they weren't bad. But the best wines we had on the trip were Malbecs from Mendoza. It's not close. Mendoza is also at a pretty high elevation but many of the vintners use vineyards from different elevations. Interesting to see how that impacts the winemaking process and how specific wines age.

Now we also were inadvertently exposed to a white wine, which we both enjoyed known as Torrontes. It's definitely on the sweeter side but technically is considered a dry wine - not a dessert wine. For someone like me, it has plenty of sweetness. For Marc.... eh, not so much. That said, we will be sampling more of these back home.

We had a pretty good idea of where we would be tasting in Mendoza, so while trying wines in restaurants, we wanted to focus on producers that we heard good things about from our friends but not visiting onsite. After a trip to the Rhone in 2004 (where Marc had his "I get it" moment about wine), Marc and I also make an effort to focus on learning about vintners that we can get in the States without too much difficulty as opposed to trying the most esoteric wines but are a nightmare to get imported to Seattle.

We absolutely enjoyed the wines from Catena Zapata, Zuccardi (the lunch at Zuccardi was beyond epic), Achaval Ferrer and O. Fournier. Yes, these are some of the "big dogs" of Mendoza production but the wines were of high quality and very enjoyable. I don't know how much I would age them but they were tasty. And of course, all of these wines went very well with the components of an Argentine 'parrilla' - read: RED MEAT.

On the road, we tasted wines from DiamAndes, Cheval des Andes, Dominio del Plata, Salentein and Alta Vista that were standouts. Most of these, we should be able to get stateside.

As for Chile, it was very hit or miss.... more often a miss. Part of the problem is that we were in remote towns for most of our stay in that country so the caliber of the wines available wasn't super strong. That said, we feel pretty strongly about trying wines from Chile so we have already picked up some wines from a local wine shop to start seeing what we like and do not like.

While we are on the topic of wine, I found some other articles worth reading.

Marc and I have a special affinity for Greece and it seems like their wines are starting to really take shape. We need to try more of these for sure. The title of the linked article is *SO* 'The Wall Street Journal.

I still miss Dottie and John, but Lettie Teague has done well here with some myths about wine in this piece. No question is dumb, so ask if you don't know. Real professionals want to make you feel part of things as opposed to making you feel stupid.

Thinking about joining a wine club? I agree with much of these sentiments. You need to do your homework. I did enjoy the selections from Italian Wine Merchants, when I was a member of their club. It really helped me learn about the types of Italian wines that I am a fan of, plus it helped Marc learn about some of the varietals he was interested in.

The best wine club we have been a part of was from the Sonoma Wine Shop in downtown Sonoma. They customized their selections for each member and really were proactive about taking feedback with respect to style of wines you enjoyed/disliked and price point. 

We outgrew their club but we still recommend it when someone asks about learning about wine. Obviously cultivating a relationship with your local wine shop/grocery store (depending on the state you live in) also can bring great finds.

Questions? Please ask. We're not proclaiming that we are now experts on the wines of Chile and Argentina, but we are just relaying what we observed and learned.

Celebrating Int'l Women's Day -- Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands.

Much of life comes back to "The Godfather" so I'll start this post with:

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune."

I'm proud and thankful to be an American. I was before 'PatagoniaCaminada' but my pride increased during this past adventure. The rural scenery was fantastic but it's nice to be able to drink water from the tap and have an abundant supply of toilet paper for starters.

The flip side of being in a somewhat remote part of the world was the luxury of minimal internet access, which we used to post daily updates on our adventures in South America. It also allowed me to focus on not drinking out of the proverbial "firehose" of current events and actually read some books.

It's something I hope to carry throughout 2015 because I really enjoyed focusing on the story at hand for a change.

On the trip, I managed to finish 4.5 books. The last one was dense, full of detail and took awhile to get through. It wasn't for lack of interest. The book, "Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands" by Charles Moore, had so much information that you had to read and re-read due to the access the author had. I decided to pick a book on this topic due to our visit Patagonia and the Falklands War wounds still being fresh in the minds of the Argentines in the area. My interest was piqued after watching an episode of "Top Gear" and remembering it was still serious business the last time I was in Argentina in 1998 (the Falklands War was in 1982 in case you didn't know).

Before I had a chance to read the book, I asked our Argentine guides throughout our visit about their thoughts on the Falklands. Most said that it was a desperate attempt by General Galtieri to divert attention from many of the problems associated with his military dictatorship. All were sad that a fair amount of men who were not officially part of the military were ordered were to fight. Many of those men were killed and their families were never given proper respect afterwards. Protests continue to this day every week in specific locations, especially in Buenos Aires in front of where President Kirchner works.

The gist of what happened in the Falklands War was that Argentina tried to reclaim those islands from Great Britain. Margaret Thatcher, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, basically said "no way" and sent in troops to get them back. She didn't have a ton of support when she made that gutsy call in the early 80s.

When Baroness Thatcher passed away, I posted on Facebook that she was "a person who was less concerned about keeping her job as opposed to doing her job. This quality is something that pretty much every politician in the US lacks." I will modify 'politician' to 'elected official'. We continue to see evidence of sustained "schmuckitude" (trademark pending) from our elected officials on every level. But citizens, including me, continue to believe in America and trips like the one we just took reinforce my gratitude of living in a democracy.

My thoughts on the book are that it was meticulously researched, which is why it took so long for me to finish. The mindsets of key decision makers during critical times during Baroness Thatcher's career were amazing to follow. I was overwhelmed by how much sourcing Mr. Moore did to ensure he had a comprehensive way to tell the story. Disclaimer: It was an authorized biography and he had an agreement with her that he would not publish it while she was alive. 

While I learned a bit about her during the film "The Iron Lady", I feel the movie gave her the short end by choosing to focus on her dementia as opposed to the many barriers she broke down on the way to becoming Prime Minister as well as the decisions she had to make. Many despised her politics, but she had a true "courage of her convictions" and loved Great Britain.

Until today, I had no idea about 'International Women's Day'. I finished Moore's book this morning about one of the most controversial elected leaders in history, who happens to be a woman. An unexpected coincidence. After reading the book, I am even more impressed with what Baroness Thatcher dealt with on her rise to being Prime Minister as well as when she was PM. I am fairly confident that she would likely be horrified about the concept of 'International Women's Day' based on everything I have read about her.

Here's my beef with days like 'International Women's Day', 'Mother's Day' or whatever the current trend in social media with 'World Chocolate Day' (sorry, darling):


"How about trying to celebrate the things that matter to you everyday (like your mother for example)? Why do you need Facebook, Hallmark, Twitter, etc. to celebrate these things?"

I'd really like to see a day when we don't need to celebrate 'International Women's Day'. How about just celebrating meaningful contributions from everyone? Or treating all leaders the same, regardless of their gender. 

I am not naive. Prejudice exists. Just look at the Ellen Pao suit against Kleiner Perkins. Be aggressive but don't be forceful and a bunch of other contradictory sexist crap. But women would be better served if all sexes were treated equally and we didn't need a call out for a specific day (IWD). If a person accomplishes something great, celebrate them. If a person commits a horrible offense against society (President Christina Kirchner of Argentina), prosecute them. 

With respect to President Kirchner, everything that I have read about her and the situation currently dominating news in Argentina has been anything but complimentary. Yes, she is a woman but my hope that as an elected official in a "democracy" that she is treated in the same way as a man. Almost everyone in Argentina suspects something very nefarious is involved with the death of Alberto Nisman and that she had something to do with it. And sadly, everyone we talked to in Argentina doesn't think the real truth will come out with respect to the entire history related to the bombing that Nisman was investigating. This is why I continue to be thankful to be American.

[Rant over.]

By the way, we did take some notes on wine tasting. I'll post those and notes on other books read over the course of the trip in a few days.

3 Mar: Mendoza (ARG) --> Santiago (CHI) --> Equator

A rather long day ahead for us as we make the journey back home. It's been a great trip and I always say that a goal of any trip is not to get value for money on your travel insurance. So we succeeded.

We checked out of our hotel and went to the airport. We had some ARG pesos to spend and were offered a variety of options in the duty free shop such as below:

Marc and I ended up settling on a wine that we tasted yesterday but cannot obtain in the States, so we'll have to repack our bags again once we get to Santiago. Perhaps more clothes to be ditched?

The plan was to spend the afternoon touring Santiago with a driver, have a nice dinner and then head to the airport for our late flight back to the States. The constant and dramatic changes in climates covered on this trip have started to catch up to me and I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, which seemed like a fabulous way to travel home. Woo woo! Give me some Nyquil please.

Santiago is a pretty city, and is surrounded by mountains and smog. Lots of smog. Not as bad as Los Angeles, but it's there and it's constant per our guide. We had lunch in one of the local food stalls in the central area and we found out that the locals like to watch TV during this time so we were fortunate enough to catch an episode of "Glee" with Lea Michele singing "Let It Go" (our niece, Mollie, would have loved this). Then "Sex and The City" was on, but it was time to start our tour.

We went up to a lookout point to catch some nice views of the city and toured a museum that discussed hallucinogenic snuff kits from a long time ago. Apparently these were popular in our 1st destination, Atacama, but oddly no one offered us any. Hmmm.

After our tour, we went to the hotel that we stored our large bags at prior to Mendoza and re-packed. They were kind enough to let me use the gym to shower before the flights home, so I was happy. We had a couple of farewell cocktails, dinner and then it was time to head to the airport.

Our gate had people ready to go to DFW (our destination) but the sign said MIA. Right. Some confusion especially since we saw one crew board the plane and another crew was waiting to board the plane. It turns out the MIA crew boarded our plane, then were informed they were on the wrong plane, etc.

Somehow we managed to take off on schedule. As you can guess, we made it home safely and the journey was uneventful. Thanks for tuning in to another adventure of Marc and Jill. It was an exhausting journey but a worthwhile one. We appreciated all of your likes, comments, emails, private messages, etc. We were especially grateful for all of your well wishes for Marc when he wasn't feeling so well.

2 March: Mendoza Wine Tasting AND Siete Overload

We spent our final full day (non-travel related) doing one of the things we like to do. Taste wine.
We started Bodega Catena Zapata and this place can best be described visually as a crazy Napa winery down in Argentina. Wine in Argentina used to be table wine for the local market. This winery was the first to see what it could do against international competition. They were 20 years ahead of the Argentine market in doing this.

We arrived by driving up to the building that is a tribute to Mayan architecture in the shape of a pyramid. We started with a movie combined with another tour group of about 10-12 people. After the movie, Tatiana pulled us out for a personal tour likely the result of something Erik Segelbaum might have "arranged". So thanks!

Tatiana showed us the locked room with wines from all over the world that are stored there and sometimes opened to see how the wines made here stack up in relation. We also got to see an entire room of bottled wine that had been in barrel for a couple of years and was now spending a year or so in unlabeled bottles before being labeled and released to market.

We entered the barrel room for tasting, and the power went out. Fortunately German, our driver for the day, was hanging around like the paparazzi taking photos of our personal tour with two different cameras and used his cell phone to light our barrel tasting until the lights came back on. We tasted about 4 barrels and they were good to get a sense of what the winery is going for here.

We eventually ended in a nice room at a table and tasted 4 bottled wines - 3 for the export market and one available only in Argentina. This tour was a great way to start the day.

German then drove us over to Achaval Ferrer for our next tasting. This was started about 15 years ago by two friends. The winemaker is Italian which makes him different from basically all the other wineries in Mendoza. The wines are almost all Malbec (they have zero white wines) and basically some blend in a small percentage of other grapes. The goal of this winery is all high end and no second wines like a lot of wineries do all over the world.

That being said, half of their production is what they consider their table wine and likely mostly available in Argentina. We didn't taste that one, we tasted 4 other bottles plus a barrel sample and a sweet wine. The first wine we tasted was Quimera which is rare in that the winemaker co-ferments several grapes and selects the "blend" by tasting the grapes before they ferment. There is no going back once combined.

We then tasted 3 different Finca wines. Each of these come from different vineyards (or "plots"/"ranches") and are meant to show the sense of place for each area in Medoza that they come from. They are all 100% malbec and they were all good although I think we both settled on Finca Bella Vista as our slight favorite.

The final dry wine is a blend of the best 3 barrels from all 3 fincas called Temporis. So production is limited and they do not open them to taste but do allow visitors to buy them. We happened to show up mere days before they will be bottling the 2013 version and they allow sampling from the barrel in the 2 weeks prior to bottling so we sampled this and it was good. We didn't buy any. We went back to the tasting table we were sitting around and tasted a nice dessert Malbec.

We were with a group of 6 other tasters on this tour. One couple was from Austin and the guy threw in some pretty humorous stuff. He called Austin "the blueberry in the middle of a strawberry pie." This caused some laughter between us and another couple from the San Fran area. Somehow the group soon got on the topic of rednecks and he belted out: "our rednecks make YOUR necks red."

On to Siete...

We then drove out to Siete Fuegos for lunch. This place was *remote* but quite beautiful. It is in Uco Valley and is a new resort at a winery with seven different ways to fire up food including burying in a pit and covering with dirt, huge ring of fire to hang meat on, a pizza oven that has been burning fuel constantly since they opened, and several others. This place is gorgeous but *very* expensive to stay there and so remote you'd need to rent a car or get a driver to do anything unless you want to just hang solely at the resort. We tasted some decent wines here and had a wonderful lunch and tour of the fires.

We were driven back into Mendoza which allowed us to pack things up for a big 24+ hours of travel and sightseeing on the way back home.

For dinner, we went to Siete Cocinas just a short walk from the hotel. The restaurant showcases the best of each of the seven regions of Argentina. I was so tired of meat by this point, that I actually had a vegetarian soup followed by a vegetarian pasta dish and both of these were excellent. We ended up ordering a malbec from Patagonia which was different. And of course I ended with some chocolate...

1 Mar: Cerro Aconcagua (ARG).

We woke up to very blue skies and no clouds to be seen, which seemed to be a good omen for our day trip to see Cerro Aconcagua. Aconcagua is one of the 'Seven Summits' and is the highest mountain outside of Asia at almost 23,000 feet. Marc and I actually summited one of these peaks in Australia known locally as Mt. Kozi.

The road we took connects the Atlantic (Buenos Aires) with the Pacific (Valparaiso, Chile) so it is actually well paved (a luxury in Argentina) and heavily traveled by tourists, truckers, etc. We stopped off at Puente del Inca, which is a natural arch that forms a bridge over a local river. The rock formations have some really interesting color combinations and we heard some legends associated with the arch.

Side note: CrossFit always talks about functional fitness. Well on this trip, it has been quite functional when using banos (aka toilets) on the road. The movement I am referring to is the squat, which requires you to shove your rear end back and not push your knees forward. Using some of these "facilities" has required me to really leverage those squatting skills picked up at CrossFit. I know many of our friends are competing in the CrossFit Open, but I have my own competition going on the road....

OK, back to the tour. The Andes in Argentina have 3 sections and they all have different elevations, characteristics, etc. The clear skies made it ideal to appreciate the differences. After 3 hours, we arrived at the Aconcagua Provincial Park at just over 11,000 feet. The skies were still very clear and the mountain had snow on it. It was a gorgeous backdrop.

We did a relatively easy 2 mile circuit, saw some horses bringing supplies down from one of the base camps, and really enjoyed the views. Definitely lucky on the weather. And yes, 2 miles at 11,000 feet is very different than at sea level or even half of that elevation.

After our walk and snapping some photos, we headed back to Mendoza, had more meat (because that's what they do in Argentina) and laughed about the playlist from the driver's CD collection that focused on 80s love songs. Think Peter Cetera, Debbie Gibson, Billy Joel, Spandau Ballet, Michael Bolton, Christopher Cross and Air Supply. I started to get disappointed that I didn't hear any Barry Manilow. We also spent part of the ride back monitoring how our 5 friends (and running buds) were faring in the Napa Marathon. Gotta love technology.

We walked around Mendoza after our tour and it was pretty quiet. The 4th largest city in Argentina pretty much shuts down on Sundays. Marc and I then had dinner at a restaurant called Nadia O.F. within a few blocks of our hotel. For whatever reason, we were the only people there and we left after 11pm. The food was great, the courtyard was pretty and the service was excellent. Our server was able to tell us more about Mendoza and the wine scene, so bonus for us.

Dessert came and Marc spotted a liquer that he was keen on trying with his chocolate, which seemed similar to one of his faves, Nocello. Marc enjoyed the wine to the point where we are going to be throwing out some clothes so we can fit these 3 bottles in our respective backpacks for the trip back home. I stuck with my new favorite "faux dessert wine" - Torrontés.

28 Feb: Insane Winery Lunch AND Chocolate Para Fanaticos

Crazy lunch that Jill created a slideshow for in an attempt to capture PART of it. And dinner later included the irresistible Chocolate For Fanatics.

So after the dinner last night that had us both practically falling asleep during the waning courses of the meal, we got up at 6am of course. This was so that we could head to the airport in Santiago and fly to Mendoza for the final stretch of the trip.

The flight was quick and our guide dropped us off at our hotel but our room wasn't yet ready. The road in front of the hotel was one way until last week but now is clearly painted with a yellow line for a lane to go the other way. As our driver turned onto the street to drop us off, cars were driving the wrong way straight at us and he had to honk and wave multiple times for them to move over to the correct side of the line. Ok. Since our room wasn't ready we hung on the free wifi for a bit until he returned to take us to/from Familia Zuccardi, a Bodega (winery) in Mendoza.

What a hilarious ride we had. Anything quoted is from him. "Good wine doesn't make you drunk. If you drink cheap wine, you'll get drunk." Later along the way he asked us to explain "white trash" which had us laughing quite a bit. He asked if "rednecks" was termed from being out in the sun unprotected.

He asked where we were from and when we said Seattle he said "Super Sonics" and he isn't the first to have that strong association. I had to explain that the team was sold and moved (not merged with another team like he thought at first when I explained things) to Oklahoma City. SHOCKED. "Oh My God! For me, Seattle is same as SuperSonics!!"

He asked more questions after the shock wore off. I explained that Howard Schultz sold the team to someone he knew would move the team. "I imagine people want to kill Howard Schultz!" (Re-emphasizing that this is not the opinion of Marc and Jill but of a fan who lives in Mendoza, Argentina) Then later, "Now that you tell me this, I can't take coffee at Starbucks anymore."

So he dropped us off and the insane lunch began. They did a traditional grill of many things with plenty of wine but words can only tell so much. They brought out some white wine (Torrontes and Chardonnay/Viognier) to start and some *amazing* empanadas to start. Then several huge salad plates with delicious food and the red wine started. We had Syrah, Bonarda, and Malbec along with this wonderful food that included them bringing out meat 3 times and they asked if we wanted more later on too. Since we were asking questions about the wine, the sommelier brought out some wonderful Tempranillo too.

After all of this, we got dessert and a dessert wine called Tardio. Keep in mind that this was our lunch for the day. I had a coffee because the food was so good that I figured the coffee would work and I've basically not taken coffee this trip because it has NOT been good. Those are the written words, but perhaps watching the slideshow of this lunch would be better.

Now, we ALSO got a tour of this winery and there was an Irish couple on the tour so we had a great tour with them along with the guide who is from the States but doesn't get to speak English very often anymore. Every winery tour still seems to teach us something. They are experimenting and several of the wines are really good.

We were taken back and given a break at our hotel. We walked around a bit and the city is so busy with locals and just a real town. It was fun to walk around.

Eventually we got taken to our dinner at a place called Francis Mallman 1884. We both were't quite sure where we were being dropped off, but once we walked into the courtyard, it was this amazing building that was impressively restored from the late 19th century. The dining areas were quite cool but I think only Jill (or perhaps some of our photos) can describe them. This meal was wonderful too so let's just say were both full from these two meals.

Jill asked for the dessert menu because she figured something would entice me. She tried to get me to go classic Argentinian with dulce de leche but I couldn't be talked out of Chocolate Para Fanaticos (Chocolate for Fanatics). Three chocolate things appeared on a plate untarnished by fruit as it should be. This plate was as wide as a fork or spoon and definitely longer and full of chocolate goodness.

The taxi home featured a driver who visited Atlantic City and won. He used the proceeds to drive across the country through Chicago ("cold!") and to Vancouver, BC.

27 Feb: Puerto Natales (CHI) --> Santiago (CHI).

As Marc mentioned yesterday, the group had a vote on whether or not we were going to see the Magellenic penguins. The reason for the debate is that we wouldn't be arriving at the sanctuary until late morning and in most cases, penguins are already out at sea for the day to eat, swim, etc.

The location on the Otway Sound was beautiful and we managed to see 3 penguins out of the 20,000 or so that live in the colony. So hey, it wasn't a total loss. After that, we headed to the airport to say goodbye to our Patagonia guide, Muti, and fly up north to Santiago with our group.

The flight was uneventful and I finished off another book "Blood, Bones & Butter" by Gabrielle Hamilton. She is the owner and the chef of Prune, a highly regarded restaurant in New York. It was a fun and a quick read, and it was about her unconventional path to becoming a chef.

We landed, met our contact in Santiago and then said goodbye to our group of travellers. They were all flying back to the States within the next 24 hours and Marc and I are next heading to Mendoza. We plan on tasting more Malbec in the next 3.5 days than we ever had in our lives. It's good to be goal oriented, right?

Marc and I had about 25 minutes from checking in to the hotel to having to catch a taxi to our dinner location for 9pm. We kind of packed in advance in Puerto Natales so we were able to get cleaned up and make it to Borago for dinner with a couple of minutes to spare. Score.

Dinner was pretty interesting.... in a good way. All of the ingredients were from Chile and it was a 12-course meal of small bites. Borago also has a small garden in the back of the restaurant, where they grow a number of the ingredients that they serve at dinner. I had a local mushroom that I never tasted before, so I was happy.

We had a local Chilean Syrah, which we enjoyed. It was more old world style than new world. Our table had an open view of the kitchen, which was fun because of elaborate prep put in for each dish.

But since we had such an early start this morning and dinner was many courses, we were dragging by the time the 9th course came out. The staff perceptively picked up on the fact that we wer pretty tired, so they "moved dessert along". I think we finally made it back to the hotel at 12:45am, which will make that 6:15am wake-up call tomorrow really interesting.

26 Feb: Puerto Natales

We departed Rio Serrano at 9am after a decision to make it an 8:45 departure the night before. One thing this group cannot do is depart at the appointed time - it is always about 15-20 minutes after that. Since the group decided not to do a 3.5 hour hike today, I was feeling good and rested for the day.

We stopped several times for photos as we made our way to the Milodon Cave, which was cool to see. After that, we stopped at La Sila de Diablo (The Devil's Chair), a rock formation that looked a lot like a chair that the devil apparently spent a good amount of time sitting on back in the day.

We got to the town of our final stop (Puerto Natales) on this portion of the tour early due to the lack of hike. We all walked along the waterfront and took in the amazing views on a windy day. It was crystal clear which was spectacular.

The timing of getting cell phone service back worked out as it was Harv's birthday and we were able to call him to wish him a Happy Birthday. It was good to chat with him and give him some chuckles from far away.

As we ate lunch at the hotel, the group voted no less than 3 times on either seeing penguins the next day on the way to the airport OR hitting the city of the airport (Punta Arenas) for a walk around the town. On one of the votes, I voted twice just to see if Muti, our guide, was paying attention and he caught me. We finally decided to follow the agenda and go see the penguin sanctuary.

After lunch, Jill and I walked up into town only to discover that if it was not a restaurant, it was not likely open. So a 'locals town' rather than a 'tourist town'. It was a nice change of pace to stroll around anyway. We then headed back to the hotel to rearrange the bags for our 3 days in Mendoza and let the town eat lunch at 2pm or take their siestas.

After packing and a shower, we headed out once again. Now stuff was open and I needed to at least go to the chocolate shop. It appears that I've started to collect a Chocolate Harem (Southern Hemisphere Edition) and we needed to buy some good chocolate as a parting gift on the final night of the dinner. Fortunately, the place was open and the chocolate looked really good. We got some and walked around some more before returning to the hotel for a pre-dinner drink with the gang and just hanging out.

Dinner was good and I busted out the chocolate after the dessert course (which of course included chocolate or vanilla gelato and brownies). A nice way to end the final full day with the group.

25 Feb: Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine (CHI).

The good news is that Marc was feeling good after yesterday's hike. But he didn't want to push his luck, so he opted out of today's hike. I put him "to work" writing out some postcards and getting a bunch of our photos uploaded to Dropbox since we finally had a decent WiFi connection in our hotel. What a good sport! Below is the view from our hotel room.... not bad, eh?

Last night, the group unanimously decided to take it "easy" and not get up early to catch a ferry to hike in one of the valleys in the park. Since joining the tour, we had hiked almost 100 miles and we were pretty beat, plus the ferry schedule extends the day even more.

Claudio and Muti, our guides, picked out a new route for us to hike to that gave us a great view of the Paine Massif, the Paine Horns and a really pretty waterfall. The weather was partly cloudy but we still had some nice glimpses from Cerro Condor and also saw some condors (fancy that!).

We headed back to the hotel and found Marc chilling out while enjoying the view from lunch. Everyone is starting to think about their next adventure, so different ideas and suggestions were tossed around by the group. Marc and I are probably the least travelled of the bunch, which says a lot about how much our group has travelled around the globe!

I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening finishing my latest read "Business Adventures" by John Cook. I was looking for books to read so I decided to see some of the latest recos from Bill Gates and it was on it. Some of the stories are pretty interesting and many are from the 60s/70s, yet it is amazing how history seems to repeat itself.

Our gang splits up after Friday and we have really enjoyed getting to know these folks. They have all been low drama and fun to be around. Everyone just naturally has offered to share or help when someone forgot something at home, etc. Marc and I are the youngest by a wide margin, but we have been blown away by the fitness levels of our fellow mates. Actually their fitness probably tops most Americans, forget about people in their age bracket (veteran members of AARP). It's inspiring (their fitness) and sad (the general lack of physicall fitness of many Americans).

The group reconvened to talk about the activities for tomorrow and we voted to spend more time in a town called Puerto Natales, which is supposed to be pretty and surrounded by the Andes and water. The weather forecast continues to look good, so hopefully that works out for us.

24 Feb: Las Torres --> Lago Grey --> Hike --> Rio Serrano

We departed around 8:30 stopping briefly a few times to shoot different angles of Torres del Paine and the surrounding ranges. Our guides went in to get our tickets for our first boat ride of the day and apparently they didn't have our reservation for the boat. This got sorted out, we got on our way to the boat, and then we saw this tiny thing we'd be on plus a small motorized raft to get us to the boat. Once we got on the boat, we rode for almost an hour to get to a huge, beautiful iceberg known as Glacier Grey.

After viewing, we landed on a shore nearby to begin a "4-5 hour" hike. After taking off layers and getting my trekking poles ready, I turned around to find no one but Muti, our guide, waiting for me. Fortunately 5 others were within sight so we caught up quickly. I eventually worked past everyone as they stopped to shed layers that I had already taken off straight off the boat.

I eventually caught the next group, not by my speed but because they (including Jill) stopped to wait for at least some of us. Jill and I continued out on the hike, on of the best and most beautiful of this entire trip. We finished in about 3 hrs and 20 min. We then waited in the Paine Grande Lodge while the group trickled in.

After the group arrived, we stood in line for the hydrofoil ride across Lago Pehoe to a spot we could get back to our hotel. This boat was PACKED with people basically standing for the entire ride for 30+ minutes. It felt really good to land and get off that beast.

Our bus took us about 40 minutes to the NICE hotel with a great view of Paine Massif and the Paine Horns. It is the best hotel in the Patagonia region so far. It had been a long day -- 12 hours from one hotel to the next. No time for a shower before dinner at 8:30pm. Food was good and I plan to take tomorrow off from the hiking tour and just rest and drink lots of water at the hotel with a book and write some postcards.

23 Feb: Torres del Paine National Park (ARG).

In light of yesterday's wonderful discovery around having brown water at the hotel, my first words of the day to Marc were "do we have clean water yet?" Unfortunately the answer was no.

Today's hike was expected to be challenging as we were targeting a vantage point of the Paine Towers that had a final ascent similar to our Laguna de Los Tres trek last week. The weather was cloudy with light rain but anything can happen weather wise in Patagonia, which could be good or bad.

Marc hiked for the 1st 90 minutes to a great viewpoint of the valley and then returned down to the hotel to rest up and continue reading "Ready Player One". I continued on with the rest of the gang. The weather was toying with us for most of the trek out to the towers. Rays of sunshine, rain showers, wind gusts, etc.

Our guide didn't think it made sense to go to our initial target because of the conditions but he did want to take us to a spot to *MAYBE* see the towers without too much difficulty. Low and behold, we caught a glimpse of them in the clouds. Score for us.

Heading back to the Refugio for lunch, we saw the sun shining in the direction of our hotel but not in the direction of the towers. The Refugio is a place where campers stay, shower & eat. It also is a place for day hikers like our group to take a break. By the time we made it back there, we found 2 of our crew engaged in a serious game of Jenga.

The wind picked up quite a bit as the sun continued to come out in the Lake Nordenskjold Valley near the hotel. I went ahead as I wanted to see how Marc was faring at the hotel.

In case you are wondering, windy conditions at your tail as you are going downhill with narrow paths/large drop-offs are less than ideal. I was making progress when I saw the sign for a shortcut. Ahhhh..... Some other word was also on the sign but I knew our hotel had a campground, so I figured it was the same place......

About 10 minutes in, nothing looks familiar but I tell myself to stick with it. Another 10 minutes in, I see my hotel down in the valley but the path I am on is not heading in that direction. I should turn around, right? Sure, but I don't. Now I am almost 40 minutes into this "shortcut" and I am now assessing if I should continue on the path and hitch a ride to the hotel (probably not), head back up the trail to the sign and head down the right path (smart) or identify a way between both paths to see if I can cobble something together (hmmmm).

Note the handwriting in red on the map, which was my "foolproof" plan. :-)

Obviously I went for the brilliant plan of looking across a huge swath of land to see if I could trek down to the proper path without killing myself or getting eaten by a puma. When I started, I gave myself about an 80% chance of success. I immediately thought I was making some progress since I found some horse tracks (aka horsesh**). My logic was if a horse could walk this, so could I. Flawless, right?

I get about 60% across and I am bush whacking trees & branches. No more horse tracks though. I am walking on top of lots of bushes. More swashbuckling brilliance. I then run into a bunch of trees and can't see a thing, so I decide to get to a higher point (slightly going backwards).

I now see that I am about 85% across, so this is good. Progress. Now what about those fighting guanacos or the wild puma that could attack me? Hmmmm. Stay positive, Jill. The other hazard was that if there was an unknown chasm that made it impossible to cross but wasn't visible from my earlier vantage point..... Oh boy.

Fortunately I started hearing familiar voices, which ended up being one of the couples from our tour so I knew I was close. I find a spot to pop out of to get visual confirmation and I traverse some more bushes to get to them. When I yelled out to them, they said, "Where did you come from?" Ah yes....

So thanks to some literal horsesh** along with some schmuckitude, I saved myself from a very dumb move around a "shortcut". We got back and we're talking to a couple of Brits about fitness. She starts talking about burpees and I tell her that she should try CrossFit because why not? The discussion then shifts to me explaining the "shut the car door (with your tush)" as a way of improving squat technique. The gal loved it and then we went our separate ways.

I get back and see Marc. He is in good spirits and looks well rested. I immediately ask to see the map of the park. Then I really got to see what an idiot I was for taking a "shortcut" from a sign in a language that I didn't completely understand.

I guess I should've have listened to my Dad because had I followed his tried and true advice around "staying with the group", my little detour probably would not have happened. Oops.

22 Feb: Ranch --> Argentina/Chile Crossing --> Hike --> Hotel Las Torres

I am writing back-to-back entries because you really want to hear Jill's voice for February 23. Trust me...

We had to get up around 6am so we could eat something before a long day of driving with a departure at 7am. This surely pleased the other guests at the estancia who got to hear several rolling bags echoing through the accommodations but I guess this is something the tour company can manage. We drove 90 minutes on dirt roads to El Calafate where some business got taken care of including Jill mailing actual post cards to some lucky recipients.

The next adventure was crossing from Argentina to Chile via a bus of 12 tourists, a guide, and the driver. The approach to the crossing was gravel road for a while and we arrived at a couple of shacks to exit Argentina. We all filed out of the bus and into one of these shacks without power so we could get the exit stamp placed inside our passports. This wonderful facility lacked visible bathrooms (translation: bring your own TP and go behind the building) and power is from solar panels. But they've been overcast recently and today were working in the dark.

We then drove a couple of km to the Chilean facility which was a fairly modern building with bathrooms in full view of all people waiting to get the entrance stamp in Chile. In addition, we sent all of our bags through a screening machine so you know they had power. They also had some friendly dogs sniffing bags for fruit and other items. Finally, the road became paved beginning right here. The border crossings are definitely indicative of the current situations between Argentina and Chile. Go figure.

After lunch we got to Torres del Paine national park and were given a chance to walk about 4 miles (which took us about 1.5 hours) with some decent elevation gain and then loss along the route. Jill and I witnessed two guanacos fight each other about 30-40 meters from us and then one was chasing the other straight toward us. It avoided us and jumped a fence we were walking near and the chaser stayed on our side so we were pretty close to both of them at this point. Fortunately, they were staring at each other so we slowly walked away along the trail. We certainly didn't need another danger point where "animals were jumping us".

Jill asked about the consumption of guanacos because they seem to be similar in numbers to kangaroos in Australia. Our guide, Claudio, responded that hunting season for them is very limited and mostly not allowed in Chile.

My health meter was about 2/3 before the hike (lots of hacking cough) but dropped to about 1/2 by the end of this little journey. It took a bit out of me. I want to thank everyone for the well wishes in the past few days. I feel like I'm getting better, but I'm also on a strenuous hiking tour that is gonna take something out of even a healthy individual.

Jill brought some books with her (I went all digital on my tablet) and keeps offering them to me before she donates them to wherever we are staying or one of the other tour members. I've read the first chapter of a couple but she handed me "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline and I got enough to keep going. The number and detail of 80's references in this book is astounding and it's a pretty good read so far (I'm close to halfway today).

We got to the hotel and I decided I needed a shower before yet another late dinner. I ran the water for a while and it was basically light brown - lots of dirt in the water supply. Yay! I needed a shower too much so I just took one.

We had a decent buffet dinner with the group in the restaurant with a good variety of interesting stuff. And the Molten Chocolate Cake was pretty good too for a buffet.

Jill has two compartments locked on her suitcase on travel days and the smaller side compartment was locked but she could not find the key when we arrived here. She basically cleared out all bags and looked through everything trying to find it. After giving up, we asked the front desk if they had bolt cutters and they said they did.

Someone eventually showed up with something resembling pliers with a tiny area that might cut some wire, but not a bolt. The maintenance guy said "un momento" and walked out. This was a long moment (about 10 minutes) but he returned with a real cutting instrument about as long as human arms (NOTE: He was about 2 inches taller than Jill) and had to be careful to cut only the lock and not a good chunk of the entire bag. But he succeeded. And yet, another example of "you can't make this stuff up".

21 Feb: A Day at the Ranch

Despite being sick, I got up for breakfast intent on at least starting the hike. I knew it was up the hill from where we were staying so I could turn around at any point. I think everybody was happy to see me out there. So we started climbing...

It was as steep as two days back (19th) for the optional 2K up/down portion except we had no trail this time. Just tall weeds and loose rocks everywhere. After about 50 minutes straight up, the group was hopping over a fence to continue up the hill. This is where I opted out as I was very tired. I was hoping I had gotten at least halfway up the hill as the hike would go along a ridge eventually and then down and they'd return to the ranch a different way.

I stood and looked at the view for 10-15 minutes and then SLOWLY made my way down, taking almost as much time going down due to all the loose stones that made every step a guess.

The group continued on and Jill referred to it as the same kind of hike that we did on Bluff Knoll a couple of years back in Australia. Just 2+ hours of straight climbing. Apparently this walk also had some false peaks, meaning you thought you were close to the top but were not....

The views ended up being great and someone in our group whipped out a harmonica as they took in the sights from the top. What a cast of characters.

After I got down, I read a book for a while in the lobby and took a short 15-20 minute nap. Jill returned at lunchtime and we all had lunch at the ranch.

The afternoon was our first optional time so we took a short, flat walk while taking some photos and then caught some members of the group going for a horseback ride. I took photos of the group on multiple cameras for them.

We then went back and slept for a while (I slept 2 hours)... 

Jill started packing and then so did I so that we could make the journey from Argentina to Chile the following day. Some folks went to see a sheep shearing while we hung in the lobby for dinner. The restaurant for the evening was in a different building on the property. They roasted a lamb for hours before we got there and the food was fairly good although the lamb was overcooked.

And I went to bed hoping to see health improvement by walking out my cough and then napping a lot. I was also hoping the down day mostly driving would give me some time to recuperate as well.

20 Feb: El Chalten (ARG) --> El Calafate (ARG) --> Perito Moreno (ARG).

Marc woke up this morning feeling the full effects of yesterday. He is definitely a trooper and everyone in our group has been so kind to offer meds to us to facilitate Marc's recovery. Fortunately today was mostly a travel day with a minimal amount of walking, so a good day for Marc to rest up.

Outside of Marc's illness, the group was feeling the effects of doing almost 27 miles of hiking over the previous 2 days (here and here). We checked out of our hotel and the group ventured to El Calafate, which is now a booming metropolis compared to when I was last there in 1998, for lunch and to get some cash. Speaking of which, El Chalten is completely different and Ushuaia has grown from 8000 inhabitants in 1998 to 80,000 in 2015. Wow.

After lunch, we headed to Perito Moreno Glaciar on Lago Argentina. The overcast skies actually helped us out in terms of bringing out more blue in our pics from the glacier. It is really hard to capture on film how vast Perito Moreno is. Trust me, it is. We saw the glacier from both lake level on a cruise and on the walking platforms, so it was good to get pics from both perspectives.

While in El Calafate, we picked up some local chocolate for the patient. So on the ride to the estancia that we are staying at, he started chomping. It seemed to help Marc's mindset, so that's positive. We're staying at a full working ranch that I immediately remembered from my trip in 1998. It's a gorgeous landscape over Lago Roca and Lago Argentina.

A word about yesterday's hike. I had a feeling that the hike was one of the ones I did in 1998. I remembered it sucking big time. Now part of it was a brutal climb but a major part of it was because of how out of shape I was back then. For better or worse, it was as I remembered it in terms of how steep and how relentless the final climb was. BUT.... we had sunny skies yesterday as opposed to when I did the climb in over twice the time in 1998. And I was really proud of my effort yesterday around not stopping until I got to the top. So there's that.

Keep on reading. Marc and I enjoy reading your comments, especially as he battles the untimely chest cold. Thanks for sending them in.

19 Feb: LONG hike to Laguna de Los Tres!

This will be short because we hiked all day and it wiped me out with back to back 1/2 marathon hikes. I also am getting sick, but didn't realize that until later in the day.

After breakfast, we got in the van just after 8am for a 30+ minute drive to the hike start point. This second "half marathon" hike back to back wiped me out. The main reason is the optional 2k up to a glacial pool and 2k back down to the trail.

Before this part, the hike was nice and sheltered in the trees. Once we got to the optional part, it was an easy 1k and the hardest upward 1k I have ever done. Jill was first in under an hour because she motored up and did not stop. I was next but only because "fit" Rocket Rick kept stopping to take in the views.

The view was outstanding and possibly worth the effort to climb this crazy hill. We ate up there while enjoying the view and then began climbing back down.

Once down, we still had 9k back to the town and I wanted it over. I slowed down a lot and eventually got there but I ended up drinking 2-3 more liters of water before, during, and after dinner.

Dinner was entertaining with explaining to one of our guides what the term "six pack abs" means. We learned that in Argentina, the terms people use to describe those kinds of abs are referred to as a "chocolate bar" or "ravioli". For the record, our guide prefers "mushy chocolate bars" in this context.

Given my job at Scout, people keep bringing up college football references. Tonight we learned that at Notre Dame, their library has a "Touchdown Jesus" mosaic on the outside that faces the football stadium.

Unfortunately a little cough that I had over the past few days has progressed into something more fierce. I hope this goes away soon because we have some long hikes coming up.