39.51S/073.19W, Valdivia, Chile, day 717
Biking total: 77 days, 3079 km, 21’200 altimeters.
Climbing total: 240 days, 3151 km, 118’400 altimeters.
Sailing total: 400 days, 13’669 nm, 26 altimeters (Panama Channel)
The big mess after the storm is sorted out. We have had 1036 mb W and 1000 mb E of us on the crossing from Easter Island to Valdivia: Pachamama was beating S between the High and the Low where the isobars nearly came together.
Valdivia our new base is great: People are very friendly and we got an audience with the mayor where we started organizing our school visits and sport activities with the local kids.
After 36 days navigating in the Southern Ocean we enjoyed the fresh fruits and vegetables on the market. The fish market is just on the river Valdivia where sea lions profit from gifts from the fisher men: – they have only to open their mouth to become a monster!
Yesterday we have done a public presentation at the Valdivia Yacht Club. Three newspapers and a radio station already reported about the TOPtoTOP message “sport and environment”.
Sunstone and a small fisher boat are Pachamama’s neighbors. Our friends Tom and Vicky on Sunstone were our neighbors already in Ecuador and Galapagos!
Tomorrow we start biking from our base Alwoplast to Mendoza in Argentina. There we meet our friend Michi and together we will try to climb Aconcagua, TOP of South America. We will be back on Pachamama just before Xmas.
2005 we spend in Chile: school visits; sport and environmental activities with kids are the priorities. In the mean time we prepare and train for Antarctica: First climb of Mount Vinson by nature’s force from the shore! Till now all climbers flew to the base camp. – We started already planning with our friend Guillaume Dargaud. He is a researcher in an Antarctic camp and an experienced climber. Our plan at the moment: We sail about 2500 nm from Valdivia via Patagonian channels – Drake Passage – Antarctic Peninsula to the Bellinghausen Sea where we will ski from its shore 600 km over the ice to Vinson base camp. On the way back we may ski-sail using the wind.
But Antarctica will be only possible when we find enough sponsorship! That’s why we plan to do a presentation tourney between June and August in Europe. If you would like to support us, try to organize an interview with a potential sponsor. – There is also the possibility to click on “Make a Donation” at the bottom of our homepage, if you win too much in the next lottery.