The whole thing started with the great desire on the part of my friend Facundo to brush up on his outdoorsmanship. Facundo, or "Facu" as he is better known, is in the reserves of the Argentine Coast Guard and has trained with most of the best units of the American special forces. Suffice to say that he's pretty well adept at mountaineering. Anyway, he organized the weekend adventure and collected a group of ten of us to go: Facu, five other Argentines, a French girl, an Andorran girl (look it up on a map of Europe, there really is a country of Andorra), another American guy, and myself. In total we were five guys and five girls so it all worked out pretty well. On the right is a classic pic of Facu in his element.

We left on Friday via omnibus at about three and after about a five-hour ride set up camp in the municipal campground of Tendil. Tendil is located in the center of the Argentine pampas, the most fertile region in the world. The topsoil there is pure, rich and black for more than a foot down. Tendil, however, is an exception. It is located in a small valley in a set of hills, which rank among the oldest mountains in the world. Their look is very similar to the Appalachians but lower due to their age. The countryside in and around Tendil is divine. Most of the land in the Pampas and the Tendil region is dedicated to cattle raising, and because the entire nation of Argentina is rather ill populated there's plenty of room to let the cattle just roam to find grazing land. There's no need to grow food for them. For this reason, minus a few roads and fences, the countryside is very much in its natural state.

On Saturday it rained in the morning so we didn't leave until early afternoon. We hiking across some of the magnificent country to u-shaped cut out in the higher part of the hills. We set up camp and proceeded to start setting up for rock climbing. By the time we arrived it was starting to get dark so the most we could do was drive the stakes into the top of the cliff we were planning to climb.  On the left is a view of our campsite of Saturday night.

Sunday dawned clear but cold. Down in the campsite we were protected from the wind by the cliffs, but once on started to climb things changed. The pampas must be one of the windiest places on earth. I received the honor of getting to be the first person to scale the cliff. Mountain climbing is truly a sport invented by maniacs. I did, however, enjoy it immensely and climbed a second time via a more difficult route. It is very taxing on one's strength, especially when the only good foothold is a two inch wide fissure in the rock and you can only stick the tip of you boot in going sideways. It's rather difficult to support one's weight in such a manner. Below is the cliff we climbed.

Rappelling is another story. Rappelling is easy, exhilarating, and I would return to do it again in a second. (I would go back to go climbing too, but I liked rappelling more.) Mostly the hardest part of rappelling is convincing yourself to step backwards off the side of a cliff.

The weekend was a grand success. I learned a lot, not just about mountains, but also lots of useful Spanish dealing with tents, rope, and a whole load of slang that will come in handy the next time someone cuts me off on the highway.

As a special attachment to this letter my parents here send along their greetings to all. They just got back from some sort of formal event so they were all dressed up and wanted to take some photos. So here you go, I would like to introduce you all to Roqu� and Auri, my Argentine parents.

Love,