Lisa

Maybe someday…

I have found a research project that runs during the summer… perhaps this summer!

I am thinking of going this December, just for a brief visit.
It just seems that every time I think it’s finally the right time to go, another story hits the papers about contaminated food or some kind of environmental crisis. Am I worried about nothing?

Our cruise ship rounded Cape Horn en route to Ushuaia from the South Shetland islands. We were expecting a call from the Chilean Coast Guard warning us to stay at least 12 nautical miles away, but we got within 5 nautical miles of it and still no word from them. As we turned to head towards the tip of Argentina, they belatedly radioed us and asked for some basic info about the ship. The only explanation we have, perhaps, is that it was New Year´s Day and perhaps they´d had an exciting night before?

In any case, fun fun to see a piece of history! (and no, the water was not that rough – at least not any rougher than the rest of the Drake Passage!)

Where else can you cross over from Russian to Chilean to Chinese territory within one short hike?

December 19th to January 4th
I’ll tell you all about it when I get back!

I am leaving for Spain tonight! Looking forward to lots of photographs, good food, and lots of culture…

The skiing is great!

This is a great place to learn to ski. The green trails are wide and flat and even if you don’t have a lot of control yet, there’s plenty of room to try yourself out without bumping into others. When I was there, there were fairly long lines for the lifts at the bottom, so we concentrated on the middle part of the mountain where the traffic was lighter. I liked the blue trails here too. I am not really an experienced skier yet but found that the easier blue trails were just my speed.

My recommendation: take a group lesson. I spent my first day and a half doing that, and for someone who was a fairly new skier and not at all familiar with the trails, it made all the difference. By the end of the 2nd day I was feeling much more confident that I could find my way down and not end up on a too-hard trail by accident.

Snowbird is a very difficult mountain – in fact one ski instructor said to me, “You’ve just been down the hardest ‘green’ trail in the entire United States.” I will definitely come back when I’m ready for more of a challenge.

One last thing – if you are staying for dinner, try the Italian place. It had the best food of all of the resort’s restaurants and the most reasonably priced.