[Not such a happy story though - the reason I didn't write about aconcagua in such a long time] Yup. We met some Romanians in the permit office, a big loud bunch of them :). They were planning to bypass the mule companies and hire mules without intermediaries, but we finally convinced them not to, and introduced them to Osvaldo. Two of them were with a all expenses paid company, so we only saw them in the office and a bit around Mendoza when we went shopping.
The rest, ah the rest. Two of them were from a mountain rangers office back home (Sasha and Emil from Salvamont Arges), one is a professor in Educational Sciences (wtf is that!? They all called her Madame), one poor guy was wondering wtf he was doing there with those people, and the last one, namely Ovidiu (Popescu) from a mountaineering club (Clubul Montan Altitudine). Now. I will not go into stupid gossip about how: Madame found a dead mule's horseshoe and tied it around her neck with a white string, Emil was bragging about how he went to Pamir and climbed some 7000m there, and how he shouldn't have headaches here (but later when the doctor told him in Plaza de Mulas that he had a murmur in his lungs, we would go to the doctor's every 2 hours), Madame was taking sleeping pills (!!!!!) at 4300m because she couldn't sleep* and even though I told her she's fooling herself she wouldn't stop, Madame tore a numbered sheet of paper from the summit register (found yes, on the summit) just so she could give her email to some dizzy polish guy, how after we all came down from the summit, they spent the whole night in the mess hall arguing about who was right or wrong during their messed up trip to Mont Blanc the same year - you don't want to know the acoustics of the mess hall, or how Madame wore a black thermal suit in Confluencia, at 30 degrees... No, I will not talk about that :)
Ovidiu had a 13 year old daughter with him on the trip and he was planning to take her to the summit. She had been to various mountains and she looked pretty fit and tough enough for the job. But MINORS ARE NOT ALLOWED to climb Aconcagua. He knew about this rule but was planning to somehow get through. And got through he got. What they did (we found out much later about this) was that they used Madame's passport to get a second permit in her name, and gave the second permit to Coca. In order to by-pass the rangers in Confluencia, they did not stop to rest in Plaza Confluencia, but instead spent the night under some rock in the Horcones Valley. Then, if this wasn't enough, they messed up the trail and ended up having to cross the Horcones river about two or three times. If you do this around noon, when the glacier is melting, the water is pretty damn cold. The poor girl had just gotten her period + crossing the cold water in sandals => you know what this means ...
So she arrived in base camp with horrible abdominal pain which kept her in her tent for three days. She could not take antibiotics, because you cannot take antibiotics higher than 2700m - Madame had given her, of course, but then Catalina found her out. She would cry to Catalina and tell her that it hurts like a horrible toothache, even when she just stands and doesn't do anything. This of course meant the end for her father's summit dreams, because he could not take her with him, they could not evacuate by helicopter because this would mean a medical check-up. So Ovidiu would sit around camp moping around and begging for compassion. Then one night, other members from our Explorer club heard (adjoining tents, what can you do?!) her poor excuse for a father swear at her (as in really really bad, if you have ever heard me swear those are just rose petals), and then tell her that she should use her mind to heal herself!!! Then more swearing, etc!! This nearly made one of the other romanians (from our club) want to kick this guy's ass. Marius was also not happy about it, as in, we were keeping an eye on them such that they do not cross paths. Sasha said that Ovidiu was a good father, and this is how he raised his daughters, my, you should have seen the smaller one how much she swore, Madame said that it's not our place to mess ... Luckily she was so bad that they had to leave base camp (on foot, 35km more to the park entrance, she was sick!!) and head on for Santiago, were she went to a doctor and got better in two or three days.
In the picture (Romanian and Argentinian teams) Madame is the one to the right of Catalina (blue down jacket) wearing a black thermal suit and a white cap, Ovidiu is the bearded one right behind her, and his daughter is the one holding the white sign, wearing a red down jacket with a red cap.
*yes, you shouldn't take sleeping pills. It will trick your body into sleeping without acclimatization. It's like taking painkillers for your knee, let's say, and then running.
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