Aconcagua (I)

I've put it off for too long now, so this is the second-last story about Aconcagua and how we, the first romanian all women's team, climbed it. I would like to say that from the start my focus was on getting everybody (that is Catalina, Lili and I) to the top, as a team if not as friends. Now if you remember, Catalina had tried three times before to climb it, had not trained and had serious knee problems. Lili was fresh out of the office, extremely stressed about having failed on tres cruces and parinacota. To top it up, C, always has a knack at being on somebody's back for whatever reason. So, if somebody would step on her toes, she would be on that poor critter's back for ever. Or, if nobody would step on her toes, she would still find somebody that might've and go from there. It was the case with Dan, then with lili on and off, and at last, with me.

So we finally arrived at Plaza de Mulas after having trekked for 25 km through the bloody desert, 1000 m elevation difference. I think from Confluencia we had maybe 10 minutes of green, and then - nothing! Just red, red, brown, red. At the beggining of the trek Aconcagua shows its majestic south face, but only for a while. This prompted some young Argentinians that we were passing on and off, to yell "ACONCAGUA!!!" at it every time it would show up around the corner. The trek is through the valley of the Horcones, a small creek that grows to river proportions in the afternoon - it gets its water from the glacier on top of which Plaza de Mulas resides.

In the afternoon, the Horcones water is chocolaty, from all that red dust. We saw a lot of climbers or tourists coming down. Our favorite game was guessing who had been to the top. A lot of mulas as well!! The 1000m elevation is not sudden, it starts lightly around half-way. However, just before you reach Plaza de Mulas, you have to climb a horrendous slope. We were out of water for about three hours (it took us 9 hours, but we were also carrying the tent) by this time, so at least for C. it was horrible to climb. So much, that when i got to the top, i came down, took her backpack (almost forced it from her) and helped her up. I sweetened it saying that I expect her to do the same for me if the going gets tough, and I meant it.

We set up camp. Our cameraman, Marius, had taken off at one point because he got so pissed of at C. that he couldn't take it anymore. M. and I had a row (romanian style - which means, with lots and lots of yelling) but in the end we cleared things up. I did say something that he will never forgive me for (or even let me forget): i told him that we had the same load (which we did) and thus he can't say that he was in a hurry. Ah ... young and foolish. When we arrived, Carlos and Vanessa, the couple that was taking care of the Lanko camp at Plaza de Mulas, greeted us with juice, tea, juice, juice, and soup! A blessing, as we were totally spent. We spent one day to recover in Plaza de Mulas. It is like a small town, with all the comforts of home, including internet (very very slow), telephone, and restaurants.

You HAVE to use the ecological toilets (pictured) provided by each company. Ours did not have a door, but a green flap. There's also a doctor there, and you are encouraged to have him/her check you out. We did that at Confluencia, and somehow we didn't have the time to go to this one as well. Other teams were camped at the Lanko camp. We had the OTHER romanians I told you about. A team of boisterous argentinians, including a female rock climber (she was sooooo fit!!), that had their own support team - members of their family that were just hanging out in Plaza de Mulas with radios etc, waiting for news. A 60 something french guy, Pierre, that barely spoke english, and was by himself. The other team from Explorer that had just summited and came down on our rest day. I was truly happy for those guys. I envied their guts, but that is my problem and my nemessis.

From Plaza de Mulas to Nido de Condores, our next camp, 1000m higher, you have to scale this absolutely huge slope ranging from 30 degrees to around 50 degrees. We called it our Golgota. To the end of the slope, where you still have 300m elevation until Nido de Condores (Eagle's crib) you could see people as very very small ants going up and down it. We spent the whole rest day sitting in base camp watching people going up and down the slope. Lili, who was showing signs of intense nervousness, sat with a bottle of water by her side and did not utter a SINGLE word the whole day. That huge slope and those small ants climbing it is not very encouraging mind you. On top of that, the weather is not very encouraging also. We could see white flat clouds on the direction of the summit, made by a very fierce wind they call "Viente blanco" (white wind). To say nothing of the cold! The sun gets to the camp around 10 am. Before that, it's so cold that you HAVE to wear your down jacket. The sun sets around 10:30 pm. At Nido de Condores and higher, it sets even later, and the sunsets are absolutely amazing!! [pictured]


We went from Plaza de Mulas to Nido de Condores two times to carry gear and re-acclimatize. Our last trip was also the hardest, because, even though we were not carrying crampons and that much food, we were carrying tents, sleeping bags, down jackets and the like. These are also very very heavy items, especially when you're deprived of oxygen and/or on the road for such a long time. Going up to Nido de Condores for the last time, we met up with Zsolt Torok, a new addition to our club by the way, who had just completed the Polish Route solo, after being with some other Explorer members to the summit two days before. That's right, he was on the summit two times in one week. He told us how on the polish route while he was walking by himself, he stumbled upon the mummified body of another climber. Apparently he was a Czech climber that had died on the Polish glacier and his family had decided to leave him there. How freaky is it to walk alone and find somebody dead in the middle of your path?! Looking at Zsolt, and the immensity of his backpack and at how fit he seemed while I was so dizzy from my smallish pack, I realized that it's going to be a loong time (if ever) before I can even dream to attempt this kind of routes.

Aconcagua - The Romanians

[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.

Preamble to Aconcagua

Now, where were we? Ah, yes ... We had just had an amazing lomo alo pobre and camped by the highway for the night. Marius drove for another 900 km to reach Los Andes and from there the border of Chile with Argentina. The border is somewhere in a mountain pass, surrounded by very impressive stone peaks. To get there, you have to go up this road that has about 26km of very tight curves. The chilean customs is not, as you might think, next to the argentinean one. What you do is, you go through basic checks at the chilean border then, in about 20km or so, you find the argentinean one, in which your bags are checked, etc. Our problem was that we did not have an authorization to get out of chile with our car and as such, someone from our mule company was supposed to wait for us at the chilean border, namely Jose. Of course, Jose was waiting for us at the argentinean border, we couldn't get out of Chile, we couldn't walk for it and we didn't have any phone to call Jose.

In about one hour of so of talks and walking around (it is a customs office in a mountain pass, it was of course 9 pm - sun sets at about 10-10:30) we finally managed to get through to Jose and tell him to come and rescue the girls and the BAGS (omg so many bags!!) After much talk with the customs because the girls were getting out of Chile on foot which was unusual for that particular checkpoin, the girls were up in Jose's car and then safely in Penitentes, enjoying Jorge's cooking. Penitentes is called that way after the stone formations that guard it that are similar to the snow penitentes I showed a while back.

Marius and I returned to Santiago to return the car and get our moneys back - for replacing the clutch. We ended up spending another 4 hours arguing at the rental company, but we finally got most of them back, even though they were in form of a cheque. And it was Friday. Of course. The night before we could not find a hotel (again) and so Marius slept it a hostel - they had only one bed left, and again, it was 11 plus when we got there - and I in the car. In the morning, when I went to Marius's hostel to shower, guess who I bumped into?! Guess, guess ;;) Nevermind ... DAN, of course! He was leaving on the same day for Romania. The ticket change had cost him about 300 Euros, but he was happy to leave. He didn't even say congratulations for Tres Cruces. His voice trembled when he talked about how his little girl was asking for him. This would have impressed me at some point but now I was disgusted. Then he started saying how "time will tell who was right" and "what will we tell the people back home" sort of crap. How Dan got home and what happened is the subject of another post :)

We took a bus from Santiago to Mendoza, in Argentina, but decided to stop in Penitentes, where the girls were. They were staying at our mule company's skiing refuge, called Cruz de Cana. Our mule company is called Lanko. The company is run by Osvaldo and Jose. They are great people, even though remarkably different. Osvaldo si the calculated, mellow, kind type, whereas Jose is the forgetful, easily distracted type. They run Cruz de Cana together with Lucia, who is responsible for the bar, the rooms etc, and Jorge, (or Coky) who is the cook. Both Lucia and Jorge are students who only work there in the summer. In the winter Cruz de cana is absolutely full. In the summer it's just us climbers or tourists to aconcagua that keep the place barely running. Jorge's cooking is amazing!!! Wooha!! And Lulu is extremely kind and friendly.

There are three main routes and three main ways of climbing Aconcagua. The three routes are: the normal (easy in mountaineering) route (which we took), the Polish glacier (which I wanted to do), and the south face (south wall pictured - which i would love to do but it is extremely hard, so maybe in another life or so). As it is with climbing high mountains, you have to do it following a series of camps. For the normal route, the camps are: Plaza Confluencia (3300m), Plaza de Mulas (4300m), and from there on a couple more with the last two being (in general) Nido de Condores (5380m) and Camp Berlin (5700m). For the polish and the south face the only camp that I can remember is Plaza Francia (4200m) and Plaza Argentina. You can do the polish glacier from the normal route as well, taking a sharp left turn around Camp Alaska (5100m). All the routes start from Confluencia.

For the normal route, to get from Confluencia to Plaza de Mulas you have to walk the valley of the Horcones. This valley has more or less 25 km long, with a difference in altitude of 1000m. You can feel this difference when you get just bellow Plaza de Mulas where you have two massive slopes to climb. You have to carry a lot of bags up, of course. The weight ranges from 20 to 30 kg. To walk. For 25 km to the base camp. Wooohoo. This is where the mules and the mules companies come in. As I said, there are three ways of climbing Aconcagua: go with a full service company - including guide, all food provided, etc; go by yourself or employ mules to carry your load up to Mulas. If you go full service you will of course pay more but at least you don't have to worry about anything. However, expect to eat pasta with a bland tomato sauce for as many as twenty days. Furthermore, you have to do everything with the group. If you go by yourself you will have to carry everything up that bloody valley. The whole 8-9 hours of it. Plus, you still have to pay for the toilet at Plaza Confluencia and at Mulas. There are ecological toilets both at Plaza de Mulas and Confluencia and they MUST be used even though they stink to high heaven at Mulas. One thing that I liked was that they change the camping spot at Confluencia to allow the vegetation to regenerate, good for them!!!

What we did was to hire Lanko to take care of the luggage to Plaza de Mulas. Also, at Plaza de Mulas we were met by two great guys, Carlos and his wife Vanessa, who take car of the Lanko tent and toilet there. If you go with a company they will also have a reserved tent space in their name. DO NOT however, pitch your tent next to the mess hall. Anything is better that than, since you will not be able to sleep if there are some argentinians there enjoying some mate de hierbas or some romanians having their usual squabble. They will talk you to death. Also, DO NOT assume that you can negotiate with the muleters on sight and get a better price (as some romanians thought they could, sheesh). They will not negotiate because they are working for their companies. Furthermore, the competition among companies is fierce, so the prices are all right.

As I said, Osvaldo and Jose are really nice. They will even show you around Mendoza and help you with the formalities for getting a climbing permit. The climbing permit for Aconcagua costs 330 US (for foreigners) or 300 pesos for argentinians. Write to Osvaldo at osvaldocarbahal@hotmail.com or at info@lanko.com.ar

I R

Is backs!!! Climbed:
Guane Guane (5100m)
Tres Cruces Central (6629m)
Aconcagua (6962m)

Reached until 5700m on Parinacota. I will return Sunday with the first part of the story. I am missing one nail and limping because of it, must try open toed shoes.

Off

8 hours till lift-off. Bags are packed. lists have been made and relisted. things have been packed and unpacked. I hope i did not forget anything. For the following 53 days i will be trying to climb Guallatiri, Pomerape, Parinacota, and, I hope, Aconcagua. My main concern is that the first three will be out of season and thus difficult to climb (if not impossible because of the weather) and we might not be acclimatised for Aconcagua.

See you (and the internet) in February.

Jitters

Went down to pick my marathon race pack today. I think i will need to change the size for the finisher tee, since size "S" seems a bit too tight. I also bought 36 power bars for Aconcagua, and I ate half of one because I was hungry and there was nothing else to eat there. I am now caffeine high and I find it extremely hard to concentrate or type. You could say that i have the marathon jitters, ha hahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!


Sugar high!!!!

On an intellectual note, check out this youtube movie, it will make u think. Over and out.


SUGAR HIGH!!!

Supervisor love

SO I am so full of supervisor lurrrve today. I just told him yesterday that I am taking extra two weeks off and he said ok, go!! Just purchase a travel insurance! Hooray! So now the trip to Aconcagua is more than definite!!! Since I had this half lie looming over my head I could not quite grasp the fact that I am going. But now... YEY!
In light of this, I have started to train! And last night, I made Marian promise that at 6:50 this morning when the alarm rings he is to push me out of bed, and if I don't react he is to say stuff like "oh you wanna be the last one there, spend so much money and not be able to do a thing" ... Eh, I put the alarm to ring at 6:45 hoping that I get a 5 minute snooze out of it ... But did i get it?! Nooo!! the moment it started ringing I found my self struggling at the side of the bed, trying my best not to hit the floor and hoping to get through to him that it's not that time yet!

Alas, the kent ridge hill welcomed me again ... I must put more weights inside my backpack because it's only six kg, comprised of 1 2l waterbottle, 4 0.5l waterbot, and 2 dumbbells, that are swaying from left to right (and me with them) when I go up the hill.

Last night we went to a flamenco show, called "Sevilla" by the Maria Pages Dance Company. It was lovely, I loved the flamenco, the modern touch added to it, and I loved Maria's dance also. Even though she is incredibly masculine, when she dances she's so full of grace and yet so strong. Lastly, I discovered that women with curvy bottoms (or big asses, if you wish) can be quite sexy. Feeling good about meself :))

It's done

I am the proud owner of a plane ticket to Buenos Aires - i leave on 11 December and arrive on 12 december, and i come back on 30 Jan and arrive on 1 Feb (yes, i fly TWO WHOLE OH MY GOD!! days coming back)!!

I am also 2900 SGD (or 1450 Euro) poorer!!! Omg, I could not sleep at all last night, kept thinking about how I will be broke for at least one year from now, thinking about how I still haven't told my supervisor about the one month and a half (i only told him about the permitted one month), about what I am going to do if the expedition turns out to be a complete failure. Yup. That's what I did last night. Toss and turn, toss and turn.

Excuses I have not

So, I took the day off yesterday! So what?!? On tuesday, apart from my morning workout and climbing, I went running with kesheng, which left me on wednesday morning feeling sore from (almost) all my muscles - even my a.s.s. muscles were sore (good thing though, it means there's something there other than fat!) So I took the day off!! So what?!!? Later in the afternoon I went with Marian to buy Pasha a birthday present. We bought him one of those nice pillows - it's shaped like a turtle to symbolize his/ours slow (but STEADY!!) progress towards getting a Phd. Also it's very useful since he has been sleeping in his lab for the past three years! (I suppose you save a lot of moneys on rent)

Marian got me this wonderful present: a Nike+Ipod sensor plus connector - you put it in your shoe and it tracks your workout. It's wonderful and not so wonderful, since now i really have to work out. Plus i found out that my hill (that i thought was 600m) is actually 300m! It's very inclined, but still, 6 minutes for up and down??!?! carrying only 12 kg? How, oh how, will i ever be fit enough? For today, it took me 1h 10 minutes for 7.32 km: my house to the hill + 4xhill + from the hill to school.

Ok, and I admit!! I fell off the "no shopping" wagon! I shopped!!! but it is a very very nice blouse (expensive though) and i promise i won't shop for the rest of the month.

Last night i talked to M. on skype - next week i am going to make reservations for Santiago de chile - Chile here I come!!! We're supposed to meet in santiago on the 13th of december - initially we were supposed to meet on the 14th, but M. said he's not starting a journey on the 13th :)) Targets: Parinacota, Gualatiri and Aconcagua. I still have to buy (after the alps) some high altitude boots, ice crampons and a big backpack ... Cool! Shopping!! [i am incorrigible, i know]

I also admit i am selfish - i have been reading this article about how the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia is melting and all i could think about was that "what if parinacota and gualatiri will melt before i get there?"(they're at the border of chile with bolivia), instead of thinking about those poor people that will lose their water supplies... and how we're all going to die if global warming keeps up...
Enough with the admissions/confessions and all that, back to work!

A name and a face

Hurray! I finally have a name and a face for all the peaks that we are going to attempt in december - january! [drums drumming in the background]
Ladies and gentlefolks, the peaks in the order of height are as follows:
1. Aconcagua - 6972 m

2. Guallatiri - 6071 m

3. Parinacota (pictured) - 6342 m

I can't wait! It's so good to have a name for those peaks! M. says that we are going to do another one if we have the time. Guallatiri and Parinacota are volcanoes! Guallatiri last erupted in 1960, Parinacota erupted last in 290 AD +/- 300 (how small is 300 in volcano years if you can plus/minus it!!!)

Disclaimer: those peaks are not difficult climbwise, they involve minimum ice climbing (for the last two), and just good training for Aconcagua (if you take the normal route, which I think we will ... although my feet ache for the polish route)

Since we still are on a climbing related tone, Boulderactive is coming! It's probably the most important bouldering competition of the year, it's organized by us, so the pressure is [VERY] high! I am trying to get as much climbing in as possible, before they get the tiles down from the gym, so this is why I've been so silent. This year I am in intermediate category, but from my point of view I am a very well trained novice, so no striking performances from me... The target is for all the girls to qualify for the finals (wtf?!), but I'm trying to ignore it and to put a more positive target on the canvas, like maybe, climb my best, enjoy the comp and the organizing and all that.

Copyright: The photo is taken from Peakware and the author is Edilson V. Benvenutti. All rights reserved.

Sacrifices

When i said that i am a dog in chinese zodiac, i meant of course that i am loyal, playful, hard-working etc (not modest as you can see). However, there's another image of the dog that portrays i r: the image of the stray dog walking in the rain, tired, hungry, but who continues to walk to somewhere, not giving up his purpose. Well ... that's how i feel now.

Firstly, M just upped the stakes a bit, including some 6000 peaks in the andes, besides aconcauga. This is so accidentally cool! However, it involves around 30 something working days of leave (instead of the paid 20), which means that i either have to get my supervisor to agree to pretend i only left for 20 days (i really don't like this, one thing is for me to lie, but making another lie is really beyond my understanding), or to take extra 10 non-paid days of leave. I will try to contact whoever is responsible here at NUS, maybe i can get a sort of special leave or something, in exchange for a photo exposition. It will also mean an extra 2 weeks worth of moneys for me. Since i am not rich (read ... i am always NEARLY BROKE) this means that i really really gotta start saving.

So the sacrifices start now. I was planning to go to the Phantom of the Opera show that is showing here this spring. I am not so keen on Sarah Brightman but i absolutely love Webber, so i would have paid the moneys (the cheap 70 bucks ticket of course), but now, in the grand scheme of things, i gotta give up on it. As a consolation, i am now listening to jesus christ superstar.

I will be going to "300" though, the ticket is only 10 bucks and marian has been driving me crazy with it.

I really do not enjoy making choices like these, usually i just go "oh, the hell with it! moneys come and go!" but this time .... aaa

In the quiet words of King Leonidas, via marian: "Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast, for tonight we dine in Hell!"

Back to work after CNY

Had the stupidest dream last night/this morning. We were climbing aconcagua and we were just preparing to leave from base camp. There were two ways to the summit that started from base camp: one took the normal route and one took the polish route, going left and right respectively. I was convinced that we were going up the polish route, so, when everybody took a left instead of a right I started to yell and complain that we were supposed to go on the polish route instead of the normal one. We started to argue, black clouds started forming on the polish side. The normal route was bright and sunny. I was screaming and yelling and stomping my feet like I used to do when i was a very spoiled child. Woke up with a headache.

Speaking of headaches, here's the movie that m. made about his and vlad's trip to the alps in 2006. Vlad complains at one point about altitude headaches (will i get those also?) It's in romanian, so don't bother if u don't understand it (unless you want to see the superb scenery). The movie covers Dufourspitze, Matterhorn and Mont Blanc. It left me with a stupid grin on my face (still wearing it! *gush*) cause it got me to imagine me, myself and I on those routes. I can't wait!!! I'd better stop dreaming and start training, july is not that far away (I hate planning this far forward in my life, used to take it one day at a time - it's only for mountaineering though, i still take it one day at a time for the other aspects of my life - whew!)

down down down

Today I am feeling down. I am in dire need of motivation. I dun feel like working at all... I feel like waking up M. and asking him to answer the email I just sent him.
So, it all boils down to this: we are planning an expedition to Aconcagua in Jan-Feb 2008 (this is why I have been carrying all those water weights around campus). It has been my dream for quite awhile now, but only this year it seems I will be able to raise the moneys to go there. So you can imagine I am quite eager to go. I also wanted to go to the Alps and do some climbing there - i have a picture (no, 2 pictures) of Matterhorn taped to my desk's wall ... so when M. said he's going to the Alps and that I should come you would expect me to be HAPPIE!!!! But I'm not ... Thing is, this month of leave that I am taking is the only one in three years (2006,2007,2008) in which I will be able to go home, so I wanted to spend it at home, if not really at home with my mom (I know she misses me dearly), but at least in the same country... So what to do? I have written to M. and asked if he'll take me for 10 days (he says it will only last 2 weeks, but I know it usually lasts more, especially since I don't have any saying in- "we gotta go back now") - but this means that I can't help with driving back and packing up the tents and all that ... and it feels to me like I'm taking advantage in a way. I feel so troubled, in one place I want to go to the Alps, no matter how long it takes, on the other hand I can't do this to mom, it doesn't feel right.

I only hope that M. understands and will allow me to go for the 10 days and then fly out or smth... But I think that he won't, he'll just say forget it, or smth... Aaaa ... I am so sad, I hate choices like these.

Later edit: thanks to Nita for encouraging me to send the email.