Instead of crying because I got robbed the previous year, I decided to return to South America.
This time, I started my trip with one month of high (for me)-altitude mountaineering in Peru.
Then I met my friend Robin--fresh off a Central American surf trip--in Chile, where we began a month of climbing and skiing lines there and in Argentina.
We lived in a mice-infested rock cave for a few weeks in Chile and in an Argentine snow cave for the remainder.
In the snow cave, we had a tent that was too small for either of us to lay flat in, without a proper fly, with insufficiently-warm sleeping bags that we cushioned
with a children's mattress that we found in a dumpster behind the cheapest hotel in town.
While living in the rock cave--and somehow avoiding diseases--we once returned after a day of skiing to find garbage bags ripped open and spread all over the cave,
with some of the most disgusting contents imaginable. We hitchhiked everywhere, and what we lacked in funds we made up for with energy and time.
And we didn't get sick of one another.
