Getting there~December 12th to 14th

Chris and I left our respective cities (Rochester and Sacramento) on December 12th.  The flight down was quite the miserable affair for me, I got some kind of stomach bug or something just as I was leaving Sacramento.  I threw up 3 times on the first flight from Sacramento to Dallas.  While in Dallas I threw up one more time in the airport, then laid down on the floor for the majority of my 8 hour layover.  I thought I was feeling much better, but once I got on the flight heading to Santiago my stomach started to hurt pretty bad.  Although I only threw up once on that 9 hour flight, my stomach hurt the entire time and I was unable to get any sleep.  Once in Santiago, able to lay down on the airport floor again, the pain went away.  So I had figured out how to deal with this weird pain anyways, and luckily I was able to lay across 3 seats on the pretty empty flight over to Mendoza.

Once in Mendoza, a full day and a half later, on the afternoon of December 13th, Chris was there at the airport to meet me.  We went straight to the tourism center to try to get our permits so that we could make our way to the trail head the next day since the 14th of December is the last day of 'mid-season'.  If we wanted to wait until the 15th to get out on the trail, it would cost us each an additional 100 USD each.  We did not quite succeed in getting our permits that day.  We were informed that we would get a discount if we signed up with a mule company, but I was still not willing to hire mules to carry our gear to base camp, I really wanted to make it the whole way on our own and Chris agreed to go on without mules.  So we got everything organized and paid for so that we could come in and get our permits the next morning.  We managed to find white gas, fill our siggs, get last minute food for the climb, eat some dinner, and re-organize our packs that night at Hostel Alamo, which was a great place to stay for us, they were incredibly helpful both before and after our climb.  

Us on the 4 hour bus ride from Mendoza to Horcones trail head.

View out the bus window.

So the next morning,  all we needed to do was go to the tourism center, which opened at 8:00, pick up our permits, and get to the bus station by 10:00.  This was really quite easily done, we got some instructions at the tourism center and by 10 we were on our way to Los Horcones  trail head.