Down the Road in South America (A Bicycle Tour through Poverty, Paradise, and the Places in Between) by Tim and Cindie Travis Chapter 8 Argentina: Traveling as an American During Wartime. (pp. 223 - 224) Our plan was to camp for the night in Aconcagua National Park, but we were exhausted and wanted to be indoors away from the wind. Two kilometers (1.2 miles) before the turn-off to the park, we found a hostel that caters to groups climbing Aconcagua, the highest mountain peak outside of Asia. In the hostel, we heard the familiar sound of people speaking English with a North American accent. We introduced ourselves to members of the group and learned they were a mountain climbing club from Boulder, Colorado. At dinner, we listened intently to the stories from their three-week adventure ascending the challenging peak. The next day we said goodbye to the group as they boarded a bus for Santiago to fly home. We kept in contact with one member, Roger Wendell, who later interviewed us on his radio talk show several months later. The MP3 file of that interview is located in our media section of our web site (www.downtheroad.org). It was a few kilometers straight up a rough dirt road to Aconcagua National Park. The park has a small ranger station and a busy shack that collects fees from climbers and trekkers totaling hundreds of US dollars each. We went on a short hike and took pictures of the beautiful peak before returning to our bicycles and continuing to the border.