By Daniel Cassman on December 24, 2008
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I flew into Lima in the early hours of December 14. A desert city on the Peru’s western coast, Lima is known for its depressing weather, and sure enough it greeted us with oppressive clouds and fog. A taxi took Kate and me to a hostel in Lima’s Miraflores district, one of the nicer tourist districts in the city. I didn’t really know what to expect, having never been to South America, but Miraflores was definitely not anything like what I would have anticipated. Within a five-minute walk of our hostel were a TGI Friday’s, a Chili’s, a McDonald’s, a Starbucks, and a Domino’s pizza. We spent the rest of our first day trying to fight jet lag while exploring the area around our hostel. We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant a few blocks from the hostel—apparently Italian food is a hot trend in Peru.
The next day we were joined by Kate’s friend Divya and her boyfriend Daniel. Daniel, a native Colombian, spoke fluent Spanish and proved to be invaluable in helping us travel throughout Peru. The four of us walked around Miraflores, and we ate lunch at an upscale Peruvian restaurant where Kate and Divya tried ceviche, a quintessential Peruvian dish. We strolled west to the cliffs above the beach, where we were heckled by paragliding companies. Then we walked down to the beach, where we were heckled by several people offering surfing lessons. Declining, we gravitated towards Larco Mar, a new mall built into the cliffs above the Miraflores beach that wouldn’t look out of place in San Diego. It was a surreal experience to stand in an Aeropostale store in Peru, with pop remixes of Christmas carols (in English) playing outside on the mall’s soundsystem and The Killers blasting on the store’s speakers.
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Posted in Travel | Tagged latin america, peru, Travel |
By Daniel Cassman on October 25, 2008
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In late October of 2008, I led an attempt to climb Sequoia National Park’s 11,188-foot Mount Silliman as part of the Outdoor Education Program. We left Stanford on Friday evening and arrived at Lodgepole campsite a little after midnight. Mount Silliman is in the same area as a peak I climbed last spring, Alta Peak; it lies a few miles to the northwest. We went to sleep almost as soon as we arrived.
Saturday morning dawned beautiful and sunny. We had a pancake breakfast and then drove through the campsite to the trailhead (the trail for Silliman lies in the eastern part of Lodgepole campground). For the first two miles, we followed a trail up to the north of the campsite. At about the 2 mile mark (where the trail meets Silliman Creek), we turned east, following a use trail that paralleled the stream. The trail wound its way to a meadow below a striking 10,000 foot peak. We took a break in the meadow and did a navigation workshop with maps and compasses.
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Posted in Climbing, Mountaineering | Tagged california, Climbing, mountaineering, sequoia |
By Daniel Cassman on September 5, 2008
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Early in September of 2008, I attempted a climb of 14,153-foot Mount Sill in the Palisade Range of the eastern Sierras. About one year prior, I had tried the climb but was turned back on the second morning by inclement weather and ill health. On that trip I climbed Mt. Agassiz instead. This time I was determined to make the summit with my three friends, Kate, Whitney, and Ian.
Half Dome in Yosemite
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Posted in Climbing, Mountaineering | Tagged california, Climbing, mountaineering |
By Daniel Cassman on June 28, 2008
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At the end of June during the summer of 2008, I left for Yosemite with a group of Stanford Outdoors leaders. Our goal was ambitious: to watch the sun rise from the top Half Dome.
We left campus late on a Friday afternoon. The drive was relatively painless; there was no traffic, but we were hampered by thick smoke from the forest fires burning in hundreds of locations across the state and endless stories about pet hermit crabs. We stopped for dinner at a place called Ofelia’s’ taqueria in Tracy. We found a number of interesting items in our burritos, and none of us will be returning there.
Half Dome
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Posted in Backpacking | Tagged california, yosemite |
By Daniel Cassman on June 22, 2008
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After leaving Florence on my journey to Italy in June of 2008, my family and I drove to a small town in Umbria called Lerchi. About a 20 minute drive into the hills above Lerchi is an old farmhouse christened “La Dogana”. Nestled in the hills among the farms and forests of Umbria, La Dogana lies beneath the fortified town of Monte Santa Maria Tiberina. Monte Santa Maria dominates the horizon, its imposing silhouette overlooking the countryside in all directions.
Monte Santa Maria Tiberina
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Posted in Travel | Tagged europe, italy, Travel |
By Daniel Cassman on June 14, 2008
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I flew into Florence on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-June. Wrestling with jet lag, I went to bed early the first night after a delicious dinner at an osteria a few blocks north of the Arno with my family. The next day we strolled through the city and visited Santa Maria del Fiore, known as Il Duomo. We visited the baptistry outside the cathedral, and then walked into the church itself. Beneath the church we toured an ancient Roman town that had been on the site before the cathedral. Then we climbed the dome, which offered spectacular views of Florence’s rooftops.
The Arno River
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Posted in Travel | Tagged europe, italy, Travel |
