I do not think I would recommend Aconcagua and Tierra Del Fuego by Sir Martin Conway. My goal of this book review was too look at high altitude mountaineering in a different range from what we have been covering in class and to see if any of the major themes applied in South America also. To get a different perspective I think there would have been a better book to choose than this one. This book was written in the late 1800’s and is a record of the last of Conway’s mountain explorations. The book is really all over the place and makes Krakauer’s tangents in Into Thin Air seem like the most focused irrational single argument out there. From all the drastic changes in tone of this book, the reader can tell that it was probably put together from notes and diary writings that Conway had written while on his explorations, which some people might be in to. Though for someone looking for an exciting story to read in one shot, this book is probably not the best choice and actually was quite frustrating to follow if that is what you are looking for.

To be completely honest, the book did get slightly better after they climbed Aconcagua and started to explore the region of Tierra Del Fuego. Compared to other books we have read in class, Conway and his crew attempt to climb two mountains, having no concrete direction of where they are. The subtitle of the book is “A Book of Climbing, Travel and Exploration” which is very true to the story, though not as exciting as it sounds. To give a brief summary of the book Conway and his crew were following notes and physical signs left from FitzGerald’s expedition crew, who Conway seemed to have a crush on throughout the book. By page 107, they had already reached the summit of Aconcagua which seemed very early in the book. I guess that is what the reader gets with a book about climbing two mountains. Even when they reached the summit it was pretty uneventful, I actually only picked up on it when they went back down to camp. Even the rest of the crew in the camp thought they were descending because of weather, but Conway was like, “nope, we came back because we have accomplished the ascent,” everyone at camp was surprised and said, “really, already?” I said the same.

I was hoping to get a different perspective on the themes we have covered in class during the crew’s expedition to the mountain because they had no idea where it was. I was fooled. But being a book about exploration, it would seem like they would be interacting with the local people more – asking for directions, and maybe they were but it was not in the book. I was hoping to find a different image on the local people (like the Sherpas of the Himalayas) and themes of drama, conquest, and globalization. Honestly, it was a pretty bland book that I could not draw any themes of because of the lack of detail. He spent two full pages talking about the philosophy of mules, which he was attempting to relate to mountain climbing but then it ended immediately (it must have been a boring day on the sail boat). This seemed to be a pattern through out the book. He would start writing about something really interesting like the history of the Inca, but he never actually went anywhere with it. Conway dropped the subject and started writing about something else (maybe that was how the book was put together or if that was the way he wrote his diary; it is hard to say). He did call Chilean and Argentinian people who lived near the mountains athletic people, men equal in physique, activity, and sporting instincts to any in the Old World, but it stopped there, that was it, not enough to draw any thoughts to. But then he had a totally different image of the locals towards the end of the book, which I will get to later.

The first chapter of the Tierra Del Fuego expedition started off pretty exciting relative to the rest of the book. Conway started writing about the history and geography of the region. There was much more detail in this section, actual dates of other explorations, where they were from, and for what reasons. Conway talked about Darwin and his influence on his own expedition, but it was then that I realized the book is just about an expedition that follows the path of other explorers. Fitzgerald during the Aconcagua expedition and Darwin during the Tierra Del Fuego expedition. It is pretty boring in my opinion for a book about exploration to write about other expeditions, especially if you are trying to create a story. It tends to lack detail and decreases the value and excitement of each of the stories.

Then I found it! Another portrayal of the Indians who lived in the region. This time was completely opposite, but I was not surprised. The image of the Indians was that of the “brutal savage”, the same image of people in South America during this area from a European perspective. Conway called them murders, robbers, damp, dirty, greasy-looking, and ill-looking creatures that were more like seals than human beings. It was a pretty brutal description that I was extremely surprised to read from Conway because the rest of his writing was so poetic and calm.

After the disappointing history of the region and portray of the local people, Conway and his guides make a failed attempt of Mount Sarmiento which is in the Tierra Del Fuego range. The first ascent would not happen until 1956, this was around 1898. Again the climb comes off pretty dull; they turn around due to weather and are back on the boat in a couple of pages. You get a sense that all of Conway’s writings were from the sail boat, why he chose not to write about the climb itself after he came down, I do not know. He ends the book talking about sheep farmers and sheep shearing, yes, sheep shearing, not what the reader would expect at the end but a sense of culture I guess. Then there were a few pages on the return home which closed the story.

Overall, I was trying to stay pretty hopeful of this book but it continually made me frustrated and disappointed. It is not a good book to get a clear perspective of mountaineering in South America or even to think about its major themes. It lacked detail, was extremely disorganized, surprisingly slightly racist, and disappointing for someone who is familiar with all the books we have read during the semester. Conway is definitely not a Harrer or a Herzog in the way he writes, but maybe someone who has been so inspired by explorers before him, he did not really create an exploration or even a story to write about for himself.