MONTERREY ~ A Mexican tipping the scales at 560 kilograms will be listed as the world’s fattest man by the Guinness Book of Records, while a loss of 200 kilos may make him the man who lost the most weight.

“I’m glad to be in the Guinness Book as the fattest man. I am also happy to have lost 200 kilos,” Manuel Uribe, 41, said.

Uribe was able to leave his home in Monterrey, northern Mexico in March aboard a trailer to celebrate his weight loss.

KATHMANDU ~ Fancy standing on the top of Mount Everest?

If you have previous high-mountain experience, an understanding boss and about US$40,000 to spare, Russell Brice, a New Zealander and leading Himalayan expedition organizer, can probably help.

First conquered in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the 8,848-metre peak has since been scaled around 3,000 times, and this spring season was a record breaker with around 530 people getting to the top.

Despite the growing number of climbers jockeying for space on the small summit, climbing Everest is still an incredibly demanding and potentially fatal challenge.

“It’s not just about fitness. You have to be physically fit; you also have to be mentally fit,” Brice said.

“You need to be able to have determination, to know your own body and ability, how far you can go before you have to turn around, how far you can go before you fall over and die,” said the 55-year-old.

Seven people died on the mountain this spring, and last year 11 perished.

With just one third of the oxygen getting into the lungs compared to at sea level, Everest’s “death zone” above 8,000 meters is littered with the corpses of those who did not know their limits, were caught by the fast changing weather or involved in accidents.

Brice vets his clients and requires them to have a thorough medical examination, provide a résumé of climbing experience and sign a contract that stipulates they must do what he says even if it means turning back just meters from the summit.

“We know from experience that the success rate of people who have been on an 8,000-metre peak previously increases their chance of getting to the summit of Everest,” he said.

Telling white lies about previous mountain experience cuts no ice with Brice and his team.

“We had a climber this year who said she had a lot of experience, but in actual fact we saw immediately that she didn’t, so we stopped her going to the summit,” said the plain-speaking, windblown and graying Kiwi.

Big Mountain, Big Money

Costs charged by commercial operators vary widely - a bare-bones climb with minimal support costs around $7,500 on the cheaper northern approach from Tibet.

“A medium-priced expedition on the north side is around $30,000 and on the south side it costs around $10,000-$12,000 more. I am at $42,000 and an expensive expedition on the south side will be $65,000-$70,000,” he said.

To take a stab at the mountain, you’ll also need just over two months, with acclimatization and training climbs taking most of the time prior to a five-day summit push.

The trip starts in Kathmandu, from where Brice’s clients are flown to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, then trucked to Everest base camp on the Tibetan side.

Despite the cost, time needed and tough conditions imposed by Brice, the customers just keep on coming. And with 53 of them taken to the summit this spring, Brice puts his success down to meticulous planning.

Everything Included, even the Kitchen Sink

“It’s a huge operation. I just paid a quarter of a million dollars in wages today. At base camp we had accommodation for 130 people, and we had 10 trucks deliver the gear,” he said.

“We had underground sewerage and water pipes, we had a power tent, kitchen tent, medical tent, communications tent and a bar,” added Brice.

Brice’s Sherpa team lays out the fixed rope needed to ascend Everest and he charges climbers from other expeditions for its use.

In addition, the Sherpas set up and stock the five camps between base camp and the summit, as well as closely guiding paying clients along with Brice’s foreign guides.

“Our Sherpa teams are totally important. They are incredibly strong, incredibly modest and incredibly qualified to be climbing Everest,” said Brice, who employed around 70 of the world renowned high-altitude workers this spring.

“Most people would not get to the summit without them,” he added.

So far Brice and his team have helped put a staggering 219 people on the summit.

“Its impossible to say why people climb Everest; the reasons are too diverse,” he said, but the boom in adventure sports and travel has been a major factor.

“The whole adventure tourism business has escalated astronomically in the last few years,” said Brice, who has been organizing Himalayan expeditions since 1979.

“People want to be skiing in the morning, skydiving in the afternoon, diving with sharks the next day and climbing Everest after that,” he laughed. “Whether driving a Formula One motorcar, or climbing Everest, someone will provide that service.”

Suntans and Melting Ice in Alaska’s Far North

By William Boot

The Washington Post

Granted, it is still a niche market. But if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed - and why not? - it’s a growth opportunity. The traveler in the very near future might be ready for some global warming tourism. Vacation destinations? You could do the Maldives and watch the sea level rise before your very eyes. Glub glub. Bye-bye, happy island nation. Or perhaps a trip to the African Sahel to experience some scary soil evaporation. Subtle, but profound. Or you can do what we did and journey to Icy Bay in Alaska and just watch the world melt.

Seriously melting. A century ago, when the naturalist writer John Muir visited the region, there was no Icy Bay. It was all ice, all the way to the coast. Now? A lot more ice water. A coastal exploration three generations ago would have found an immense tidewater glacier blocking the bay, an inlet that today is 30 miles long and hundreds of feet deep and four or five or six miles wide, depending. Welcome to one of the fastest-receding glacial systems on the planet. It is geology on fast-forward. Genesis on speed dial.

Surrounding the bay, the landscape left behind by the retreating glaciers is so brand spanking new and raw that you have the impression the wolves and grizzlies show up each summer and go, whoa, bro. Wasn’t this an ice field last year? It is like a baby Earth. The ice retreats. The ground looks raked, lunar, but then summer after summer the successional parade of plants comes through, first with fireweed and lupine, then alders.

The soundscape: Plink. Plonk. Drip. Drop. It’s like God left the water running in the bathtub. Then a terrible nerve-rattling craaaaaack, like a high-powered rifle recoil, echoing. It is the sound of birth, of the glaciers calving off chunks of ice the size of your garage into the bay.

Oh, and this calving? It goes on and on and on. Day and night, except there is no “night” night, because it’s July in the far north, and you never really sleep; you just sort of pass out for a few hours from sensory overload and giddy exhaustion in the midnight twilight, with a smelly fleece layer wrapped around your head to block out the sun. I brought along a tube of SPF-70 sunscreen and came home with exposed skin as brown as a dead lizard.

Every once in a while, a big ice block cleaves, splits, splats. A super-size heifer. Size of a building. And when you’re boating around Icy Bay in a collapsible kayak with a 12-year-old paddling partner, you don’t want to think about that, but in fact your vivid moviegoing imagination won’t give it up, and your mind’s eye envisions the horrible splash, and then wait for it, wait for it. Cowabunga! There would be one moment of the most hellacious surf, and then of course, you would be out of the boat, in the water, and that would be bad (so you have to be careful and not get too close).

Extremes

We didn’t bring a thermometer. In July and August, when kayak-trippers venture into Icy Bay and the glaciers do most of their melting, the weather ranges from freezing rain to the sunny 70s, sometimes in the same day. During the fast but intense Alaska summer, the inlet fills with thousands of icebergs and a gazillion gin-and-tonic-sized ice cubes. When the clouds rolled overhead (frequently) and the temperature dropped, I would float in the boat and watch crinkly ice begin to re-form on the water’s surface. You dip one of your paddling hands into the milky-blue, sediment-green, freaky-calm water, and as the sensation goes from really, really freezing to pin-stabbing, you pull it out a minute later. It looks like a boiled lobster claw and feels as numb as a Novocain target.

Our group of good friends traveling to Icy Bay include five kids (boys and girls, ages 7 to 13), one environmental writer, one bear biologist, a family court judge, a president of a charitable foundation, a land conservationist, a journalist and, best of all, the founder (but no longer the owner of) Alaska Discovery, a wilderness adventure travel company, who was a pioneer of kayak trips to Icy Bay: a man with the perfect name for such a job, Ken Leghorn. Lost in the Alaskan wilderness without a Swiss Army knife or a prayer? Ken Leghorn would bring you home. My personal motto: Cling to Ken.

We spent a week beach camping, kayaking from cove to cove, and exploring, hiking up creeks to the glacial edge. We brought our own tents and gear, and we cooked our meals with a propane stove, carbo feasts of pastas and rice, with a shared bottle of wine for the adults, as the kids ran around like happy nuts.

So if you’ve read this far, naturally you’re thinking, OK, Bill, we’ve done Legoland and Epcot and you seem relatively sane and this adventure sounds exactly like the global warming vacation I would love to experience with my family and friends, and I’ve got a couple thousand left on my MasterCard limit, so where exactly is Icy Bay and how do we get there?

We flew in peanut class from the Lower 48 to Juneau (lovely city, almost steamy in comparison) and then on a 50-minute Alaska Airlines flight northwest to a village called Yakutat, a place famous for its fishing. Immediately upon exiting the terminal, one faces the Yakutat Lodge, which announces its presence with a sign that reads: “Food. Shelter. Booze.” Ahhh, Alaska. We fortified ourselves alongside burly fishy brethren and then lugged tremendous quantities of duffel baggage and survival gearage around to the back of the airport to the waiting chartered bush plane.

The first inkling that the bush plane ride is part of the fun is when you see that the six-seater prop job sports oversize landing gear with cartoonish spongy tires. Why? Because Les the pilot is going to land the thing on a beach. On purpose.

It took four round trips to get us (a dozen people) and our six kayaks, wine, tents, kitchen, food, paddles, propane, wine and approximately 17 pounds of Skittles up to Icy Bay. The 45-minute flight from Yakutat was a revelation. Really. We could have turned around and gone home with fond memories.

I have traveled a few times to Alaska, and I was a dim bulb about the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, home to Icy Bay. Never heard of it? It is the largest national park in the United States. It is six times the size of Yellowstone. That would be 13 million acres. In a state that boasts superlatives, it is a superlative superlative. The park contains the largest assemblage of glaciers on the continent.

Not enough? Well, it does have … volcanoes. Mount Wrangell is one of the largest active volcanoes in the world. The park boasts the greatest collection of peaks above 16,000 feet, including Mount St. Elias, which is the second-highest mountain in America at 18,008 feet, and which just happens to be within 10 miles of the Taan Fiord on Icy Bay, so it is the tallest mountain close to a tidewater. So when the clouds part and you are paddling or camping at Icy Bay, the edifice staring you in the face is your very own private Mount Kilimanjaro.

In the little plane, flying north from Yakutat’s food/shelter/booze, you cross over the Malaspina Glacier, a classic example of a piedmont glacier. That, we learn from the guidebooks, is one that has spilled out of a valley and onto a relatively level terrain, where it creates wide, whirling, swirling lobes. It looks like day-old white frosting. For a cake the size of Rhode Island. It is 40 miles wide. The astronauts can see it from the space station.

The bush plane banks, bumps, lands, disgorges us on the beach at Kageet Point near the entrance to Icy Bay. And then it leaves. And then we are alone. I mean it.

Solitude

By profession and proclivity, I’ve spent a few days in some lonely outposts. But I have never been in a wilderness so empty of humans. Because of brown bears, Ken advised us not to go on long hikes alone, but if we did he suggested making a lot of noise, so as not to surprise any bears. But even a walk down a beach or up a creek was a sublime solitude. You could turn around 360 degrees, search the horizon and see no dwelling, no road, no trail, no scar, no imprint. It was just pure. And a mind trip. This, I feel, is what it was like when the first bands of rugged outdoor types crossed onto the continent thousands of years ago. This is what they saw. They didn’t have my Patagonia parka, but wow, they had the same view.

In seven days and six nights paddling and beach camping, crisscrossing the bay, moving from place to place, we see no one. On the morning of our departure, a single sailboat probes the bay and then, just as quickly, exits. Every time we step onto the dark sand and round pebble beaches, which are covered in melting icebergs stranded by the high tides, our footprints are the first human soles of the season.

And we did right by the place for the next visitors. When we made a fire, we built it in the wet sands at the low tides, so that the rising waters would wash away all traces (there are 18-foot tides). So, too, with our, umm, biological necessities. We were instructed to walk down the beach and drop trou at the water’s edge.

Not so the animals. We found scat land mines everywhere. We heard the yaps but never saw the coyotes. But upon our arrival, Kageet Point was pocked with grizzly prints the size of NBA sneakers. One day out on a hike, we spotted a brown bear foraging along a far cove, and we watched it for an hour, snuffling along, occasionally stopping to flip over a rock.

We stumbled upon a moose munching veg in a marshy meadow. I was very impressed with the size of this moose. We spotted parasitic jaegers and the rare and endangered Kittlitz’s murrelets. These are birds. We saw otters, which circled us, that came even closer, and seemed as interested in us as we in them, and because so few outsiders visit Icy Bay, you wondered whether you might be the first people the yearlings had ever seen. On our last night, we set up the spotting scope and watched a pair of wolves far down the beach, and they were almost dancing. Running up and down together, like a couple of nutty mutts at the local dog park.

Because it is so (relatively) protected, Icy Bay is (surprisingly) ideal for a kayak trip. Our boats were the tried-and-true two-person Kleppers, which we assembled on the beach. You put together the Lincoln Log skeleton struts and then the boat is wrapped in a rubberized canvas skin. Into the Kleppers we stuffed our gear, and then stuffed ourselves. They are admirably stable watercraft. Which was very important. Remember the cardinal rule. In our paddles around the bay, we passed through iceberg-studded fiords.

One day, there were so many bergs that they blocked our path, and we retreated. The floating ice was so plentiful and so close that sometimes you had to push the smaller chunks out of the way with your paddle. The bergs floated. We floated. The icebergs were sculpted by melt and wind into fantastical geometries, lit with internal flares of blue and green light. Four immense glaciers keep pumping out the product like an assembly line. On the flattops, harbor seals hauled out, and summer is a time for pups and molting adults. According to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Icy Bay can host 3,500 harbor seals, and we saw a hundred of them, staring at us with those earnest, inky black eyes.

Another day, we paddled to the terminus of Icy Bay, a round amphitheater of high bedrock walls topped with spires of glacial ice pushing over the cliffs in slow motion. Years before, Ken had christened the place the “Arc of Creation.” We turned the boats and faced it. Cracking, crashing ice. Seabirds wheeling over our heads. We counted the waterfalls. Twenty? Thirty?

I thought about the laws of mass and energy, how it is neither created nor destroyed. I thought about birth and death. Water to snow to ice to water. We are alone but not lonely. I felt very global, with very warm feelings about this icy bay. I wanted it to stop melting.

SYDNEY ~ The global community has not done enough to prevent the spread of HIV and millions of deaths from preventable disease are a “shameful failure,” said the head of the International AIDS Society.

Society president Pedro Cahn was speaking ahead of the first session of the fourth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Sydney this week.

Cahn said 11,000 people were still contracting HIV each day despite the huge advances in knowledge of and treatments for the virus.

He said fewer than a third of those living with HIV in low and middle income countries were treated with life-saving medication and even fewer could access proven prevention methods such as condoms and clean syringes.

“Science has given us the tools to prevent and treat HIV effectively,” he said.

“The fact that we have not yet translated this science into practice is a shameful failure on the part of the global community.”

The Sydney conference brings together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss cutting-edge treatments for HIV, including two new classes of drugs that could give hope to those who have developed a resistance to existing retroviral drugs.

It will also look at prevention strategies such as male circumcision, which has proven effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

And under its Sydney Declaration it will push for governments and donors to allocate an additional 10 percent of their HIV program funding to research to ensure that projects are effective.

“We are badly in need of research that will tell us what impact our programs are having in the areas of the world where 90 percent of the epidemic is focused, and how to adjust our programs to make the best use of our investment and to save as much lives as possible,” Cahn said at the opening of the conference.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, speaking before the conference opened, said there was cause for hope in the fight against the disease because of the successes of the past two decades.

In 2001, only several hundred thousand people living with HIV in the developing world had access to retroviral treatments but the current figure was now 2.2 million people, he said.

“This is far beyond what most of us thought was possible,” he added.

Kazatchkine said as well as the encouragement from the development of new drugs, there was also hope because the world was coming together to fight health problems as never before.

He said the scourge of AIDS had demonstrated that “we cannot have development and prosperity when AIDS is killing large parts of the population and eroding human capital.”

But he said despite the Global Fund so far raising some US$11 billion, the main challenge to fighting the HIV epidemic was resources.

“We need more resources, but we also need more sustainable resources,” he said.

Key adviser to the US government, Doctor Anthony Fauci, said there were now extraordinary treatments for those who have access to the right medicines.

But he also acknowledged the gap in access. “As great as those advancements are … we still now are treating only about 28 percent of the people who actually need therapy,” he said.

He said prevention strategies such as male circumcision were essential to combat the disease because of the huge gap in the provision of drugs.

An estimated 40 million people are now living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, while more than 25 million people are thought to have died from the disease.

Releasing the Creativity & Fun of The Inner Child – The Gift

By Jelila
For The Bali Times

SEMINYAK ~ Discover “The Gift” - a new framework for creating inner harmony. This week, healing the hurt inner child, and empowering the magical child within so you can express that wonderful, free, simple wisdom and creativity that is the divine child.

The Gift is my concept of four important inner identities that we all need to have working together to fulfill ourselves. They are:  Masculine, Feminine, Inner Child, Higher Self.

The Inner Child is the part of us that wants to have fun. Highly creative, with a simple wisdom and truth, the Inner Child often has simple yet brilliant solutions to problems. Advertising execs and designers easily access their Inner Child – enabling them to create wonderfully artistic, whacky concepts to solve problems and fulfill needs.

Your Inner Child needs to be heard, listened to, respected and given the resources they need to express themselves creatively. Otherwise they tend to act up, just like a real child, and have tantrums. (When this happens, your frustrated and repressed Inner Child identity may take over, causing you to splurge on whatever you perceive as having fun. This may mean playing hookey from work, a shopping spree or drinking too much). Positive expressions of the Inner Child include:  sports, games, playing with children, creative pursuits, picnics, being in nature.

Sometimes our Inner Child is vulnerable and hurt, afraid and tired of not having its emotional and physical needs met by its parents – which are, within you, the Inner Masculine, the part of you that organizes, make things happen and provides physically; and the Inner Feminine, the part of you that feels and loves.

Case Study – Inner Child

John came to me feeling dissatisfied with life. “I work all the time!” he exclaimed. “Busy at the factory, I don’t connect with my wife. I’m successful but I don’t know what to do with myself.”

John recently reconnected with his children, estranged through divorce, and was excited about meeting his son (a sign that he was getting ready to reconnect with his Inner Child, having been mostly caught up in his Inner Masculine, working self, for so long, and also being rather disconnected from his wife, representing his Inner Feminine). We spoke about ways that John liked to enjoy himself, and his eyes lit up at playing guitar. “I used to love that!” he said. “I just got too busy with work to do it.”

Most of us make our Inner Masculine our dominant identity and stay there most of the time. This is why the world is so focused on physical things, commerce and work, and has little time to play. And is so stressed – because we need to meet the needs of all the parts of the self, not just one. I guided John to change a deep belief about needing to harm himself to get what he wants, allowing him to stop believing that he needs to harm some parts of himself in order to gratify others, making it easier to balance (you can change this for yourself, below).

Here is an easy exercise to show you the state of your Inner Child. Don’t just read it – really try it! Relax, breathe deeply and imagine the scene in sounds, pictures or feelings. Let it be how it is, whatever comes to mind is perfect.

Meditation – Inner Child Treasures

Relax, breathe and imagine yourself rummaging in a dressing-up box, pulling out all sorts of costumes. You find a trapdoor in the bottom and open it, revealing golden light and steps. A child carrying a candle beckons, fingers on lips - shhh! Allow the child to lead you by the hand to their special place and show you their treasures. Spend as long as you want looking at the treasures with the child, and ask them what they need. Now work with the child to make their place really perfect, no holds barred. Allow yourself to imagine giving everything that pleases the child. Lastly, make a large deposit of cash in the child’s money box, and give the child a gift. Enjoy the reaction. When ready, gently return.

Was your Inner Child’s place well-tended? Was it easy to put money in the child’s moneybox? How generous are you to your Inner Child? Do you trust your Child with money, or are you miserly, afraid they are a bottomless pit?

Experiment with being generous to the Inner Child – for the creativity and magic of the child is stymied without the support of the parent. (A kid with no hula-hoop cannot hula!) Make a promise to yourself to fulfill one thing on your Inner Child’s wish-list this week. (Maybe you need to go to the beach, to a movie, buy yourself a toy, or play?)

This next meditation takes your relationship with your Inner Child to a new level, enabling you to be more creative.

Meditation – Activating The Magical Child: Doll’s House

Relax, breathe and visit a fabulous toymaker’s workshop. Elves sit on benches humming. Jars overflow with colored glass, shells, glitter, diamonds. Boxes, wood, fabric, furs and leather are piled high. Glue spills from jars. Sewing machines thrum. The elves sing a high-pitched magical song as they methodically work, sew, build. In the centre of the room is the framework of your perfect doll’s house. A fairy is there to help you magic it just the way you want it. Play with the fairy to shape your dolls house. How many floors? How big are the rooms? What shape? How are the windows? Is there a staircase? Play until you get the structure just how you want it. Next, the decorating team arrives. Will it be a shell-house? Contemporary? Flowery? Sparkly? Furry? Play about with your doll’s house for as long as you like. Then relax and gently return.

Beliefs:

Try this process, which creates positive transformation for the Inner Child. Invite every part of yourself to be fully present. Now say aloud:

I choose to believe I am not heard.

I love myself when I believe I am not heard.

And I embrace it, and I surrender.

Take it slowly, rest afterwards, drink water.

Repeat the process for each of the following beliefs:

Nobody loves me.

I feel lonely and frightened.

I must have to harm myself to get what I want.

I’m afraid I can’t fulfill my child’s needs, or no.

I’m never satisfied with myself.

Postscript: John resolved to buy a guitar and get playing! How will you allow your Inner Child to play, this week?

Next issue: Accessing the Wisdom of the Higher Self

Jelila practices in Bali at Wellbeing Spa, Jl. Laksmana 66B, Seminyak. Tel: +62 (0)361 735573. If you have a question you would like help with in this column, please write to Jelila at jelila@jelila.com.

Dedi Susanto, 33, is a pilot of the Indonesian Air Force. From Banyuwangi in East Java, he lives in Yogyakarta with his wife, Astrid Yunita, and their two children, Muhammad Raflie Nauval Madjid, 3, and Annisa Zahra Naura Madjid, 1. He shared his day with The Bali Times’ Arga Sagitarini

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Suzan Hoyle, 61, is a nursing home care worker from Adelaide, Australia.

What’s the greatest lesson life has taught you?
We’ve got to be honest.

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