Day around Namche

Internet connections are getting much weaker and I'm having trouble making consistent updates and photo uploads are getting more difficult.  For the time being, I'll try to get text only journal updates and when Internet gets better, I'll put photos back into these text only entries.

Today was a "rest day" for us which means we really still have a fair amount of hiking but we are return back to the same place we started.  This is to help the process of aclimitaztion occur.  That process is where your body is stressed at higher altitude to produce more hemoglobin (red blood cells) to carry more oxygen but you return back to an altitude where your body has already spent some time.  Thus the saying, climb high, sleep low.

Our hike today was up about 400m over a total of about 10km to the famous View Everest Hotel.  We got a very brief glimpse of the pyramid of Everest when the clouds cleared momentarily.  The view was not lost as we had an amazingly clear view of Ama Dablam and many other peaks that I don't know their names of.

On the descent, we took a short side trip to the local museum where we saw a awesome statue of Tenzing Norgay who what Edmund Hillary's guide on the first successful ascent of Everest.

Later that afternoon we sat in a coffee shop at the "main intersection" in town where you are just as likely to see a yak train coming through as trekkers as locals.  I had an Oreo milkshake however it was mostly milk and not much shake.   There are lots of shops in Namche and we wander around most of them.  The amount of knock-off brand name stuff here (and in other parts of Nepal) is unreal.  Everything says "The North Face" but I'd guess less than 20% of it is legitimate products.

Took a hot shower in the hotel, might be my last for many, many days to come.  I'm also expecting to loose cellular for the next 6 days or so of the journey.  I do have EverestLink WiFi which has (supposedly) good coverage through most villages in the Everest region.  We'll see how that plays out.