Jaime Vinals, a Guatemalan mountaineer and the first Central American ever to reach the world’s seven summits, scaled Taiwan’s highest peak, Yushan (Jade Mountain) on Mar. 8. Dept. of Spanish and Graduate Institute of American Studies invited him to deliver a speech on his mountain climbing experience, and Hector Ivan Espinoza Farfan, Guatemalan ambassador in Taiwan, also joined the event. During the speech, Mr. Vinals showed some pictures he took in the seven continents, and all the audience were surprised by the bizarre landscape of the world.

Mr. Vinals also shared some interesting things of climbing Yushan. On account of the slippery road brought by the wet weather and the previous snowy days, he needed to use many mountain climbing gears to reach the top. However, Mr. Vinals said that he never thought about giving up even in the severe weather of pole region, “because I love mountain climbing, and it is the most important thing in my life,” he said.

Hector Ivan Espinoza Farfan is going to exhibit Jaime Vinals’ Yushan pictures in Central America to make the beauty of Yushan widely known. Dr. Chen Hsiao-chuan, Chair of Graduate Institute of the Americas, indicated that Jaime Vinals’s experience of mountain climbing is a very good modal for students. Kuo Ming-cheng, a senior of Dept. of Spanish, said, “Jaime Vinals’s pictures inspires my desire to scale mountain top. He let us know more about Yushan, and as a Taiwanese, we should also climb Yushan once in our lifetime.” ( ~Shu-chun Yen )