31st – Down

Today we left El Salto and descended all the way back down to the hut at 2700m. During the night a couple of rock slides had been heard in the distance. When getting up in the morning it was quite windy which was impractical when trying to get our tents under control, but it also meant that the sky was clear which meant we had an unobscured view of where we had been going yesterday. We packed up and left the campsite and after only 2 hours we were back at the hut where we had half an hour of doing nothing (apart from having a coke from the hostel and wifi’ing) before the bus arrived and picked us up.

We drive a couple of hours through a mountainous landscape before arriving at the restaurant where we were to have lunch. Beef de Chorizo was ordered. Take a look at your open hand (male, above average size), add 6-8cm of thickness and you are getting close to the size of the steaks arriving on our plates. For lunch, even. I almost felt bad about eating it all. But only almost.

An hour’s drive later we arrived at the hotel and checked in. It felt great having a shower for the first time in 8 days. Dinner was at 2030 and our guides informed us that because most people lose their appetite at higher altitude you need to eat as much as possible when further down, so despite our sizeable lunch we also had a full dinner with dessert. Our guides told us to do so!

Tomorrow we will be heading to camp Confluencia at 3409m. Our sleeping bags and pads have been handed over as they will be transported by mule to the camp. Our large bags will be packed with what we need from base camp and up, so these will be handed over tomorrow and brought by mule directly to base camp. This means that we the next two days (the walk to Confluencia and the walk from there to base camp) we will only have to carry a small bag with what we need for the one night by ourselves.

The next couple of days will be relatively easy; tomorrow a short walk of 3-4 hours and the day after will be flat a long bit before ascending – and while the distance will be 17-18km the limited time we are ascending combined with the small bags the days aren’t expected to be too hard despite the potentially long second day.

The view in the morning. Things could have been worse.

Pleasant weather on the way down.

STEAK!