Because yesterday was such a tough day, today was an “easy” day. We were only doing 11k instead of 28. And at this point I needed the break. Last night was the worst night sleep that I’ve gotten the entire trek. There were 6 of us girls in bunkbeds sleeping in sleeping bags. I hate sleeping in sleeping bags – I feel like a sausage in a casing. Yuck.
We set out on our short trek a little after 8. Today we’d have rain. My fellow trekkers definitely had all of the appropriate gear for the rain. But thanks to Lisa, I stayed nice and dry. But it was seriously funny. The poncho she lent me was a godsend and it covered all of me – from my head to my pack and all the way down to my knees. But I looked like the hunchback from all sides except from the front! It was the butt of many jokes and gave us a lot of laughs. No worries, I have evidence of this too. Good thing I have no shame and can laugh at myself!
Again, the trek was beautiful – and relatively easy. The sounds during the trek seem to be the thing that’s staying with me. And trekking through the rain is completely different than through clear skies. The sound of rain hitting your gear drowns out the other sounds and you get lost in your thoughts and in the moment. With this type of terrain it’s a bit dangerous to not keep your eyes on the ground in front of you so it gets somewhat meditative. Follow the person in front of you, pick a good line – try to find stones to step on that aren’t loose – and avoid dunking your boots in puddles of mud.
Halfway through we came to a viewpoint where we got our first look at the Grey Glacier. It’s a massive glacier with bits of ice floating miles away from the main part of the ice. It reminded me of a scene from Titanic J I was very excited to see it up close.
Another couple hours and we were at Refugio Grey – another place for trekkers to camp for the night. We had a quick lunch here, grabbed 5(!) bottles of wine from the restaurant and boarded the boat that would take us on a tour of the glacier. For an hour or so we drove within 50 yards of this huge, magnificent, menacing piece of ice! I asked about the temperature of the water and was told you could survive for about 7 minutes in it! I took tons of pictures and we all drank a good bit of wine and just celebrated being off our feet and the gorgeous sight before us.
We had just a short walk after the bus in the now-pouring rain to a van that would take us back to Ecocamp. I’d already gotten spoiled at Ecocamp. We have warm showers there, wonderful food and wine, warm, cozy lounges and soft music. It’s totally unlike the refugios but it was very cool to experience at all. I was, however, ready to get back to the relative luxury of our camp.
We finally got back, I had a shower and headed down to the bar where the rest of our team was. Our assistant guide had gotten some ice from the glacier – no one really knows how he got it – but the guides took it outside the bar, chopped it up with a hammer and we all had a bit of scotch over glacier ice. Seriously, unbelievable!
Tomorrow is our final “difficult” trek to the base of the towers – the most famous trek of the area. It’s said to be 22k and will take about 8 hours. And one of our fellow trekkers asked our assistant guide – Diego – if there was any way he could do a trek to the base of the towers AGAIN to be there for sunrise. So I’m seriously considering that as well. I mean, how often do you get to do a trek in the middle of the night and see something 99.9% of the population will never see?!?! Of course it makes me want to do it…check back…