Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
quiggsy on tour
Still alive... just about.
The night before last actually supercedes 'night from hell' as the coldest night of my life. So we set off from Chile, Argentina bound. However, due to some paperwork problems we couldn't leave until midday. So we managed to get just over the Chile-Argentina border at around 5pm at which point we had to look for a likely camping spot. At this point I should point out that we were at around 4000m. So we all set ourselves up for a chilly night in our tents (bearing in mind that it had been freezing at 2500m in San Pedro....). After dinner by the fire we all attempted to warm ourselves as much as possible before getting into bed. For some reason my bum refused to get warm by the fire and so it was almost as if i had an icepack strapped to my behind when I got into my sleeping bag. As I said it was the coldest night of my life. In fact it went down to -15, and it was only -10 when I eventually could get out of bed at 5.30am to help the breakfast team (I was awake from about 2.30am just waiting for a reasonable time I could get up!). We decided to delay breakfast as the milk was frozen. As was the washing up water. As was the water in the kettles.... etc etc. I ended up getting out of having to put all the tents down as I had a random bout of nausea and couldn't do anything which involved being vertical, but did feel bad as everyone else was just as cold as me.
Anyway, somewhat worse for wear we set off. I did get slightly worried when, about 4 hours later, after sunrise, Shauna's hands were still freezing cold and 2 of her fingers had gone white at the ends (the first signs of frostbite......). Luckily mine were ok by then so managed to get some feeling back to them.
So we made it to Salta, in northwest Argentina yesterday afternoon. It's quite surreal as Argentina is a lot more developed than Bolivia, it's almost like being in Spain or something. We are camping at a large campsite which apparently has the largest swimming pool in South America. Unfortunately it is empty as it is winter here (although it is the warmest we have been for a long time - shorts and t-shirts woohoo!). I didn't even wear thermals last night and was sooooooo warm. There is also a massive hypermarche where we can do shopping for food - very exciting - they had a RANGE of gin! Had my first Argentinian steak last night. Very good.
Anyway, more from the land of big steaks and cheap gin soon.....
- comments