Start point: Las Leñas 2,800m;
End point: Casa de Piedra 3,200m

I slept pretty well last night even without the mattress. We were called at 7. Packed the bags and tents together, had breakfast and were on the trail at 9. We were so proud of how fast we got ready that we’ve asked for an extra half hour in bed in the morning, confident that we can get it all done.

Today was a fun day. It was a lot cooler than yesterday but everyone was a little paranoid about the sun and heat so we were extra careful. I wore a long sleeve t-shirt and liner gloves to keep the sun off my sunburn, a wide-brimed sunhat to protect my head, a buff from my neck up over my nose and ears to keep the dust out of my mouth and nose, and sunglasses – I was nicknamed the invisible man, which is one of the nicer things I’ve been called – so it’s the only one I’m blogging about.

When we were getting ready to set out, the mules arrived into camp. They arrived in pairs – two tied together and one hobbled. They had to stick together and work together even if they disagreed about everything. Comparisons were drawn to a couple on tent buddies from Clare, but no comments were made on which one was hobbled.

During our walk today we were able to soak our feet in the river mid-walk. It was lovely. When we started walking again i ended up between two girls. Before I joined them they were comparing notes on arguments with their respective partners, after I joined them they started talking about horses and ponies. One’s a vet and the other owns a horse so I was quickly out of my depth, but i did learn what the withers are/is.

Every day we get a little goodie bag and a packed lunch. Everyone gets a packet of ‘Tang, which is some kind of luminous sugary drink mix. Only our expedition leader likes it so every day he does a few dodgy deals exchanging Argentinian Bounties for extra hits of Tang.

The grocer asked me about using two walking poles rather than one. I told him they were occasionally awkward but generally useful. The horselady told me I was the same.

The horselady has a little competition with herself each day to see how much water she can drink. I mentioned that it was amazing with all the cold water that goes in each day, only hot water comes out.

Before we got to camp we had our first view of Aconcagua itself. It was beautiful and terrifying. Very terrifying. It’s huge.

In Casa de Piedra, the grocer had to convince the nut smugglers that smoked salmon which has been out of a fridge for a week and spent two days in 30+ heat was no longer good to eat, even if it says “refrigerate AFTER opening”.

The toilets in our camp are long drops – basically a little hut with a great big hole in the ground underneath. Our IT guy dropped his extra-strong, extra-long Andrex down the hole. He’s very depressed – it had 80 extra sheets!

The horselady has a little bottle of flavoured drops to help her reach her daily water target. The instructions are to add a single squirt to each litre of water. A big discussion point of the day was the lenght of each person’s squirt – as one of lads pointed out, a squirt can last for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. Fair play that man and his 5 minute squirts!

The best thing that happened in camp was that our basecamp duffels arrived with my inflatable mattress – my trip is saved. I happily blew up my mattress to the distant sound of (I’m reliably informed) muleteers smoking cigars, racing their mules in a circle, drinking wine straight from the bottle, and tearing chickens apart with their bare hands for our dinner. Those guys are hardcore.

Basecamp tomorrow…