Rest Day at Basecamp 4,200m

This will be the last blog post for about a week. Tomorrow we leave basecamp  (and its slow expensive WiFi) to climb to Camp 1. We won’t be coming back. All going well we’ll spend three nights at Camp 1 before moving to Camp 2, then straight on to Camp 3 and summit before descending to Plaza de Argentina, basecamp on the other side.

We started the day with a breakfast of double entendres. Horselady claimed that she could stuff anything into her at breakfast and broke into a fit of her dirty giggles that lasted a good hour. When one of the Clare lads wanted a volunteer for a magic trick, the vet screamed “Do me! Do me!”.

Today has been a day of preparation for tomorrow: another packing conundrum with one bag going up, one going around and one going down. The Clare lads started preparing for it early on to spend the rest of the day commenting on everyone else’s inadequate draughts skills.

We all have bunged up noses – a result of the altitude, the changing temperatures and the dust. The doc has one small bottle of Olbas Oil and he’s rationing it by doling out lines in little bits of tissue. We’re all addicted.

The grocer’s solar charger has become a valuable commodity as everyone tries to charge cameras, phones and kindles before we make our move. He’s also testing out his Walter-White-esque water purification system. At least he’s mixing bottles of chemicals and claims it’s to purify water. There are rumours he’s actually working on a way to bootleg Olbas Oil and shut the doctor out of the business. He had me blind taste two cups of water and watched me closely for adverse reactions. My nose is still blocked so he hasn’t succeeded yet.

During the morning one of the lads wandered around camp asking where the shower tent was. As he’d had a shower two days earlier and had walked past the shower tent to get to the loos about once every hour, this was a worrying development, so we all had a good giggle.
The rest of the day will be spent playing draughts, packing our three bags and practicing putting on and taking off crampons. First I’m going to try and get online.

Talk to ye all in about a week…