Today we woke up at 5:45 am, and straight away had to pack all of our stuff and tent, ready for our 6:30 am breakfast. Following breakfast at 7, we started walking down to the river where we were met by some mules.
The mule driver armed with his 3 mules, ferried us 2 by 2 across the river on the back of his mules, whilst he pulled them from his head mule. Thankfully we were able to get a lift from the mules, as the alternatives would have been to cross the freezing river in shorts.
After all of our group had been dropped off by the mules, we started hiking down the valley towards Plaza argentina, our basecamp on our attempt to hike to the top of Aconcagua. Our journey today took us about 6 hours, as we gained 1100 meters of altitude over a 15km journey. Through out this journey, we followed the river all the way to its source, Plaza Argentina. On the way we crossed all of our mules, running through the hills past us as we were slowly hiking up.
At around 1 we arrived to Basecamp, and were shown to the mess tent, a giant dome tent, where after a brief introduction to the camp we were given fruit juices and pizza! We ate a lot and then went down to build our tents which this time will be staying still for the next 4+ days, whilst we are here.
Having built our home, we went back to the mess tent, to enjoy the Wifi. Since this camp is 5 stars, we were also treated to a warm shower, which was great to remove all the dirt we had accumulated over the day. as we had a couple hours to waste and are still not fully acclimatised, I took a nap in the mess tent.
For dinner we were served a good meal with beef burgers and a delicious chocolate cake, before it was time to go to sleep (at 9pm) to catch up on the lack of sleep we had been having previously.