The night was not the most comfortable but it could have certainly been worse. The wonderful black night sky had turned bright blue with no clouds around and the sun was lighting up the peaks of Torres Grande.
Packing up was no problem and we started walking around 8 or so. Before most of the other people at the camp. That was good, as we were nearly all alone for most of the trek.
We hiked up a couple of meters above the lake, had some great views. Today's destination was Campiamento Italiano. Not that far, but it took a while to get there. It was going up and down a bit but the landscape rewarded for the work. Also it was great to do all this with Kai as we still had loads to catch up on. We had never spent more than two or three days together and if we did it was with our parents. So this was a new experience.
After a couple of hours (a little more than suggested on the maps) we got to Italiano where we were suppose to book the camping for the Torres Campiamento for the next night. Torres Campiamento is just an hour hike from the famous Torres de Paine Massive and is very popular as it is good place to stay in order to go up to the massive for sunrise. We wanted to do this and so needed to book ahead (because of it's popularity).
Unfortunately there as no spot for us for tomorrow night, so we had to stop once somewhere in between.
This also mad our decission final to stay at Italiano rather than going on today.
So we booked a spot in Torres for the day after tomorrow and set up our tent here.
This time we didn't break anything and also improved on our setup speed a little.
We had lunch and went up to a viewpoint in the Valle Frances. Funnily the Campiemento is called Italian, the Valley is called Frances and the viewpoint we went to is called Britanico.
Wonderful hike up the steep path over rocks and only a bit of a path. Along the way I noticed one of the arms of my sunglasses had fallen off. But true to MacGyver Style I found a little stick and some flexible root that was ideal for fixing my glasses.
The path (if you want to call it like that) led us through a Valley surrounded on both sides with mountains and steep rock walls, there were glaciers up on the top of the mountains, that even let us know they were there by the odd creaking that sometimes turned into a thundering roar.
Along the way we met Anna from Germany and went up to the viewpoint. Up there at Mirador Britanico we were surrounded by all side but south with tall rock walls a couple of hundred meters straight up. It was magnificent but see for yourself.
Back at the camp it was time to prepare dinner.
With ice water, freshly calved from the glacier up the valley we made a pot of ravillioli with tomato sauce and added of course some of the chillies.
It was a surprisingly nice dish. Not sure if it was just the fact that we were very hungry or if it was actually really nice. It certainly hit the spot.
The camping here is free as it is not a refugio, but only a camp site and thus the facilities were not very impressive.
Especially the toilettes were in need of some improvement but hey... its free.
On a big rock by the river (with a little cup of Chivas) we planned our route for the next day and tried to figure out where we were going to camp.
Anna came by later and gave us her leftover (still packed of course) food as she was going to leave the park tomorrow and had no further need for it.
It was some sort of couscous, quite dense and not as heavy. It may come in handy we thought.
On the rock it really got cold now. It wasn't as windy any more as it was yesterday but it certainly was very cold, so we decided to head over to the tent and slip into our sleeping bags to enjoy the rest of our whisky.
Thanks to my warm, rented sleeping bag (and the little drop of whisky) the night was acceptably warm.
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