Brrrr it’s cold up here!

We managed to re-arrange our trek by a couple of days giving Shona a bit of time to recover from her small bout of being poorly, so with much eagerness and a rested up spring in our step we headed off to trek up to the 2nd base camp of Aconcagua – the highest mountain in South America at just under 7,000 meters. We met up with our guide and 2 other fellow trekkers, a couple from Sweden who spoke better English than us and with a very posh accent to match! The base of the mountain was about 3 hours drive out of Mendoza and from here you could see the peak of the mountain through a break in the valley. It looked stunning as did the route leading to it which we soon found ourselves trekking along. It took around 4 hours to reach the first base camp "Confluencia" at around 3,200m. Confluencia was how you'd expect a mountain base to camp to be! Tents everywhere and a hive of activity with guides and porters – these guys live on the mountain during the climb season and are there to aid the serious climbers who are taking on the 15 day challenge of reaching the summit. However there was no one attempting to climb at this moment so instead of busily preparing ropes, clothes, food etc they seemed to have let their hair down (and when you’ve lived on a mountain for 8 months that’s a lot of hair) and it was games of volleyball, music and beer. We had a little explore around the camp and its surroundings before chilling out with dinner, chill being the operative word because as soon as the sun went down the temperature plummeted. We sat huddled in the food tent trying to eat rice wearing all our clothes and still shivering (the Swedish couple were even in their sleeping bags!) before quickly retreating to our tent and hopefully the warmth of a sleeping bag. No such luck! It was freezing and our poor little sleeping bags couldn’t quite cope with around -10 degrees so it was a difficult night’s sleep… kinda felt like we were breathing in icicles! The 2nd day begun around 7:30 and it was very difficult to get going from the coldness so for the first couple of hours we struggled up the mountain waiting for the sun to come up over the peaks to bath us in some warmth – it finally made a much needed appearance around 10ish and just in time, Shona had lost all feeling in her hands and feet since breakfast and I was starting to think I may have to amputate using my penknife! The trek was stunning, we were dwarfed by mountains on every side all made up of different coloured minerals and rocks. We finally made the 2nd base camp ‘Plaza Francia’ at 4,300 meters after 4 hours or so. It was set in a fish bowl like area with Aconcagua’s peak rising out of it and up into the sky for another 2,700m almost vertically. Every now and then chunks of ice would break off and crash down the sheer face echoing all around us. We sat watching the mountain while having our lunch – as picnic areas go this was pretty mad! As cold as Confluencia had been at night Plaza Francia would have been a lot worse so we trekked back down and spent the night again at Confluencia (thankfully a little warmer this night) before trekking our way all the way down the following day with thoughts of how cool it would be to actually come back and reach the top…one day maybe although the -30 temperature at the top is a little off putting!