When we woke up the next morning, the rain had stopped. Only for now- the sky was pretty gray and the clouds were on the move (never a good sign). Since we hadn´t made it very far the day before, we tore down camp and were back on the trail before 8:30am. The open forest we had been following yesterday soon gave way to a bamboo jungle.
Yeah, there´s a trail in there, believe it or not. Bamboo bushwhacking was fun for a little while, but around hour 4 in the stuff, with the rain making the wet leaves even wetter, it stopped being fun. My camera was better (as in at least it was turning on), but the viewfinder wouldn´t come up so I don´t have any other photos for today. In fact, I took the bamboo shot blind :)
I had started the bamboo-whack trying to be careful not to break the stems if I could, but by the end we were just bulldozing through it. The trail was really wet (so much for dry boots) and we crisscrossed back and forth over the river dozens of times. At one point, the trail had become a river, completely washed out. Then it was always back into the damn bamboo. Finally the bamboo pulled away but only to be replaced by stubby, wet lenga trees (shades of tuckamore). After about 1hr of wet lenga-whacking, it was back into the bamboo. Argh.
It seemed like it took forever for us to finally get back into the open forest and when we did it was full-on raining (although who could tell since we were all soaked by the damn bamboo and lengas). We could finally see Lago Moreno, this huge lake that leads down to Pampa Linda area. We still had about 1hr of winding around to get to the Colgante Bridge (sketchy but not quite a sketchy as some I´ve been on here) that would let us cross the Rio Manso of Lago Moreno. When we got to the other side of the bridge, we noticed that the bridge was in fact closed. I don´t think because of the state of it as much as the fact that the whole area was now closed for the season. Awesome.
We wandered around until we found the path leading to the road that would lead the 16km to Pampa Linda. Earlier, I think we all had thoughts to get to this road and catch a ride up to Pampa Linda. But, standing on the shoulder of the road getting later into a dreary Sunday afternoon, the prospects weren´t looking good. The boys, under the weight of their incredibly heavy packs, soggy wet and now cold, feet raw from 2 days of wet, opted to set up camp right where we stood in someone´s front yard. Britton and I sat down, had some food ("hobo" sandwiches consisting of tuna, sweet mustard and this truly scary sticky spreadable white cheese stuff) and tried to decide what to do. With the weather set in and us growing more and more cold just sitting, we rallied our raw and screaming feet to set out on the road. Afterall, it was only 16km, right? I think the boys thought we had completely lost our minds.
The first 2hrs of the road weren´t so bad. Britton and I had lots to chat about (she´s a really, really cool girl) and we laughed and joked. The road was only very slightly uphill (which our feet let us know) and super super bendy. At least we had warmed up and the puddles in our boots had been mostly squished out and sucked up by our socks and disintegrating skin. We met at least 2o cars and a handful of collectivo buses, but all headed back to town. Grrr. The sky also cleared up and the sun came out, warming us up and drying out. I even got a glimpse of the huge Tronador Mountain and glacier (although my still soggy camera wasn´t working yet).
Around hour 3 of this last leg, we started to get quiet. No more laughing, just concentrating on putting one pulsing foot in front of the other and praying that the next bend would open to the park area.
When we finally got there, man, we were a sight. Now walking as though we were 89 y.o. arthritic and senial old ladies, backs screaming from our packs and completely fried. We slowly, slowly made our way to the tent area, set up, gorged ourselves on cookies (they have these cheap mix bags here that are addictive somehow) had a scalding hot shower (not by choice but at least it wasn´t cold water) and put on every single stitch of clothing we had with us. Everything. Now that the sky had cleared, it was getting cold. Really cold.
We smuggled ourselves into one of the parks shelters to make supper. We made a lot of food, but I think we were both so tired (and cookies stuffed) to really eat much more. We calculated that we had hiked about 12km on the trail today, and then with the 16km walk to Pampa Linda, we had covered about 28-30kms today. And our pulsing, raw feet concurred. But, even after it all, we were both glad we had pushed on to at least get to the park area and avoid camping cold and wet at the side of the road where we had left the boys.
We crawled into our tents to finally get warm. The sky was so clear, I could see the stars through the window in my tent fly. I would not need anyone to rock me to sleep tonight.
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