Second night in the desert

We had a shared room between the six of us, which contained six beds on breeze blocks, very basic. We were 4300m high tonight and boy could you tell, it was freezing! The room was bare stone stone with no heating and we felt very glad to have said yes to the sleeping bags offered at the start of the tour, unlike the rest of the group. The bathroom was small, considering the number of rooms sharing it and it had just two sinks, one that was always blocked and filled with toothpaste and soap suds and the other which was just a broken half sink. At least there was a flush on the not so nice toilet through...small victories.

We sat in the dining room and played some Uno together after some warming tea and biscuits. Rich and Micheal were new to the game and of course, they loved it. We chatted to Pablo about Bolivia and learnt they drink a lot of coke...not water and suffer quite badly in the altitude and dryness, with bad eyes, chest and skin. It's not a surprise, my lips have lost all moisture, despite constant applications of lip balm and my nose has never been so dry in all my life. We are all constantly plagued with very dry bogies, making it even harder to breathe in the thin air. It's manageable and I don't ever feel suffocated but I will be glad to be lower and where there is actually some humidity!

We were all hungry now and dinner was a couple of hours away so we whiled away the time talking about food, of course! We are so, so smart haha. We taught Marion from Quebec about Scotch Eggs and Pork Pies (she thinks the British are obsessed with pastry and sausage meat now), toad in the hole (cannot understand how a person has lived without even trying Yorkshire Pudding before) and then her favourite of all...pigs in blankets (they just call them sausages in bacon). We discussed apple crumble, fish and chips, Bolivian food and New Zealand Ferg Burgers, which Anna and Micheal claimed to have eaten almost everyday in Wanaka because they were that good. Rob also learnt that they eat pies a lot for lunch, so New Zealand has become his favourite place already!

Eventually, after the torment, the food arrived. We started with soup again, which was delicous as usual. I didnt fill up on bread and soup this time though to make sure there was room enough for the main meal.
For the main meal, we watched first as pasta and bolognese was served up to the other two groups whilst we waited for ours. We didn't get this though. We were served a Bolivian dish that was pretty weird instead. It was quite cold and was a mix of tomato, raw red onion, boiled eggs, lama meat, hot dog style sausages and peppers. Very odd and I wished I had had more soup. There was also not very much of it, one dish and no rice. It wasn't too bad if you liked all the ingredients (which I didn't) but it was agreed by all that it was a little strange and there was not enough. The Bolivian red wine went down well though. Very sweet and I actually liked it.

This, and the fact we were so exhausted, meant that we were at least ready for bed pretty much straight after food. The sun had gone down now and the room was basically a freezer. No one got undressed and we braved the gross bathroom before wrapping up in bed. Rich gave his sleeping bag away like a gent and Rob was secretly glad when Anna refused his.
Rich and Rob were crazy and went to take night sky pictures...the results were great though so worth the near frostbite! Minus 5 to 15 degrees it gets to at night.

Lights out came eventually and we all had the worst nights sleep so far. No one was cold but I think the altitude and the dry air made it a restless night, especially as you tend to have shallow breaths, interrupted with sudden deep ones to compensate. You either wake yourself up or spend ages listening to someone else and hoping they haven't stopped breathing. It also didn't help that we knew we had to be up in the cold at 4am...ugh.Read more