Susanne and Machiel

The weather started a bit questionable this morning and we didn't really know what to expect, partially because the weather forecast provided by the campsites was usually between 1 and 4 days old, and partially because this is Patagonia and the weather changes every minute, or so they famously say. The plan was to reach camping Italiano. Not to sleep there, but to decide whether from there we should attempt the climb up to the viewpoint Británico at the end of the Francés valley. Regardless of this decision, we'd finish the day at camping Francés.

The first stretch went well and we soon took of our rain pants. At camping Italiano we heard that the weather in the valley was supposed to be ok that afternoon, so we happily took our heavy backpacks off, left them next to a hut, and repacked our small bags for what would be a tough climb of almost 600m over 5km. There were 2 other viewpoints on the way there but just to get to the first one seemed very tough due to the steep and technical trail which mainly consisted of wet lose slippery rocks and stones in all sizes. It started raining at some point as well, making Machiel fall for the trap of putting his rainpants on. It almost immediately stopped again, forcing Machiel into a double rainpants pitstop. When we finally made it to the first viewpoint, we fueled up with our daily lunch of wraps with salami and cheese, giving us the energy to continue.

While Franzi had already proven that the emergency brownie she had eaten this morning gave her some superhero energy that made her quicker than ever, Machiel and Susanne were actually convinced they would not walk to the end of the trail but stop at viewpoint 2 out of 3. However, the trail got more walkable after lunch, the weather was amazingly sunny and the valley so beautiful walking next to a river in a very nice forest with once in a while views of the mountains and glaciers. So we couldn't actually resist and continued walking even though Susanne knew her knee would let her regret this decision later.

Viewpoint Británico ended up being a huge flat rock in the middle of the end of the Francés valley from where we were surrounded by glaciers and interesting rock formations. A French couple we met earlier at Paine Grande nicely took some group pictures of us. We did however still had to walk back down, pick up our backpacks at Italiano and make our way to Francés, so we couldn't stay too long unfortunately.

Camping Francés was in the middle of a hilly forest, and they had wooden platforms on which you could pitch your tent. The platforms provided nice flat surfaces but we were unlucky to get the two spots on the very top of the camping. This meant a steep almost 1 km hike to the bathroom and cooking area. What was also annoying was the fact that the kitchen area was approximately made for 3 out of 60 tents. And according to the rules of the national park (and what you get reminded about by signs literally everywhere) is that fire safety is the most important rule in the park due to the risk of forest fires, so guests are only allowed to cook in the designated cooking areas. Upon asking about where we then could cook, we were told we could also cook in a second cooking area, but this turned out to not only be even further down the hill but also not more than a picnic table in a very windy spot under a tree. Fire safety first... Haha. So we were quite annoyed by the fact that our gascooker flame went off over and over again while sitting in the cold waiting for food, and also knowing that we would spend 2 nights here.Read more