As the light faded the temperature dropped spectacularly, and it wasn’t long before we were tucked up in our Norwegian sleeping bags with most of our clothes still on!! It was at this point that we realised that although our hired tent was really sturdy, the inner tent had mesh almost all the way round. Now whilst I’m sure this would be great when camping in the heat in Australia or California, it was the worst idea ever for up in the windy mountains of Southern Chile!! Not only did the howling winds come straight in through the mesh, but also the little heat that we generated immediately escaped!! It has to be said that this was a very cold night! Added to this was the fact that the camping mats which we’d borrowed from Alejandro were of the old school, foam type. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent many a night on one of these things in my younger days, and granted they do keep the cold at bay, but having been used to a Thermarest type mat for the last ten years or so it has to be said that

this was a whole new level of discomfort!! I even ended up with bruises on my thighs from the damn thing!! Despite all of this though we ended up with a reasonable nights sleep, broken briefly by some morons walking past loudly on their way to watch the sunrise at the Torres viewpoint. This was something that I had considered but after the walk up there I decided that a repeat performance at half four in the morning really wasn’t for me!!

We eventually got up at around half past eight and had a warming breakfast of porridge with nuts and raisins!! The weather was again really nice and sunny and we’d decided to leave the tent at the campsite and walk further up the valley towards the next free campsite, Campamento Japones, a climbers campsite at the bottom of the Valle del Silencio, the valley on the other side of the Torres. Alejandro had told us that there was a viewpoint in this valley