At 5:00 the alarm went. It was ready for action time. We did what had become the standard job standing up in the morning. Get out of the sleeping bag, let the air out of the sleeping matras, put everything in bags and deconstruct the tent/prepare the tent for (mule) transportation. At 5:30 we had breakfast and at approx 6:45 we started the hike. It started with an ice cold barefoot passing of the river, the water temperature being approx 2 degrees.
After this I was happy to hike up to Costa Dura as this gave me an opportunity to warm up my feet doing so.
The walk to Plaza Argentina/Basecamp is very nice and it gives some splendid looks down into the valley and up to the Aconcagua mountain/summit.
It took us a little bit more than 5 hours of walking – and a 1000 altitude meters – to arrive at Plaza Argentina. We setup our tent knowing that this would be our (Base)camp for the next three days.
As the strategy is to climb high and sleep low, Frank and myself continued for another 250 altitude meters above camp an took some rest there watching Basecamp under us.
Tomorrow will be a rest day – to get used to the 4200 meters of altitude and we also will have a medical checkup. The following (9 to 11 days) we will continue our ascent to the summit working in several days towards our goal. Once more off the grid & looking forward a lot to it.