The rain was supposed to start at 8am this morning but didn’t really get going until 8:02am. Classic Chile, always late to the party.

Will and I stayed in the tent reading until ~11am, which just shows you how critical the kindles are to our well-being in the wild. Also it was nice to sleep (and read) on our bigger, comfier sleeping pads that we have at base camp. Between being extra cozy with book in the tent and the rain outside of the tent, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to get moving. Also I took literally zero photos the entire day, so you get a repeat of a climbing photo with Pía from few days ago as the header to this post. You can blame the rain but we all know not taking pictures is more of a me problem.

We braved the rain for the fifteen-minute walk over to Pía and Nacho’s campsite around noon, at which time they were just barely starting to think about possibly making breakfast potentially sometime soon. We settled on Pía and Nacho coming over to our campsite after they ate, so we could hang out and chat and play some games and eventually cook dinner together.

Will and I headed back to our campsite and went over to the campground’s central cabin, which has a fire pit and some big picnic tables under a big roof. Having a dry space to cook and eat and read and such that’s not our tiny tent was a huge help, plus you can make friends with everyone else who is also there to avoid the rain. We didn’t, but theoretically one could.

When Pía and Nacho said “after breakfast”, it turns out that they really meant more like 4 hours later. Eventually they arrived in the early evening armed with some dinner veggies and pasta, which was exciting since we don’t have any fresh vegetables in our personal food stash. Plus as a fun bonus, after dinner we inherited a small bag of leftover food, since Pía and Nacho are leaving early tomorrow morning. Will and I are still not totally sure if we’re going to run out of food or not but we think at this point probably not.

The four of us spent the rest of the evening playing a card game called Carioca (Kah-ree-oh-kah) that is very similar to Phase 10, using some Uno cards that the camp hosts generously lent us. It was a bit of a cluster but we muddled through. As a lover of board games and card games and lawn games and literally any type of game that anyone is willing to play with me, it was a lovely way to close out a rainy day and also to spend time with one of my best friends. Before this trip I hadn’t seen Pía in almost a year and a half, since she was living and working in Australia, but luckily I’ll get to see her a few more times this month in Chile before she flies back to the land of kangaroos and deadly animals. She’s trying to convince me to come visit her in Australia sometime in the next year but her story about getting bit by a super giant super poisonous spider is not helping her case.

Day 12 Modified Perfect Ratio

No climbing, no hiking, no nothing to add on Day 12.

43 pitches : 33 hours

The full list of Cochamó posts can be found here.