December 26, 2005 - Day 3 of our trek: This was our longest day of hiking, but our favourite. We hiked 22kms over varied terrain (up down up down up up up down). We were lucky with the weather again and had excellent views of mountain peaks and the glacier lake. We decided to get off track to hike through the French Valley (about 2.5hrs). Well worth it too. A lot of hikers returned after only hiking a fraction of the trail. There were some clouds covering the mountain peaks and they thought the hike wouldn´t be worth the journey if you didn´t get to see the peaks. We continued on and soon after, the sky cleared up and there was nothing but blue skies and sun. When we reached the top, we got a 360 degree view of the cuernos (the horns of the mountain). You could hear the thunder-like sounds of glacier parts falling off the mountains and collecting into the lake. It really was a beautiful site.





Coming back down the French Valley, this was one of the views you would see:

The last 2.5kms to the next campsite (refugio Los Cuernos) seemed to take forever. Our bodies were pretty worn out by the end of the day, but we treated them to some beer and wine with our dinner......we were forgiven:-) We had dinner with a few other hikers: 3 Germans, 2 South Africans, and an Austrian woman. We were fortunate to have a fantastic sunset that evening. The sun doesn´t completely set until 11pm in the evening in this area, so it was always a shock to see how late it actually was.



At each refugio/campsite, the Chileans have been very welcoming and informative. We haven´t met too many Chileans with the exception of those that work in the service industry, but the ones we have met have been fun and very kind.

Sleep was good that night.