October 7, 2007
Day 739
I just went for a short walk around the lagoon where I was camped this morning, but I was already feeling the effects of the altitude because I wasn't acclimatized properly. I spoke to the ranger and asked for a walk of around five hours so I wouldn't have to worry about hiking at over 4000 meters all day. He happily obliged (after taking my money) and showed me the way.
I set out with my full backpack walking along the trail. My first stop was at Tres Cruces, which was the watershed point that split rivers flowing into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. (Useless info of the day: The Tres Cruces point was also the closest watershed to the Pacific in South America.) Next I continued walking past a bunch more lagoons, passing two big Dutch groups along the way. I heard people got lost a lot in the park, but I found the trail easy to follow.
After two and a half hours, I looked at my map and discovered that I had already passed the lagoon I was supposed to stop at for the day, the lagoon that was supposedly five hours from my starting point. It was way too early to camp, but I didn't want to wander off on some other path only to return along the same path tomorrow morning, so I called it a day, set up camp, and got a ton of sleep in the extremely quiet surroundings.
