How could I? It was beautiful here, I felt good here. Base camp felt like home. Too bad I have no skills whatsoever that could be useful to anyone in base camp. I'd love to stay.
A round of hugs. A tightening of the heart, many times repeated. I want to stay I want to stay I want to stay. Adrianna looks at me longingly, Chapu is staring at the ground, Rodrigo is drinking mate with friends, looking unusually somber. Nenu and Jaime come to give me a present. A beautiful woven necklace, with a stone from the mountain inside, Inca style. Jaime picked the rock. Nenu wove the little pouch it is in. Jaime wove the string it hangs on. I stare at it. I know I will cherish this, know I won't want to part with it, know I will be heartbroken if ever I lose it.
I really don't want to go now. I am just getting to know these wonderful people. Intimacy is very quick in such a place, where you need to depend on one another, where you share tents and more forced physical closeness than most people ever do, where different body odours are just part of everything else and of no particular concern to anyone.
More hugs, more pictures, more exchange of emails. We should have left an hour ago, we have to go.
The last view of everyone.
And we do, we tear ourselves away, we are driving Lito insane, but I feel I leave a part of me behind. I am glad for the walk ahead. It will give me the time to be with myself and mourn.
Leaving base camp further and further away.
I walk alone, or nearly, for the first 3 to 4 hours.
We spread out into a line about a kilometer long. Lito ahead, then Jackman, then me, then Gerard, the German we met yesterday, then Shum. It takes us nearly 10 hours to reach the entrance to the park. During that time, we mingle, take pictures, change our order of walking.
Confluencia camp, people playing volleyball.
It does me good to be able to use my German. Gerard is really entertaining, very interesting. And a brute, in the most admiring sense of the word! He can walk us all into the ground carrying 30kg on his back! I hid his tent with the things I left for the mules, to lighten his load slightly. I meant to take more, and am sorry I didn't, I got caught up in the goodbyes at base camp.
When we finally get to our bus, exhausted, I feel calm. I'd been really sad a few hours earlier. We board the bus for the 3 hours back to Mendoza. It is nearly dark. I look at the snowy mountain peaks one last time, and feel I will be back. This calms me further, and I can feel serene as we drive away.
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