Everyone arose around 8:30 and Zeek arrived with the van as we were eating breakfast. I'm sure I was not the only feeling muscle soreness. Some students had hiked 47 km in the past two days. I did between 25-30 km.

The day was clear and warm so all of the tents were dry. As we broke camp and loaded the baggage onto Angel's truck, newly christened as the “Green Machine” by the group. We finally pulled out of camp after 11:00 and started the long trip to Torres del Paine. As we headed east the view of the Fitzroy and Cerro Torre ranges behind us was fantastic so we stopped to photograph the mountains under perfectly clear skies. Most of us stared at the structures exposed on the north wall of the valley as intently going out as we had come in.

We stopped at the mouth of Lago Viedma where the Río la Leona begins. We bought sodas and Angel and Raul prepared lunch which we ate in the parking lot. We continued our journey past El Calafate. Zeek had brought one of Amanda Green's bags with him in the morning so he and his van went ahead to El Calafate Airport to see if others had come in that morning--they hadn't.

We headed south toward the Cerro Castillo border crossing into Chile. I had not crossed there before. It was a long drive. We stopped for a snack within sight of Torres del Paine but still in Argentina. Angel missed the turn to customs but Zeek saw us headed in the wrong direction from the border and caught up with us in the van to turn us around. We arrived at the border crossing a little before dark. It was relatively painless for us but Angel has a license problem and was delayed. The station chief was a real jerk. We said good-bye to Zeek and transferred our luggage to our Chilean bus. Then we drove to a restaurant in Cerro Castillo to wait for Angel. He came along after about half an hour but said he would have to drive the 100 km to Puerto Natales to get the proper papers. We unloaded our truck and piled everything onto our new bus with Carlo, the driver. I spoke at length with the salteño border guard who accompanied Angel. They are both from Tartagal.

We arrived at Torres del Paine well after dark and had to transfer everything to two smaller buses because ours was too big to cross the extremely narrow bridges in the park. It was pitch dark when we go to the campsite. Everyone was grouchy and set up their tents and went to bed without dinner; it had stayed on Angel's truck. Chris was yery sick with a fever so he, Nicole and I walked over to the Torres Hotel. The security people were very helpful and took us to a hostel where the two of them stayed for the night. Their tent had also stayed on the truck.

Security dropped me off at the campsite at about 1:00. I started setting my tent up when Kim appeared out of nowhere and offered to help. I accepted and it was up in a few minutes. I went to bed immediately and was asleep soon after.