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Waking up this morning, it had actually stopped raining thankfully. This was the acclimitisation day. The plan was to head up the Lava Tower (4600m) before dropping back down again into Barranco Camp. The maxim - climb high sleep low...of sorts. I hadn't drank enough water the previous night so was a little dehydrated. I popped a neurofen and diorolyte to get back the body salts and downed a litre of water before the walk started and hoped it would be ok. Seemed to do the job, as the headache cleared up in about 10 minutes and was ok for the rest of the day.
The walk up the Lava Tower went fine, the pace was slow enough that I didn't feel the need to stop all the time and at least there was a view to enjoy when we did stop. I found that I was beginning to loose the appetite. For lunch I'd pick at it, eating some things like a carrot and maybe some orange but the sandwiches weren't appealing..the bread was too thick and the filling was too thin, that it seemed to soak the moisture from your mouth and I didn't want to waste the water simply to eat it. Was able to eat a nutrigrain bar anyway so I wasn't starving!
I did find that on the walk back down from the Lava Tower, I felt really tired in the legs. It was if someone had tied weights to them and I was quite slow. Apart from this though, I felt ok..breathing with no problems, no reoccurrence of headaches and no signs of nausea so it was just a case of grin and bear it. Eventually we made it to Barranco Camp.a relatively small plateau close to a steep rocky ledge called the Barranco Wall.
We would be tackling this in the morning, so I paid it little thought that night. I had other things on my mind, as I came down with a mild case of hypothermia ! I found that once I left the mess tent which was snug and warm, I started to shiver uncontrollably for a few minutes. I told the group, and said that I was heading for the tent to get into warmer clothes and into the sleeping bag to heat up again. Charlotte, reliable as ever, brought over a lovely cuppa after a few minutes...I stayed in the tent for about 30 minutes half dozing and was toasty warm and alert again. Hunger got the better of me and so I headed back to the mess tent for food. No reoccurrences of that again anyway for the trip.