Clouds rolling in again during the night, but I was feeling better and filled up on pancakes at breakfast. Mostly a lazy morning as our mountain guide wasn't due until 9:30.

At 9am I was heartened to see the guide, Eugenio, show up. We packed up the tent and burros for one last climb. The walk up to base camp took only an hour and a half but we gained over 2,000 feet in elevation.

As we climbed we passed a few people carrying heavy packs up to base camp, for some of these climbers this was their first mountain of their trip and they weren't as acclimated as we were after our trek. We usually walked with a view of a waterfall to our right, but gradually we ascended into thicker clouds and lost the expansive view of the valley below.

We passed a small shrine, and then reached base camp, a lumpy, rocky clearing with a small stream for water. Above us on a moraine was a lodge for those who wanted to stay out of the elements.

We chatted with some of the other groups, mostly from the US. One group left some equipment in our tent and went back down to spend the night lower in the valley. Today's walk was just an acclimation hike for them. Another two climbers were from South Carolina, Tommy and Mark, and we chatted with them quite a bit. They were hoping to climb Pisco tomorrow morning as well.

Martin gave me a hand setting up my tent, and it appeared he was laughing at its small size the whole time. Then Cheryl and I reviewed our equipment with Eugenio. This involved quite a bit of show and tell, as Eugenio didn't speak any English.

Martin found some packages of cookies, and each one had a cartoon character sticker included. I walked into the large tent to find Martin had placed a sticker on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book he was reading, while Benito had put one over his bad knee.

I fished out a package of cookies and stuck the Donkey Kong sticker inside onto my ice axe. Maybe if the Cipro didn't work, Donkey Kong would get me to the summit. Cheryl did the same with the sticker of Lugi from the Mario Brothers she found in her package of cookies.

I started a list of quotes from the trip, and one of the first on the list was "Esta Nevando" ("It is snowing"), a phrase Cheryl had been dying to use, and finally could. Our summit chances didn't look promising. Since we had reached base camp it had been almost constantly raining, sleeting or now snowing.

Irma came by and helped Cheryl practice her Spanish. Later we walked up to the "Refugio Peru 4680", the mountain lodge just above us. We heard it was pretty expensive, so didn't even bother going in.

We were planning on leaving by 2am, so we had an early dinner, then off to bed at 7pm.