Solita

So everybody moved on to S.P. except for V. and me. I think both sides had some mixed feelings about it. The boys were doubtful because they were leaving without cooking facilities and lots of dry pasta in their food bags (because they noticed too late that a camping cooker requires gas). They were also not looking forward to facing the mosquitoes, cold showers and other pleasures of the lower plots whereas V. and I were a little sceptical about being left behind in a near-empty fieldstation. We waved them goodbye as all eight of them squeezed into and onto a Toyota pick-up which officially seats four.

In the afternoon - which was busy with building a battery chain and power lead, with equipment checks and with stammering broken spanish at V. - the lack of people hardly showed . In the evening it was a different matter. P., the best cook of the eastern Andes flank, did his best to entertain us at our severely shrunken table but it still felt lonesome. Even though he promised us fried bananas for tomorrow. Coming back to the cabin both V. and I felt that it was better to lock the door tonight - which has a psychological effect only, given that the locks are really flimsy. V. went to bed punctually for nine o'clock - as usual. She falls asleep very fast, sleeps like a log through my turning-and-tossing-episodes late at night when I wake up because I had dug myself into the sleeping bag too deeply and can't breathe and she is also the last one to get up at around seven. I am not as good at sleeping early any longer now that I have got over the jet lag. And so I sit here, depleting my precious computer battery and fretting not only about malevos but also about a cow which has to everybody's surprise turned up in the field station. I hope she is not going to trample on my sensors that I have installed around the hut to test my newly written computer program.