A Cemetery at Night

New Journal Entry 4 – An Unwelcome Guest

Wind lashed at our tent while rain continued to pour down, as it had done the previous 12 hours. We were alone in a Patagonian forest close to the enchanting, Laguna De Los Tres.

It was midnight and I’d just been woken up by something crawling across my chest. It was too dark to make anything out. I called for Rachel to turn the torch on.

We set out that day with the best of intentions. We were to hike to a campsite at the base of the Laguna and an hour before sunset we would hike the mile upwards to reach the hidden treasure amongst the mountains.

We’d hired a tent and sleeping bags, checked the weather and began hiking at 9am. The day began mildly. The further and higher we hiked, the colder and wetter it became.

We reached our campsite in the early afternoon. Not a soul was to be seen. In the howling wind we set up the tent, ate some grub and had a brief nap.

4:00pm marked the beginning of our ascent towards the Laguna. Sleet and rain was lashing at our faces. We both knew there’d be no sunset but we had no intention of giving up.

The climb was ropy and at times too steep for comfort, with a sheer drop either side of us. Whenever we heard a gust of winding whipping in, we both threw ourselves to the ground and waited it out.

Step by step we finally clawed our way to the top and had a beautiful view of the Laguna and the mountain tops that it sits between. The light was far from favourable. I haven’t looked at the images yet but my expectations are low.

We made our way slowly back to the tent as the light began to fade. On returning to the tent we opened a carton of red wine (apparently they do cartons of wine in Argentina) and enjoyed some music and podcasts – a reward for the hard work of the day.

As we dosed off to sleep, the wind flew through the trees making a whispering sound. I kept hearing the distant voice of a young girl.

One point before midnight I’d felt something climb over my legs but thought I was imagining it.

This time, however, I was sure something was on my chest. When Rachel turned the light on, I was staring face to face with a large mouse. I spun around and tried to trap it under my body. I then realised that my sleeping bag was too tight. I couldn’t free my arms to trap the invader. I was lying on top of a mouse and couldn’t move.

I resigned to let it free itself so I could liberate my arms. It ran to the bottom of the tent. There’s something very odd about being in such close quarters with a large mouse. Rachel screamed. I thought he was cute. He had a huge head and round belly and sat looking at us. He then casually picked up some crumbs from the floor and started munching away, as if he had all the time in the world. He reminded me of Garfield.

Then he went over to Rachel’s toothbrush and started eating that – at least he was brushing after meals, I thought.

We later realised that he’d been into half of our food and pooped on almost everything!

I grabbed my hat and snagged the little bugger. Once I threw him out the door we investigated the tent and found that he’d chewed his way through a mesh window. Having 7 more such windows in our tent, the mouse would have ample opportunity to get back in if he so wished.

Rachel vowed to stay up all night and stay guard. I made no such promise, but to her credit, apart from a 2 hour break when I took over the duties (in a half-hearted way), she sat up and stared at each one of those possible points of entries.

The little blighter returned 6 or 7 times, each time to the same window and each time he got a sharp wallop!

Daytime couldn’t come soon enough for Rachel. She really doesn’t like mice.

Now we are back at our lodgings, warm and rested.

Today’s Photo

This is the graveyard at Le Mont Saint Michel