After Luanne left, Chet, I and our camp staff went to a nearby Puja at the Spanish camp. As usual after the Lama’s prayers there was an abundance of food, beer, chang and whiskey. There were several hours of Sherpa and Spanish dancing. Chet took a turn at break dancing on the rocks. As he nearly completed his first full spin up against a rock the Spanish climbers responded with applause. Chet even got the Spaniards to join in some songs. The Spaniards are from two main areas in Spain. Several are Basques (mountain area) and the others are from Barcelona. It is unusual for these two groups to get along, but they seemed to be a very happy group.

By noon we headed back to our camp. We had lunch and spent the afternoon recovering from the morning party.

The Sherpa’s went to another meeting at 3 PM with the military. The hope is to get permission to go higher on the mountain. Unfortunately little came out of the meeting. The route to camp two should be completed tomorrow. Our Sherpa’s decided to carry gear up tomorrow to start setting up camp two. The result is that Chet and I will have another rest day. It is a little disappointing because we had planned to get back up the icefall tomorrow. We do understand that our Sherpa’s do need to get more gear hauled up to camp two in order to get is set up.