The Kleins

The highlight for us over the last two days has been getting together with our good friends from Edmonton, Jennifer and Doug Klein. Jen and Doug are travellers extraordinaire who have been traveling in South America for 2.5 months. They specially altered their plans to join us in Chantel for a few days. It was a little touch and go for them as they were traveling from Chile and their shuttle was delayed but they managed to make it in time for supper. We met them at Taperas an Argentine restaurant for supper. Think massive slabs of roasted beef, lamb and pork. They were able to regale us with stories of driving the Canterra Austral in a rally car, hiking the W trail in blinding snowstorms in Patagonia, being stalked and escaping from Pumas and more. It was all so adventurous and spellbinding. Of course we were able to tell them all about the excitement of looking at Eva Peron's hats at the Eva Peron museum and taking Tango lessons and having to dance with the male instructor which didn't seem half as exciting when we were telling them about it as when we had been at the museum or in the dance lesson.

On Thursday the Klein's met us at our Air BnB for a hike at 8:30. We had sworn off doing the big Laguna de los tres with them and had instead settled on the 4 hour Laguna Capri hike. They are spending several more days in El Chantel so they will save this hike for another day. The Laguna Capri hike was perfect. It offered commanding views of the Fitz Roy Mountain and the weather was perfect with totally clear skies such that you could make out all of the spires on the mountain. It would have only been better if we had seen a dragon circling the mountains. We haven't seen the Klein's since the summer so we had so much to catch up with them. I didn't bring up the Tango lesson or Eva Peron's hats again or the heat stroked Puma at the BA zoo as it just wasn't as exciting as what they had done. Having friends to walk and talk with made the time fly by and it seemed that the 2.5 hours up to the lake just flew by in no time.

We ate our lunches all sitting on the same log looking out onto the Capri lake and the mountains and the beauty felt surreal. I didn't mention that I thought the mountains looked a lot like one of Eva Peron's hats. I just sat in silence eating my ham and cheese sandwich and was happy that I had some friends. Of course the hike back down the mountain wasn't as thrilling but we were still afforded some incredible views of the Rio de las Vueltas and the snow covered mountains in the distance.

We were done the hike by around 1:30 and felt much better than we had felt on Tuesday. We reunited with the Klein's later in the afternoon for cake and coffee at Meme's bakery. Cheryl and I shared the largest piece of Carrot Cake which we felt guiltless eating as we had spent the morning preburning the calories. We enjoyed a game of Quiddler with the Klein's. Quiddler is a scrabble like card game. Whenever I am faced with playing such games, I think I develop word game anxiety induced expressive aphasia and can't think of any words to make. I kept my anxiety under control and finished 3rd with a respectable score.

After the game we bid adieau to the Klein's. They needed to get organized for more adventures and we needed to pack as we were heading off to El Calafate in the morning and then on to Montevideo Uruguay on Saturday morning in search of more fashion museums.Leggi altro