Bail Boys

We spent a few days lounging in town resting, hanging with Isaac's parents, and mostly eating food constantly (didn't feel a full post, so adding some details here). Isaac's parents, Dann & Dana, brought us out to a few more meals including an AWESOME lunch on their final day at La Tapera! This is a cute & unassuming little spot of our side of town that I'd walked by, but had not clue that it was a nicer restaurant. We ordered all sorts of things: guanaco lasagna, a few roasted trout, a large steak, and and a handful of desserts. This might have been my favorite meal so far, though the 5 course dinner at Asaderos was hard to beat. Our server was incredibly kind and even brought us a mystery liqueur shot at the end of the meal. An epic send-off for Dann & Dana as they made their way back to Calafate to scope out some glaciers!

Other highlights: a total of 1 full kilo (2.2lbs) of chipas were eaten, we now both have mustaches, and we got to FaceTime our friends (Emily, Maddy, Michaella, Sara, Jack, & George) back at home while they had a dinner party & hang! The next day, Wednesday, was a packing day -- We made a plan for the upcoming weather window, which was best on Friday, to attempt the Austríaca on Aguja de I'S and then continue into Last Gringos Standing on Aguja Saint-Exupéry. So we ate food, spread gear out & checked the list, and I did a final grocery run for the climbing food + food for the rest of the day. Now we're just hanging out in our beds as I write this, enjoying the down time & cloudy weather in town :)

Fast forward to the next morning. After some coffee, final packing, and breakfast, we hit the road. Isaac was immediately worried about how his heels felt. He hadn't really tested them out in a few days to allow full recovery time, and the heavy multi-day pack was not feeling good. I'd found some orthotics for his shoes the prior day in hopes that this would give some extra cushion, but it wasn't enough & we decided to turn back towards home before we completed our walk across town. We were well aware that this was a possibility, so it wasn't a shock, but we were still both feeling a bit bummed that the few days of rest wasn't enough. Back at home, we chilled for a while & ate some empanadas before I decided to go for a short hike/run to check out some new areas of town & the start of the Torre Valley trail.

I wandered around for an hour or two through the streets of town & up the first mile of the trail towards Laguna Torre. There was plenty of fresh snow up on the peaks (30cm according to Rolo), which was selfishly a welcome update: if we weren't going to be climbing, it was ever-so-slightly nicer to know that the ledges & cracks may be full of ice & snow anyways. That being said, the sun was shining down in town and it was a seriously beautiful day! On the way home, I stopped for some coffee & took the long way back home through some side streets I hadn't been on yet. There are so many cute little coffee shops & bakeries in town, most of which I haven't been to, so I checked out a new one which was right next door to my favorite chipas spot (Lo de Haydee).

Back at home, Isaac was ready for a little time out of the house. We walked around for a bit in search of snacks & with the plan of grabbing some beer. If we couldn't go climb, drinking beer & watching TV wasn't the worst second-choice plan for the evening. We spent the next few hours chatting at the table about all sorts of things, calling Maddy & Emily, drinking a handful of Quilmes' each, and eating dinner. We ended up watching Marty Supreme after dinner and both thought it was pretty awesome! Definitely an odd & chaotic movie, but some hilarious sections throughout and, at the very least, a very well-made movie (whether or not all aspects of the plot made perfect sense to us was another question). All things considered, not a bad day around town even though we didn't end up out in the hills as expected.