Back in Mexico, a year and a half ago we met a truly wonderful and fascinating couple -a Swiss husband and his beautiful Aztec (Argentinian) wife. They have been married and travelling for over 11 years up and down on the American continents. Back there they invited us to a very special event, an Indian Gathering in Zacatecas, Mexico that was insane and quite magical at the same time.

This time they were back to Argentina for a couple of months visiting her mum in El Bolson. As we were in touch, we knew that they were going to be around when we are so we were in contact with each other to see if we can come and visit them. We thought we would come for a jolly lunch for a couple of hours but we ended up staying for 3 weeks. It was one of the highlights of our journey.

It turned out that Mama’s water tank and its stand was broken and damaged a few months ago leaving her without water every evening, meanwhile the roof of her back house has rotted away and was falling down. The job was too much for the family and mum could not afford hiring someone to do all these so John offered to do the roof and build a new water tank-stand.

John absolutely loved the job, he remade the whole shed with the new roof and built a beautiful new stand for the water tank.

Within these three weeks we had a fantastic time with them. We got to know the rest of the family, the other sisters and their family, even a cousin and some friends came and stayed for a few days. Mama took wonderful care of us with delicious home-grown and homemade food and every day there was a special something to do, make, enjoy or visit. We made trips to El Bolson for on market days, visited a friend who lives in the woods like hobbits, went to a festival with one of the sisters who is just adorable and mad as a hatter, or when the sisters came over we had wonderful dinner together had a few bottles of local beer and stayed up talking till 2AM.

Once the jobs were done, our friend, and son-in-low for Mama and who was trained by the Lakota Indians 30 years ago, set up and performed an ancient Lakota ceremony that lasted one whole day and a whole night, and which wrapped up our stay here so beautifully and was very special. An unforgettable experience.

It took 3 days to say goodbye as we just didn’t want to leave. John kept finding more jobs to do we kept coming up ideas why we should leave this morning. Maybe later, in the afternoon… then “OK, one more dinner, but we are leaving tomorrow”. Then, something else came up… and so on. We even got a beautiful leaving presents from one of the sisters. Eventually the day came, and we really had to say goodbye and move on. It made us all deeply moved when we realised the love and the bond that developed between all of us. We don’t know how the future unfold itself for us but we would like to put our intention out there for coming back and visit our Argentinean family.

Next, Chile…