A guardian Angelo

So today - Day Two in Mendoza - our goal was to get in some hiking in the Andes. Megan and I were practically desperate for a good long walk. We met for breakfast early, but by the time we´d gotten food supplies at the fabulous market, the morning was already wearing on. Then we went where we were told to go for information about Aconcagua National Park: the information booth in the big city park in Mendoza.

We stopped at the city park on our way out of town. After having one of those experiences of asking five people where the right office was (each one sending us on to a new place, which was wrong, and sent us on to a new place, and so forth...) we found the office - though it was now 10:45 and time was a-wastin´for the (alleged) 90-minute drive to the national park. However, as we searched, we were befriended by one of Argentina´s happy dogs, a cute if slightly mangy guy who looked like a small German Shepherd. He just trotted along with us companionably, not really exhibiting any kind of begging behavior or even seeming to want anything from us except company. It was almost as if he wanted to help us find where we wanted to go, like our own little tour guide. Because he seemed to want to be our guardian angel, we named him Angelo (which is actually Italian, but the Spanish Angel just didn´t roll off people´s tongues.)

We finally found the information booth, and the woman was completely unhelpful. Almost resentful, in fact. She had absolutely nothing to tell us about where we might go for a good day hike in the Andes, had no maps, had no information about whether we might want to worry about additional flash floods.

Angelo accompanied us back to our car - we decided he was a more helpful guide than the woman in the park office - departing occasionally to chase a bird, but always returning to our sides. As we left the park, a pack of three little dogs were wallowing in the stone ditch, still unusually full of water. They were classic Happy Dogs of Argentina, up to their bellies in muddy water and, literally, howling. But Angelo stuck with us all the way to the car, undistracted by the joys of a wallow and a good howl.

As we drove away, we saw that he had already found new people to care for.

We never did make it to our hike. It was just one of those best-laid-plans kinds of days, and the story isn´t even that interesting. We did drive a ways out of town, and the scenery was incredible, breathtaking, astonishing. Like Arizona and Utah and the Rockies all rolled into one. We get to do the drive again tomorrow on the way to Chile, and on the way back to Buenos Aires, and I can´t imagine we will get tired of it.