Cosmic Forces of the World Watching Out For Me

Yesterday I returned to the land of civilization after spending 5 days camping and hiking "The W" in Torres del Paine. I will write all about Torres del Paine and my hiking later. Right now I have about 15 minutes to write and I want to tell you all about how the cosmic forces of the world apparently currently have my back.

A couple of weeks ago I bought an airline ticket from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires for March 8th. The flight leaves at 3:30 and lands at 6:30. I assumed that this was 3:30 and 6:15pm. I was making plans according to this, ie there is a bus that leaves El Calafate at 3am and arrives at 7am that I figured I would take cause everyone keeps talking about boring, bland, and awful Rio Gallegos is. On the bus back to Puerto Natales from Torres del Paine I sat next to two guys from New Zealand who had also just finished hiking the W. We had been passing each other on the trail for the last five days, mumbling "hola" as we huffed past each other, and now that we had energy and we shared the comraderie of the hike we talked for the hour and half bus trip. As we pulled in to Puerto Natales they said that a group of W hikers were getting together for dinner at 8pm if I wanted to join. I was going to be eating dinner with my couch surf hosts but I decided to go and meet up with the group for 1/2 an hour or so and grab a beer.  We were sharing travel horror stories (passports misplaced and returned, flights missed etc) and sharing our plans for the coming days (some us heading south, some heading east, some heading north) and one of my fellow travlers mentioned that he had to figure out how to get to Rio Gallegos cause he had a flight on the 8th. "Really?" said I. "I´m flying out of Rio Gallegos on the 8th too. You can take a bus from here, I think that you just have to transfer in Rio Turbio..." He asked me what time his flight was and said "Mine is at 3:30am, cause that was cheaper." "Weird," I commented. "Mine is at 3:30pm..." "Landing at like 6:15?" says he. "Cause that is when my lands. but in the morning." Our brows furrowed. How strange that we had morning and afternoon flights at the exact same time...So I double checked my confirmation and realized that, silly me, they use the 24 hour clock here and my flight is at 3:30 NOT 15:30, meaning it is in the morning!! If I hadn´t met up with these folks for drinks I would´ve completely missed my flight to Buenos Aires.

Thank you universe. Thank you for letting me figure this out days in advance. And thanks for the wonderful weather too! Seriously.

Hiking tales coming soon. ish.