Meet the Gonzalez's Round II

[24 de Febrero, 2014] 

With our new friend Tomas outside the hostel

When we got off the boat (mind you 7 hours late) we were greeted at the gate by someone yelling "Eli, Eli!" Eli and I stared at each other because we hadn't a clue why we were hearing his name. But sure enough a young guy was approaching us so we knew we hadn't misheard. "Hi, I'm Tomas," he said and fortunately it quickly clicked. Tomas Gonzalez was the great nephew of Hernan Gonzalez who we had been emailing about Torres Del Paine. We had tried to plan to meet him but our phone calls never went through so we figured we couldn't get in touch until after we arrived. Thanks to Nilce and Hernan however, Tomas got the information about our boat and met us, with his parents, at the boat dock. It was a huge surprise!

He quickly introduced us to his parents (His father, Patricio Jr, was the son of Patricio whom we met in Tongoy, and his mother is Mariza) They were the nicest people! With Tomas as their translator we quickly dropped our bags at the hostel and then were taken out for an evening drive.


The Gonzalez's brought us to a neighboring town to watch the sunset. There we walked by farmhouses and admired the breathtaking mountain range that contained Torres Del Paine National Park. They told us that Puerto Natales is usually windy but we arrived on rare calm day. They said it must have been our luck and I passed it off to Eli. He usually brings the nice weather with him so he deserved the credit. For the rest of our trip, they would attribute the incredible luck we had with weather to the presence of Eli.

A farm in Patagonia

Who wouldn't want to live here?!

A local BearDog as we called him, one of the few stray dogs I was willing to pet.

We went out to dinner with the Gonzalez's after our tour and got to practice a lot of our Spanish skills. This family of three vacations in Puerto Natales every summer from Santiago.They love to visit the national parks and dream of taking a vacation like ours one day. Tomas, the only child, is in University studying law but he would like to become a pilot one day. We told him to come visit us in Seattle (where I still sometimes pretend that I live) and I think he got excited about the idea of seeing where they make Boeing planes. He was incredibly kind and all three of them left an impression on me with how happy and care free their whole family seemed. They were proud of each other and clearly enjoyed each other's company the entire time we were with them. 

We said goodbye to them that evening with hopes of seeing them again. But it was on to packing and thinking about Torres del Paine, our next big destination, that kept us from staying out longer. It felt nice to know we had a family nearby if we ever needed anything. We thanked them for getting us excited about our upcoming trip and sharing with us their love for Patagonia.