Around the World in 180 Days: If we only knew what dogs were thinking...

...We'd understand why they are willing to follow complete strangers on a 12-kilometer hike in the mountains. Because any of the stray dogs which are sweet enough for me to get permission to pet follow us afterwards for hours I am absolutely not allowed to anymore.
The Cerro Otto mountain is only 1405 meters and we didn't go to the top. It was a 4.5 hour trip both ways, but we took a 'shortcut' on the way down that might have just been a deer trail. Or a llama trail (though we think that maybe we haven't seen any in Argentina). At one point maybe 40 minutes from where we stopped we met some people hiking down and asked them to take the dogs with them because we worried about how tired they were, but they wouldn't leave us. With only one bottle of water for the five of us, we bought water at a storeabout a kilometer away from the revolving restaurant before turning home. The dogs were almost reaching the point of doing a Lillie when we got the water--lying down and requiring a ton of coaxing to go any further. On the way down, on the shortcut, the boy (Gandalf) would disappear for times then reappear running full speed straight down the mountain, never mind who was in his way.
By some fortuitous chance the shortcut (which eventually turned into a dirt road) let us out not to far where we had begun to hike. After walking a couple of blocks we reached the hotel where the dogs had begun to follow us from, and they left.
The last ten blocks once we were in town (I was right; we are in Bariloche) were particularly hard, maybe because we were off the trail but maybe because of the insane amount of chocolate stores in this place that we were too tired to go into. I counted at least six on one block.
Once we reached out building we had to muster our energy to go one block further, but it was worth it because we got the 'best ice-cream in Argentina'. It was a little sweet, but delicious. I have lots more ice-cream spoons to take home now.
Luckily we slept pretty well on the bus last night. The road was so much nicer than that to Cusco, the bus seats reclined fully, the food was good, and (my parents told me to say this) they came around with whiskey and champagne. My only complaint is that the movies were trashy. I was wrong about how long it would take, though, because we got here around 10 this morning making it a mere 17 hours.

The stupid, stupid, stupid stairs in our apartment. I have tripped a dozen times on them since we arrived here 9 hours ago. I am assuming that, since the gaps are too big for anything else, you alternate stepping on one side or the other but that doesn't really work for me...