I’m one of those people who still use Yahoo! to get news. I know it is not the most worthy of news sources but for random stuff, they come up with some pretty entertaining tidbits. For example, last week they posted this video of one of the icebergs off of the Uppsala glacier in Argentina flipping over.

While slightly scary, the video actually brought back great memories of my all-time favorite trip to Argentina in December 2004. A good friend was living in Buenos Aires for the year getting a culinary degree so it was the perfect opportunity to visit South America for the first time.  The plan was for her to show me around BA and then we would fly to El Calafate to hike the glaciers and go horseback riding.

BA was awesome.  We ate the best steaks, saw Nora Jones in concert for my birthday, bought new leather jackets, and I even helped my friend celebrate Hanukkah with my own DIY paper menorah. The day came that we were going to fly south. But before we went, my friend had a sushi class that I was allowed to attend. At that point in my life I did not eat sushi.  However, I wanted to participate so I prepared it and my friend ate both hers and mine.  I mean it couldn’t go to waste, right?

This is the actual sushi I made…ok…I had a lot of help.

We rushed straight from sushi class to the BA airport, made our flight, and arrived at the El Calafate International Airport. We successfully picked up our shuttle which was to take us into the village to our hostel.  But about 15 minutes into our journey, we had to make an unexpected stop. The sushi ended up not agreeing too well with my dear friend and instead decided to bond with my shoes.  For the next 18 hours she lost her sashimi along with everything else in her stomach. We finally made it to our hostel (which thankfully had a bathroom in the room!) where she immediate went to bed and I left on the hunt for saltine crackers.  Please remember readers, I was an Italian major in college. My Spanish is pretty terrible. So I bumbled around town with a Spanish dictionary and filled in with Italian hoping that somehow I could get the point across. Fortunately it worked and I came back with dinner for me and sick food for my friend.

The food poisoning did subside and we made it for our glacier hike the next day. Wearing our winter gear in the El Calafate summer, we put on our crampons and trekked for a few hours. Considering her condition my friend kept up amazingly well but she did skip the shot of Jack Daniels they served at the top of the glacier. Despite a little food poisoning (and an eaten ATM card), El Calafate and the glaciers were spectacular! Almost 8 years later, it is still my favorite location I’ve been to.

But more than the amazing glaciers, what I loved most about that trip was the friendship that was sealed. What began as a trip to see a college friend, ended up being an experience the forged one of the closest friendships I have ever had.  Almost exactly two years ago this same friend was my maid-of-honor and toasted me at my wedding to this same story. Who knew that bad sushi in Argentina would be the catalyst for a life-long friendship?

I’m a serious hiker…look at my crampons.

Summertime at the Perito Moreno Glacier