It could have been worse.

No hurry to do much of anything today. We thought about doing the Los Hitos hike along the lake but it was windy and well... mañana. We have the luxury of time to move things around as we wish. In that sense Guille and I are well matched. Some people are more rigid about plans. 'But you said we'd go for the hike today' might be the reaction of some. We're both a bit more of the kind of travellers to come up with a bunch of options, choose one, possibly change our minds and do something else! In many ways it's refreshing not to care too much. We're both just happy doing anything.

Instead we read and chilled at the campsite in AM and then headed out for our hike at La Pasarela at 15:30. On the way we pulled over to the side of the road to rearrange the contents of the backseat. Guille had reminded me that it's best not to do that at the parking lot of your destination in case someone sees what's inside. Good call.

We move everything except for some dry food and some camping gear we hadn't been using. I left my flip flops and some odds and ends like my little perfume, my funky sunnies and the umbrellas. To make things look particularly unworthy of further attention, we left a roll of toilet paper and paper towel on top of everything. Below our seats we stashed our iPads which have been making our day bags just that much heavier and more awkward.

The hike over the pasarela was lovely and the waters of the Rio Azul were indeed a beautiful blue colour. The hike was between Mapuche (native) farms on roads lined with berry bushes and apple trees. There were cows and sheep and the sun came out and warmed us up. It was great....until we got back to the car.

Guille got in on the driver's side and exclaimed that it was slightly open and not locked. Initially I thought she'd left it open but then she got out to confirm her suspicion that in fact the lock had been damaged when someone had broken in!

Our hearts resumed beating once we confirmed that our iPads were still there. Then we assessed the situation more carefully. The bags with camping supplies, food, my perfume and the toilet paper (?!?!) we're gone. I guess it could have been worse. Obviously the robber had been in and out quickly. Had he looked more carefully he would have found other, more interesting goodies. We got off lucky. In my 'Che Boludo' book, the expression for that is "La sacamos barata".

We knew thefts like this happened. We'd heard about one two days prior in the same parking lot. We'd thought to move our stuff out of site and into the trunk. We'd seen the police patrolling the parking lot as we started our walk. We thought we'd be okay. I guess you can only do so much.

When we got back to our campsite, Zach and Ann were there all set up in the campsite next to us. They're traveling together on this second leg of his journey around South America in Babe. It's such a small world as I know Ann from the Shell office in the Hague and she knows Zach, whom I met in India. Now they both know Guille and the world is even smaller!