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The countdown to a vacation of a lifetime is on! I printed all of my checklist, and scheduled the Uber for 6:00 a.m. I have planned this trip to my final continent of Antarctica for 5 years. Our itinerary is set and excursions are planned in each city, except for Ushuaia. I hear that it is the end of the world and Patagonia is beautiful. I did some research on how to hike through Patagonia and came across an article on lake Esmeralda. Seems easy enough. The author, says its a 45-minute hike and can easily be done in two hours total. Another thing he said, is that we should definitely wear boots and that we should not do the hike alone. I checked out a couple of excursions to hike Patagonia online and they are all either overpriced or are scheduled to last for the whole day. I'm sure we will find a nice tour company when we land that would be able to let us know the best way to do it. Cab rides are pretty cheap from the airport in Ushuaia to the hotels, so we hopped in one as soon as we grabbed our luggage. It's such a rainy and gloomy day. Our cruise to Antarctica leaves on tomorrow afternoon and I would really love to do this hike this afternoon. It's about 11:00 a.m. we should be good. Our cab driver Pablo has good vibes, great energy. He really isn't speaking any English but we are communicating just fine. Something tells me that Pablo knows his way around the Patagonian mountains. "Pablo, Do you know of any tour companies that can take us on a hike to lake Esmeralda today?" I had to use my Google translation app to ask him this question. To my surprise he points to himself and says that he can do it! Pablo took us to our hotel to drop off our luggage and told us to wait 30 minutes so that he could go home and get his raincoat. I'm so excited! One of my bucket list dreams is about to come true. Hiking through the mountains of Patagonia. Pablo came back to get us and asked where our boots are. Oh crap! We did not pack any boots because our boat will have them for us. We realized that it's now siesta time in Ushuaia. All of the shops that sell boots have closed for lunch and won't be open back up until 3:00 p.m. Pablo had the bright idea to take us to a local hardware store that will open up in a little over an hour for us to buy work boots for 15 US dollars. Perfect. In the meantime, we pile into his cab and he takes us to his friends grocery store where they make us ham sandwiches and we get snacks and sports drinks for the hike. We went back to the hardware store and got our boots and we were off! We arrived at the parking lot for the entrance to the trail and it is pouring raining. In my mind this is still only a 45 minute hike and I have to achieve this goal. Quickly into the trail we realize that we would never have been able to do this alone. There's mud everywhere, falling trees and no clearly marked trail. An hour into the hike, we cross paths with a group of young ladies from Israel. Hello! She says, you have a long way to go but the hike is so worth it. I looked at Pablo and asked, how much longer do we have left? Pablo says 2 hours one way. At this point, I have been stuck in the mud and almost fallen, made it through rain and a windstorm. The sun is shining now and I'm an hour in. I can't turn back now! 2 hours later, we made it to lake Esmeralda just as it began to snow. If I had known what I was getting myself into, I never would have done it. At 9:30 pm, after five hours and 10 km through the forest, we achieved our goal of hiking through Patagonia.