The last week has been different. As I write this my heart pours emotions on this canvas of text. My eyes watery from the goodbyes I have just said and the incredulity of the people I have met sharing a love I didn’t even know you could share.

I entered Bariloche last week unsure what to do next and ran into a familiar face Lucas who I hiked with in Torres del Paine. I joined him and a few hostel mates in renting a car and exploring the area. I talk about this journal that I am writing in public with many people and I was happy to have shared a moment with friends in the car and talk about what I actually felt instead of talking about the weather. Life can be so much richer if we are willing to open up.

Spending a few days in Bariloche and having a few nice experiences, the beauty of the region felt lost on me. I had seen the ice fields of Patagonia numbing my sense of joy for these views. Seeing these beautiful lakes around me would be mesmerising in any other state of being but right now I didn’t care about it. Oh how thankless we get when we have plenty and how much we crave when we are needy.

About to leave Bariloche, I heard from a friend I had made in Santiago about a Christian climbing community which allows you to spend a few nights of the week with them and climb together. I left my hostel not sure if I should leave Bariloche or reach out to this random group of climbers to spend a night with them. In the end I flipped a coin and that’s why I ended up going to their place where they had space for me to sleep only one night.

This community blew me away. I have not experienced this magnitude of self less love by any stranger I have met.

As I stood outside their place not sure I was at the right place someone came out of a car and gave me a warm hug and led me inside. I see a big house with a lake view and several smiling faces. Each giving me a warm big embrace and welcoming me into their day and into their lives as if I knew them a life time.

As I learnt in the days to follow, the place makes almost no sense in the reality most of us tend to live in. It only makes sense in the reality of blindfold and utmost faith. For the people living there, the faith is in their religion. For me the faith is in the people around them.

I live with the faith that most people in the world are good. With a strong conviction this is the reality I am in, I share all that I can and intend to live a life that helps us all and not only me. This intent not only makes my life very easy but it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as my belief in this attracts more people around me who act similarly hence making my belief stronger and so-on.

From this community, me as a stranger received love and attention that I only get from those very close to me. I got to live in a beautiful big house right next to the lake, eat/cook anything I wanted, use their equipment from climbing to paddle boards to kayaks. Each day I was fed incredible food and got every ingredient I wanted if I wanted to cook for them.

The first morning when I woke up I felt my reality shaken with the selflessness of all this around me. I was surrounded by people wanting to share everything with me. Their time, their food and all that they could share. I was taken daily to climb with them, getting free lessons in how to climb better and harder while they waited patiently belaying me.

I was living in their home, eating their food and getting better at what I loved to do all with no direct intention to be rewarded for what they are doing except an insignificant donation to cover food.

The couple who built this community Dylan and Chirley poured in their lives saving and time to build this place. Each day building this selflessly only because of their faith in God and a will to help more people come closer to their faith. Both of them absorbed by their passions and priorities in life which involve mainly their faith, their family and loved ones and the great outdoors (specially climbing and kayaking)

I spent only 4 nights there and left with tears in my eyes as the goodbyes were so hard.

A day before I was to leave Dylan took me to do my first multi-pitch climb a 200m+ route that he set up himself. He spent his afternoon and brought his gear to give me the experience I had craved with no intention of getting anything in return. I was considering to do a course and the climbing guides had quoted €200 for it, here I was getting it for free.

As I hung on the wall 150m up, thrilled by the adrenaline of finally having almost fully overcome my fear of heights I couldn’t help but be in awe of this man and all that he has managed to achieve for himself and his wife, for his faith and most impressively for his children.

What an incredible life they must be having experiencing first hand the positive impact this place has on hundreds of lives each year and seeing the good in people from all around the world right in front of them while they get to enjoy the outdoors.

The idea of building a community around me was growing on me when I was considering to buy a house in Spain and now I had experienced a community like no-other.

I believe in sharing and have always aimed to share but even with my best of intents, I have never shared anything without judgement to strangers I have just met. Even the possibility of sharing so selflessly hadn’t come to me.

As much as I want to stay here and spend more time with these special people, I don’t know where I will head to in the coming days. I do know I am blessed to have had the opportunity to come across people like Dylan, Chirley and everyone at the community.