Last updated: October 2026
Rodrigo — the friend I sold my Misiones jacket to — was doing his season in South Lake Tahoe, in California, and he kept telling me to come over when the winter ended. He came to Park City first: I picked him up at the Salt Lake City train station, off the California Zephyr, the Amtrak train that crosses the country and stops in Salt Lake City on its way past Reno and Truckee. He stayed a few days, saw Park City and Salt Lake, and then we went to Tahoe together.
I fell in love with Lake Tahoe. It is not fancy the way Park City or Aspen or Vail are fancy. It is warm and it is easy. You have the water right there: you go to the beach whenever you feel like it, any day, all summer. In winter you have the mountain. Peaceful, freeing, healing — I run out of adjectives. I worked as a server in a Mexican restaurant and spent the summer there, and it is the place I would send anyone who wants a season in the United States without the polish.
Manu came, and with him Sabri and Mauri, all from Misiones, and we ended up renting a house together — the whole group under one roof. Mauri and I had met on Instagram, talking every so often from a distance, and we met in person here. We started going out, we moved in together, and we got married. That is the part of the story I never saw coming when I bought that first ticket with two hundred dollars in my pocket.
Mauri had left his dachshund in Misiones, and after a few months of saving he brought him over himself. His name is Asher. He used Animal Cargo, a company that works door to door: they picked him up in Misiones, took him by road to Buenos Aires, boarded him at a pet hotel there, flew him to Los Angeles and drove him to our door. They handled the microchip and the paperwork. It is very expensive, and it was worth every peso. If you are thinking about it, start with the CDC rules for bringing a dog into the US: the dog needs a microchip, has to be at least six months old, has to look healthy and needs the CDC import form filled in online before flying.
We went to San Francisco eight or nine times, and most of those trips were for concerts. At the Chase Center we saw Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa and Demi Lovato; Jade at the Fillmore; Zara Larsson across the bay at the Fox Theater in Oakland; Tate McRae a bit further out, at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento; and Christina Aguilera again, at the Portola Music Festival on Pier 80.
And we travelled for others: Katy Perry in Las Vegas for Mauri's birthday, still the best show we have seen, and Kelly Clarkson there too. The wildest one was Christina Aguilera at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Philharmonic — a free concert put on after the wildfires, and we got in because one of the two accounts we registered won the tickets. Later we bought a car together, and that changed everything: the first winter without one and the second with one are different sports.
That second winter I bought the season pass and skied a lot, with Manu and with Jimena, a Costa Rican friend who rides a snowboard. Heavenly mostly, and also Northstar and Kirkwood. I got properly better: all the blues without thinking about it, several blacks at Kirkwood, and one double black where I had to take the skis off and walk the first section before skiing the rest. That makes five mountains: Deer Valley and Park City Mountain in Utah, and Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood around Tahoe.
The stories run in order: this is what happened around this one.
