FJORD HAS A BETTER IDEA

Well, so far so good.  Loni’s pressure bands seem to be doing the trick.  We had some bumpy seas the first night, but not too bad since then.  Actually, mostly smooth sailing.  We have two days at sea before we get to our next port, Punta Arenas.  Thursday (today, as I write this) we wind amongst the Chilean fjords. 

We overnighted in the open sea, and entered the fjords at about 5:30 this morning, but we failed to get up until nearly seven, so we missed some of the nifty stuff.  The clouds have moved in, so when we did get on deck the skies were dark and we got pelted with the occasional brief shower.  Sort of like the inland passage up from Seattle to Alaska, the waters are calmer in these waterways and, of course, the scenery is spectacular.

The width of the passage varies, and sometimes the mountainsides that form the glacial valley are quite close.  Thank goodness for GPS navigation, as we do some of this stuff at night.  Hey!  The red coat returns!

Above is the outside pool.  It hasn’t gotten a lot of use thus far, but it will probably pick up once we get to the Argentine side.  The forecast is for 80’s to 90’s there.  There’s also an indoor (greenhouse) hydro-pool area which is getting a lot of takers, mostly human cetaceans from corn belt areas.  There are a couple of whirlpools and a larger pool with a zillion jets, and the whole place is sauna-like even in these latitudes.  We haven’t yet tried it.

With all these clouds, the photography might as well be black-and-white, but it’s still way cool stuff.

After an hour of that I was more than ready to come back indoors and get down to the real reason for cruising:  eating.  As I said, we’ve been having a lot of fun meeting people at mealtimes.  It always starts out the same.  The waiter leads us to a table where there already are two other couple.  I do a quick mental appraisal and, plagued by preconceptions built solely on visual cues, inevitably say “oooh, boy, this is going to be tough.”  Happy to say I’m batting 0.000.  Wednesday we sat down to hear the couple to my right speaking French, and the couple across from us seemingly so old as not to speak at all.  Hit me with the dumb hammer.  We had a delightful hour and a half.

The couple with the glasses to my right are from Montreal, and immediately shifted to English when we started talking.  He’s a music composer, doing work for movies, t.v. shows, commercials, etc.  I’ll have to listen more carefully the next time CNN comes on, as he’s done most of the intro music they use for their segments.  He does a lot of work in L.A., but goes all over, most recently spending a lot of time in China on some project.  The old(er) couple are well up in their late 80’s, been married 66 years, and are German natives born in Berlin.  They now are into eternal summer;  for the last 15 years, each year they spend the October-March months in Santiago and the rest in Berlin.  They had us in stitches recounting their excursion in the 80’s on the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing, especially the feral camels racing the train in Mongolia.  Memo to self:  don’t judge by appearances, dummy.  There’s a story in everyone.

The quail are what I had for lunch (!) today, on a bed of beet Carpaccio and Mandarin oranges.  At this table were four older oriental folk when we sat down, and I was sure we were at last going to come up a cropper.  Hammer, again, please.  Two of the ladies turned out to be Malaysian sisters, one of whom lived in Singapore and the other in Switzerland.  Both spoke good English, only saw each other on rare occasions like this, and needled each other throughout lunch.  The other couple was originally Singaporean, but had lived the last thirty years in Australia and were citizens there.  Except for the Aussie accent, their English was flawless.  And somehow we had a great conversation with them all.

Lunch over, we wandered up a deck to the ice-carving competition (above), which was over in a flash – that guy was fast!  Loni then went to a lecture on whales, and I strayed over to a team trivia contest.  They’d already started, but I listened in.  I got about 6 of the 15 questions right;  the teams averaged 7 correct answers.  The moderator was from Columbia, and fractured his English syntax.  The questions were worded similarly, so I question where he got some of the answers.  It actually looked like fun, so I might try it later in the cruise.  Hey, it’s cold outside right now!

Let’s see, lunch ended at 2:00, and the lecture/trivia were over at 3, so what’s on the schedule?  Ah, a 3:30 afternoon “fancy tea.”  Well, all right!  It’s been an hour and a half since we ate.  Shameless.  Utterly shameless.  But, honest, I only had these two desserts, a mini shrimp sandwich, and a scone with jam and cream.  Honest.

We had one couple and a woman at our table for this.  The couple was from Lisbon, Portugal, and the woman was a Toronto resident originally from Israel.  Yup, everyone spoke excellent English.  The Portuguese learn it in school starting at age 4.  Sigh.  Just think of our education system.  Anyway, another 90 minute gab fest about education, dogs in Santiago, and traveling around Portugal.  The world gets smaller and smaller.  Guess I should explain about the dogs.  The Israeli woman’s guide in Santiago clued her in when she commented on the thousands of dogs she saw roaming the streets, seemingly not bothering anybody.  He said at least 60% are household dogs whose owners let them out each morning to roam as they please along with the “street” dogs.  Apparently, this socialization does wonders for the dog psyche, and they rarely fight and don’t bother anyone.  Santiago’s municipal cleaners make sure there’s no dog poop left about, and more than one person on this trip has commented on how startlingly clean the downtown area is.  And this in a city of 13 million!  At night, the dogs dutifully come home to be fed and pampered by their owners.  Crazy.  Chile gets more and more interesting.

One last panorama from the stern deck.  The line on the right is an antenna;  that’s a snow-covered mountain in the center, not a cloud.

OK.  Gotta close this down.  After all, it’s only an hour until dinner.  Give me strength.

ACHTUNG, SENOR

The Germans are coming!  The Germans are coming!

So, where the heck are we going on this cruise?  Glad you asked.

 

That’s the overview.  Down the west coast and up the east;  Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.  14 nights, although the first one started at 7 pm at Valparaiso, and we spend 2 nights on board while in port at Buenos Aires.  Our first stop along the way is Puerto Montt, a city of 150,00 people, up from less than 100,000 only ten years ago.  It’s the fastest growing city in Chile on a percentage basis.  It’s located in a terrific harbor that affords great protection for ships.

Although several tribes inhabited Chile’s long coastal area for thousands of years, there were no settlements or villages in this area prior to the arrival of the Europeans, specifically, the Germans.  Germans?  It seems that a German naturalist visited the area in the late 1840’s, went home, and began proselytizing the place to the then-famine-and-civil-unrest-plagued Germans.  A bunch of mostly Bavarians made the trek and in 1853 founded the town, naming it after the then president of Chile, probably seeking to insure good relations with the government.  The pioneers were rewarded with land grants of around 500 acres per family, seemingly huge amounts.  But remember that the place was utterly deserted and they had to create everything from scratch. 

We had paid for a ship-organized day tour through P.Montt and then up to the Lakes Country to visit two small towns there.  The ship could not dock in Montt because of the shallow bay near the town, so we had to take tenders in and out.  These things are rated at 120 passengers when used as a tender, and 150 when used as a lifeboat!  It was tight enough with the tender allotment;  Another 30 would be sitting on laps.  And, I wouldn’t want to be on the top deck if the seas were rough.

The organization required to get 2,000 people off the ship in just a couple of hours is impressive.  You first meet in the auditorium/theater if you are signed up for a ship-organized tour.  Your ticket has a time to be there.  Once there, you take your tickets to the stage and are issued a sticker with a group number.  You wait in your seat until your group is called, and then follow a guide down a couple of decks to the gangway that leads to the tender.  If the sea is calm, easy as pie.  We’ll see what happens when we get to Punta Arenas, but here it was just fine.  If you are going ashore on your own, you go to another place on the ship to get a number and wait there.  Ship excursions get priority in loading, as you might expect.

These days, the town isn’t all that beautiful, except for the setting.  There are the ubiquitous tangles of power and phone wires, a church interesting for the fact it is built entirely of Chilean redwood, save for its copper cupola, and the usual rundown buildings scattered amongst the newer mid-rises.  Chile, of course, lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” and holds the undesired record for the strongest earthquake ever recorded by modern instruments – a 9.5 monster that occurred in 1960.  It destroyed the port areas and seafront streets of Puerto Montt and completely leveled the nearby city of Valdivia.  This same earthquake sent the tsunami racing across the Pacific at 200 mph that hit Onagawa, Japan, and left Hilo Hawai’i devastated. 

The little wooden church at lower right above is a Lutheran church, a legacy of the German settlors.  The descendants of the German families still own most of the large ranches and farms that surround the area, and the architecture of the two Lakes towns we were to see were straight out of Bavaria.  Add the huge, beautiful Lake Llanguihue, and the four volcanoes that are visible, and it’s an idyllic spot.  Our first stop was Puerto Vargas, on the southwest tip of the lake.

This is a resort and tourist town during the brief summer, but you still have to be lucky to get a sunny day like we were enjoying.  According to our guide, it rains here 220 days a year, and was raining for 7 straight days before today. The vacationers were sailing and paddling kayaks, and a few diehards were sunning on the black (volcanic) sand beach.  I was amused to see that gasoline in this remote place doesn’t cost a lot more than at home.  (About US$1.80/liter.)Across the lake can be seen the principal Osorno volcano that looks a lot like Mt. Fuji.  It makes for a spectacular view.

Aw, we can do better than that . . .

I couldn’t believe those sailboats lining up so perfectly for the shot.  I nearly dropped the camera in the drink scrambling to get it before they turned.  How would you like to get up each morning to this scene?  We only had a 50 minute stop here, so not much to report.  The bus stopped right in front of an “authentic artisan craft” store where a pair of musicians were playing the pan pipes while singing a Mexican love song.  The crafts were just about as authentic.  Still, Puerto Varas was a beautiful place.

Next stop was the even more German influenced town of Frutillar, about 2,000 year-round residents, bulging to 20,000 in the summer, according to our guide.  I don’t know where they all were, as the place was pretty quiet.  It sits halfway up the west side of the lake.  It has a small museum of 1800’s German dwellings, a water mill, gardens, etc.  Quite pretty.

We had a whole (!) hour here, so we raced through the museum, including this shot from the period house of the view towards town, with another volcano in the far background.

We took a walk around most of the town, which was pretty compact.  Again, not much to see other than the view of two of the volcanoes

and the incongruity of all the German architecture in remote Chile.

Our hour almost up, and it getting on 2:00 without any lunch, we hustled back to the bus, parked conveniently next to the driver’s cousin’s café.  They made what looked like scrumptious desserts, but we figured we’d better opt for a non-sweet and got a meat empanada instead. 

We ate it on the bus on the way back, taking in the great scenery that our guide, Javier, was describing.  He’s a great ambassador for his country, as he kept saying, and his pride of nation was infectious.  He’s a descendant of the Mapuche people, one of the three coastal indigenous groups, and the one that fought the Spanish the longest.  We took the Pan American highway back to Montt, instead of the local route we took on the way up.  Back down the dock ramp to the tender after skirting some very slow, infirm folks.  They really should route the infirm & wheelchair types down one ramp and leave the other for the more able-bodied.  It would greatly speed the loading process as the creaky folks are true roadblocks for everyone else.  I’m amazed at how many people there are who can barely move that go on cruises.  Bless ‘em all, but it can get reaally frustrating to be caught behind.

Anyway, the ship is beginning to look like “home,” and the setting is perfect.

Once aboard, well, one shared empanada isn’t enough to last the 3 hours to dinner, right?  So, off to the free ice cream bar for a scoop of peach on the starboard side, then over to the port side for the “afternoon snacks” bar and a peanut butter cookie and a scone with raspberry preserves and clotted cream, with Earl Grey tea to wash them down.  Dinner?

Well, of course there’s dinner. This was one of the 3 “formal” nights on the cruise.  Ideally, they’d like the guys to show up in tuxes, and quite a few did.  But most opted for suits or sports coats.  Our open dining plan landed us with four new dinner companions (this pic taken by the waitress with her finger over the popup flash).

  

L>R:  Skip, Ruth, Maryjo, and Charlie.  Skip and Maryjo are from Kansas City, Mo., one of the many places I have lived, so we had some conversation opener there.  Charlie and Ruth are from New Jersey, and she was a frequent visitor to Ocean City NJ, the place where my family vacationed for about 15 straight years.  Skip is an ex-Marine, and looks the part.  Charlie kept us fascinated with tales of his brush with baseball fame, having been tapped by the Yankees as the possible next replacement for Dimaggio in 1953.  Unfortunately for Charlie, he took batting practice behind another newbie, Mickey Mantle, and got drafted into the Army that same year.  So much for fame.  He was a coach, athletic director, vice-president, and president of colleges in the New York area.  We never did get what Skip did, but he must have done all right for himself with 7 kids and now doing a lot of traveling.  This open table option has turned out to be a great boon.  We’re meeting interesting folks and having a lively time at every meal.  I’m sure there will be a disaster some night, but I’ll take the odds.

ANCHORS AWEIGH; EAT HEARTY, ME LADDIES!

Right at the stroke of 7 p.m., the lines came off, the rotating screws (explanation in a later post) gave a pull, and we eased away from the dock at Valparaiso.  Being an old tar, I had to supervise, of course.

It boggles the mind, but this ship is about the same size as the two carriers I served on back in 1969 – the Kitty Hawk and the Constellation.  Roughly a thousand feet, and roughly 93,000 tons.  But the modern cruise ships are much more maneuverable, with 360^o rotating screw capsules and side thrusters to assist in getting away from the dock.  Parallel parking (and unparking) made easy.  In no time, it seemed, we had pulled sideways and back and left an empty berth.  It was easy to spot Loni in our Paris pics because of the red coat she always wore;  this trip, it will be her red “bling” hat.  There’s the Parliament building again in the lower right photo.

Behind us was moored probably the entire Chilean navy.  It looked like some of the ships had been anchored there for quite some time.  When I took this shot, a fog bank was moving in, which accounts for the difference in colors on the left and right sides of the photo.  As we pulled out, there was a swarm of local tour boats zipping by, and the pilot craft took off after we cleared the inner harbor area.

Also tied up behind us was the gem of the Chilean navy, its “tall ship” cadet training craft.  This beauty has visited the States a number of times for tall ships celebrations in New York and San Francisco.  It’s a honey.

We smoothly picked up speed and soon had quite a wake behind us.  Loni is giving it a go without chemical seasickness aids, using only the wrist pressure bands.  So far, so good, but we’re not out in open sea just yet.  Adios, Valparaiso.

Now we can get down to the real reason for taking a cruise.

For the record:  Me: Crab Louie appetizer, mushroom soup, grilled haddock, and chocolate profiteroles; Loni: roasted beet salad, mushroom soup, lamb shank in filo dough, and crème brulee.  The haddock was a bit overdone, but we were ravenous.  We took no prisoners.  We have opted for “open” dining instead of a fixed time and table each evening.  A little riskier as you might have to wait for a vacant table, but you get to sit with a different cast of  characters each night.  So far, so good.  L>R:  Robyn and Suzy from London, and Bob and Mary from Pittsburg.  Very congenial all, and we had lively conversation for two hours.  We hated to turn in right after finishing a big meal, but we were still jet-lag-groggy, so no late floorshow or casino for us.  Besides, the seas were getting a bit bumpy and the ship was challenging Loni’s determination to avoid medication.  Will she make it through the night?  Urp.  Stay tuned.   

VEERING TO VALPARAISO

As we were finishing our dinner last night in the hotel dining room, I overheard another couple say “cruise,” so I went over and asked if they were on the Infinity tomorrow.  They said yes, so I asked how they were getting from here to Valparaiso.  Turns out she (Marylou) had gone on the cruisecritic.com website before leaving home, and had posted an offer to form a group to hire a van.  She said there might be room, and she would call and find out.  Just be downstairs at 8:00 a.m. and she would let us know.  Her husband was Frank, and they were from Milwaukee.

We set our alarm for 6:30 so we could shower, finish packing, and get some breakfast before meeting Frank and Marylou for, hopefully, our van to Valparaiso.  Breakfast was again in the hotel as there is nothing at all near the place.  Hilton lightened our wallet by $30 or so for a very mediocre buffet.  We got our bags, checked out, and loitered in the lobby until Frank came down and said Marylou had spoken with the Van Man (yup, that’s the name of the outfit) and he was “sure he probably had room.”  Hmmm.  VM arrived ten minutes later and, sure enough, he had space in what was a small bus, not a van.  Held about twenty.  He had a second vehicle to carry six more passengers and some of the luggage.  We first had to stop near the airport to pick up some other folks from Milwaukee who had just arrived after a series of flight cancellation and delays (don’t fly American Airlines, folks – never) and a long horror story of lies and indifference by the AA gang.  After a half hour of our own delay, we were off over the mountains, through some long tunnels, and into the Casablanca Valley, home of dozens of wineries specializing in whites.  Our trip was to be a tour, not just a run to Valparaiso.  Well, alright!  None of the people on the trip knew each other before coming down here.  They had all met in the cloud on the Cruisecritic.com website when Marylou posted her invite for anyone wanting to jointly arrange transportation.  I’ll have to remember that if we ever take another one.  Best thing about it was it only cost us $130 (USD happily accepted) instead of the $288 that the hotel offered.

First stop was the very nice Emiliana Winery, Chile’s first fully organic operation.

Loni and I opted not to take the not-for-free winery tour, figuring that we have visited dozens in California.  Folks later told us that it was the most informative winery tour they’d ever taken, so we might have botched that one.  We did check out the tasting building, and couldn’t resist picking up the two bottles worth that we are allowed to bring on board the ship.  We opted for Emiliana’s Adobe Reserve Gewurztraminer and their Novas Gran Reserva Sauvignon Blanc.  I think the Adobe cost about $7 and the Gewurz about $12.

We also walked around the grounds, which were quite beautiful.  Everything reminded me of California.  It was nice after two grueling travel days to stop, admire the scenery, smell the roses,

and sit with your sweetie.

The wine tour and tasting bunch got a little bit into it, and we were behind schedule to pull out.  Everyone eventually giggled and wove their way back and we left, but only went about ten miles before turning off to have lunch.  This will be the most leisurely 80 miles we have ever traveled.  I think Chilean time is a bit like Mexico’s.  The stop was worth it, however, as it was an organic restaurant that grew its own produce, raised its own free-range (they were everywhere) chickens, and made very tasty fare in a homey environment.

If you ever find yourself in the Casablanca Valley, do stop by the Macerado.  Unfortunately, I forgot to film the food until I had almost finished my lunch, so no pics of the fare.  For the record, we had a great salad of mixed greens, mini tomatoes, local goat cheese, and chicken.  Others had fish or steaks, which looked great but were too much for us for lunch.

Back on the bus we finally made a beeline for Valparaiso.  By now, we’re all looking at our watches, but we should make it by the 4:00 deadline.  Well . . .

This was a tour after all, and the guide wanted to make sure we got everything he had promised to Marylou.  Soooo, we also got a tour around Valparaiso, which is NOT a picturesque place.  It’s about 350,000 people in the city proper, and it is the poorest metro area in Chile, with an unemployment rate of over 20%, contrasted with 6.5% in the rest of the country.  Add to that the damage caused by the 9.2 offshore earthquake a couple of years back, and you’ve got a pretty depressing looking city.  Nothing scary, just very poor and run down.  Back in Pinochet’s day, he moved the Parliament to here from Santiago, mainly to get them out of his hair.  The one building of any architectural interest is the Parliament building, which strongly resembles the iconic structure of Paris’ “La Defense,” with its hole-in-the-middle design.  The guide mumbled something (his microphone was broken) about the trolley buses being historic for some reason, but without internet I can’t research what he was trying to say.  Although worn to the point of decay, the buildings still sport faded multi-color paintjobs which make the hillsides seem quaint from a distance.  See those electric lines behind Loni?  Tangles and tangles of such lines choke many areas of the city.  It’s a weird way to electrify. 

I couldn’t resist this shot.  It seems to be commonplace here to see dogs lolling asleep on the sidewalks.  But this pair was irresistible.  I don’t know whether the pooch was waiting for his furry friend or lying in wait.

After wandering around the downtown, we thought we were at last going to the terminal.  Well, no.  Everyone has to see the famous overlook view of the city and harbor.  We chugged (did I mention that this was an Isuzu bus with a very underpowered diesel engine?) up the grade and tiny streets and parked where Loni is smiling in the lower-right photo above.  The overlook was a good one, and afforded our first sighting of the ship (which snuck into the hillside photo above).

By now it’s close to 4:30, and we’re nowhere near the ship.  We literally ran back to the bus, did a head count, and coasted downhill considerably faster than we went up.  A tortuous route through downtown and we ended up at a cruise terminal, not at the ship, but around the harbor about where the buildings appear above the big “X” on the smokestack.  Off we jumped, grabbed our bags (thankfully, the second vehicle pulled in behind us), and I grabbed what I thought was mine and nearly had a cow when someone said “Hey, that’s MY bag you’ve got.”  Where was mine?  I ran around checking every pile and every bag anyone was hauling away.  Finally found it some distance away where someone else, apparently realizing it wasn’t their bag, simply abandoned it.  Grrrrr.  Despite our having now blown the deadline by forty-five minutes, the Celebrity people were still on hand to process us through (including confiscating our passports for the duration), load us onto yet another bus, and ferry us over to the ship’s dock.  “Home” at last.  We were completely bushed, but happy to be in our cheapest-fare-interior-cabin at last.  Thank goodness for mirrored walls.

HOLA!

Well, about 7,000 miles and 17 hours later, we’re across the Equator and fumbling with non-existent Spanish in Santiago, Chile, the start of our three week ground-and-cruise trip around South America.  We left L.A. Friday about noon, on a totally full flight to Atlanta on Delta, there to make (hopefully) a connecting Delta flight to Chile.  For whatever reason (cheap seats, no doubt), we were in the last of four groups to board.  Delta works on the social-class boarding system, and we paupers feel the pain.  Things were so crowded they were asking both for volunteers to take a later flight, and for all those in the third and fourth boarding herds to step up now and volunteer your carry-ons for at-gate checking, because the bins will be full!  Given the ridiculous sized bags that they were allowing people to take on board, I wasn’t surprised.  Loni and I did manage to weasel our way up to the head of the desperate fourth pack (hey, don’t glare at me, lady, you do what you gotta do!), and got almost the last of the bin space for her bag.  Mine was stowable under the seat.  We got a newer plane, with in-back-of-seat video screens but, alas, no freebies on Delta.  You want to actually see something?  Fork over $6 each for each movie or tv show.  Nuts to that.  Brought plenty of newspapers, magazines, & books.  We were happy to be off at last, despite this crummy photo (I’m wearing a headset).

Delta did serve a dinner, which was fairly decent, but not up to Air France standards.  Flight was unusually smooth, with nary a ripple.  Got to Atlanta’s Hartsfield International (self-proclaimed the “World’s Busiest”) on time, but ended up in a queue of planes waiting for gates to open up and spent another half hour on the ground.  Hartsfield, if not the busiest, is certainly one of the most spread out airports, and we disembarked at the gate that was the farthest possible from the one we needed to get to for our Chile flight.  Much walking and a tram ride later, we were at gate E2 with the ravenous cruiser wolf-pack:

We were in group three of four for boarding this time, and it took some determined sidling to maneuver to the front.  Same nonsense about no bin space, and they were collecting lots of bags for checking.  Still, it was high entertainment after we were seated to watch the bin-stuffing follies.  Some of those bags just wouldn’t fit, but it didn’t deter the slow-of-wit from trying.  Sorry, more bags consigned to the hold.  One gal kept trying to slam the bin door shut over and over again, with the bag visibly bulging out and nowhere to go.  Kudos to the Delta attendants.  They kept their cool and got everything under control.  Have to say, these were my first flights on Delta in over 30 years, and I was impressed with the personnel.

This plane, however, was an old warhorse.  No in-seat videos here.  Nope, ancient CRT screens dangling from the overhead every twenty feet or so.  You’d need binoculars from some seats, the resolution was crappy, and the colors were all off.  Also, since it was not an “on demand” system, you had to watch what they were showing and when they chose to show it (“Water for Elephants” at 3:00am anyone?).  Watched Clooney’s “Ides of March,” which I think was a decent film except the dialogue was so soft so often that I didn’t have a clue what was going on.  Second film was “Moneyball,” the Billy Beane (Oakland A’s) story starring Brad Pitt.  Being about sports instead of politics, that one was much easier to follow, and was pretty good.  At least Delta didn’t charge for these on international flights.  Food was again adequate, and beer and wine were gratis.  Well, all right.  I may be off wine, but can still down a Heineken thank you. 

Delta must be part of some alliance with Qantas, because the seat pitch was just as meager.  The women in front of us, as soon as we lifted off, immediately put their seats into full recline, and kept pushing back for anything more they could get.  As a result, no knee room, and my nose was four inches from the top of the seatback.  I made a point of giving the seat a bump every time I moved around, just to get even a bit.  There’s no way to sugarcoat a ten+ hour flight in cramped conditions.  It sucks.  Restless leg syndrome strikes.  This flight had quite a few bumps, so Loni put on her wrist bands and loaded up on dramamine. 

We survived, sleepless, dawn broke, and as we approached Santiago the landscape looked just like southern California:  arid hills, fertile valleys.  Since we were an early landing flight, we had the immigration and customs facilities to ourselves, and breezed through.  After, of course, the obligatory stop to pay the $144 (each) “reciprocity fee” that Chile charges to travelers from the five countries that impose some fee on Chileans entering their countries.  The U.S., Canada, Mexico, Albania (of all places) and China.  Americans, of course, paid the most.  The good news is that you have to pay it only once per passport.  Whenever you come back to Chile on that passport, it’s free.  Whoopee.  Can’t see I’ll ever get to take advantage of that.

We pantomimed our way to hailing the hotel shuttle, and are ensconced in the very nice Hilton Garden Inn near the airport.  Have yet to see anything resembling a garden, but the rooms are nice, people friendly, and this internet connection is just fine.  We keep thinking we’re in Phoenix or Albuquerque. 

More adventure tomorrow.  We have no confirmed way of getting to Valparaiso, the ship’s port, which is 80 miles away.   The front desk said they could arrange a car and driver for $288.  Ah, no thankee.  We will figure something out.  Heck, the ship doesn’t leave until 7pm.  [Cue ominous music.]

MOM GOES TO PARIS, SORT OF

Our SoCal LazyDaze owner’s club has monthly outings (called Caravans) from September through June (Nov-Dec are combined) each year.  Attendance rarely drops below 60+ rigs, and sometimes tops 100.  Within the SoCal Caravan are 8 or 9 informal subgroups composed of folks who like to get together during these meetings for potlucks, campfires, etc.  Each subgroup takes a turn in “hosting” a monthly Caravan, consisting of registering each rig as it arrives, handing out schedules and info, doing the morning announcements via CB, and taking care of all the gear that goes with the group.  When Loni and I attended our first Caravan after picking up Albatross nearly 5 years ago (!), the host subgroup was the “Past-Tents.”  That turned out to be a fortunate bit of serendipity, as we have enjoyed newfound close friendships ever since. 

The outing for this month (January) was held at Lake Perris State Park in the Perris Valley, about 50 miles east and 20 miles south of downtown LA.  Loni’s and my recent trip to Paris sparked the idea to make this Caravan a “Lake Paris” theme.  All the Past-Tents pitched in and brought theme materials, including a ten-foot Eiffel Tower, French posters, French flags, cheezy French café accordion music, and, of course, berets.  That’s Loni in her red beret under the canopy, manning the welcome tent.

I once again got dragooned into doing the morning announcements over the CB, so Loni and I ginned up a “Pierre and Fifi” routine with a few bad jokes* and an atrocious French accent that fooled no one.  Still, it was better than a dry recitation of daily events.

* As in:  Q:  “What do you get when you throw a grenade into a French kitchen”

              A:  “Linoleum Blownapart.       (Groans)

OK, there are precious few jokes about the French on the internet, other than about their military ineptitude, which I didn’t want to use.  So the pickings were slim.

Loni, who missed it last year, got to go on the tour of the local county morgue and viewed an autopsy.  She was only mildly impressed, having seen much the same on a number of occasions at work over the years.  I went last year and thought it was pretty cool.  While Loni was doing that, Mom and I went with a group to the March ARB (formerly AFB) Air Museum which is just north of Lake Perris.  As many of you know, I’m a sucker for air museums, and we’ve been to quite  a few in our travels around the country.  Mom is an old Navy Wave from WWII, and was stationed at Jacksonville NAS in Florida where she worked with the flyboys, so she also has had a long interest in military planes.  At nearly 89, she was the oldest person there and the only one with WWII service.  The museum is low key, but has some very interesting stuff, including an SR71 Blackbird high-altitude reconnaissance plane, one of the few remaining that has both engines intact.  It’s a mach-3+ machine and still holds the speed record for air-breathing aircraft.  They entered service in 1964 and continued in Air Force service until 1998.  Because they flew so high and fast, none were ever shot down although 12 were lost to crashes.  Mom is way down the body on the left.

These things were flying gas tanks, with the fuel stored within the fuselage.  Because it was made of a titanium alloy, it had a high coefficient of expansion.  When on the ground, it leaked fuel like a sieve;  when flying, everything tightened up.  The fuel was some special composition that had an extremely high flash (ignition) point.  They had to use a sodium-based explosive to ignite the main fuel.  Our docent told us of an incident where a non-fuel fire broke out near one of these things.  A maintenance man took a jerry-can of the SR71 fuel and used it to douse the flames!  This thing was created before the days of computer-aided design, using slide rules.  And it still holds the speed record.  Amazing.  Kudos, Lockheed “Skunk Works.”

They also had a nice set of MIG fighters, from early to late models, a bunch of huge bombers, Phantoms and dozens of familiar as well as obscure craft.

They even had a kindred soul to our own rig:

They do restoration work here, and we had a nice chat with one of the guys working to restore this old B-17 Flying Fortress.  They’ve stripped all the paint off, patched up the holes, fabricated parts that were missing, and now they’re about to paint it.  Mom was a real trouper, walking pretty good distances to get to all the planes that were displayed outdoors.

She also got right in there in the bomb bay underneath this B-29 Superfortress, like the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but she eventually pooped out and had to take a break.

Back at the Caravan, we did the usual round of activities.  Mom and I broke out our set of bocce balls and, in a nod to the French, played a game of boules.  The ground, however, was very hard and bumpy, so success was due more to luck than skill.  Some of the best parts of any Caravan are the Past-Tents’ potlucks, and this outing was no different.  We even had a magnifique boeuf Bourguignon, and Loni made a yummy French green lentils dish.  The lady with the beret and sunglasses is Agnes, mother of fellow camper Nancy, and she’s even older than Mom – 91!  They had a fun time trying to hear one another.

A little campfire to end the day.  Despite the coats in these later-in-the-day pictures, we had sunny daily weather in the 70’s until Saturday, when we had rain in the morning.  All in all, a good Caravan with 95 rigs in attendance.

That’s the three of us, right in the middle.  Good job, Past-Tents! 

[Photo by Art]