CHILE-VALPARAISO APRIL 25, 2017 TO MAY 1, 2017

CHILE:

VALPARAISO

April 25, 2017 to May 1, 2017

Bob Francescone

2017-04-25 VALPARAISO DAY 1

Voice alone is not enough for her story. Eyes wide, body swaying, cinemascopic arms waving outwards then up and down, our tableside Cecilia B. DeMille, gets it across: did we feel the earthquake!! (We did not…we were on the ship.) The other waitress adds English subtitles. It was yesterday, close, and BIG, 6.9. Everything shook, people ran up the hills. But there was no tsunami. Shrugs.  How's your lunch?

Lunch is chorrillana, a Chilean specialty of fried egg, onions, slices of dark meat, tubes of something pinkish, tubular, and vaguely faunal, and something else grey and crumbly, provenance best left unquestioned, heaped atop a mound of French fries and glued together with grease into a towering mass, marginally tasty, essentially indigestible, and, surely, earthquake and tsunami proof.

Earthquake, charming and cinematic waitresses, culinary adventure…icing on the spectacular cake of Valparaiso.  We’ve been here five hours and we’re hooked. Rome has 7 hills, mere bumps compared to Valparaiso’s 47 lofty 'cerres', the city vertical and jumbled rising in staircased confusion above a magnificent bay, coastal mountains to the east and beyond them the snows of the Andes. The setting is eye-draining, but is upstaged by the city.  The old part is a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE site, but not just for the stacked old mansions from the city’s glory days (pre-Panama Canal) as the wealthiest in South America.

Valparaiso is the Sistine Chapel of street art/graffiti. Walls, houses, the alpinist staircases, fences, factories, store fronts are covered with huge murals of every school and tradition of expression. The tallest is 18 stories. We climb the streets, awash in color.

Our AirBnB is an old house atop Cerre Alegre, surrounded by colored walls, but itself unpainted. We’re welcomed in Spanish by university student Cata and in loud meows and proprietary rubs by resident feline MarYSol, walk in… and stop dead.  The back of the 110-year-old house is all windows.  Our digs hang off the hill with a 180-degree view of the city, harbor, and mountains. By the time owner Tomas (a dead ringer for a young Omar Sharif) tells us the story of the house, we’re hooked. And extend our 3-night stay to six.

Tomas/Omar gifts us with three kinds of sweet grapes just harvested from his vineyard. Mirasol crawls into my lap. Six days will not be enough.

2017-04-26 - VALPARAISO DAY 2

The ancient funicular chitty-chitty-bang-bangs us up its 130-year-old track to the top of Cerre Artilleria for 45 cents, cheap fare to aerie-view Valparaiso's spectacular setting. To the north and west is the Pacific Ocean, smudgy blue. 

Eastward is fantasy. The harbor, clearer blue, ships bright striations across the flatness, then the technicolor vertical cubist marvel of the city, backdropped by the even higher coastal mountains, greyed out behind the scrim of afternoon haze. And beyond them, the Andes, white against the blue sky, and the end of Chile, Argentina sharing the peaks.

Rumor has it that in the Inca language 'chile' means 'long, cold place'. Long it is, 2670 miles (and only 217 miles wide at its widest). Chilly it is not, not here and not today. Up north we would call it a perfect Spring day. Here, way below the equator, it’s a perfect Autumn day, sunshine distilled and concentrated into the shortening days.

The ascensor/funicular is a concession to our flatlander legs, achingly insulted by 2 days of alpinist excesses. Today we joined guide Andrea and a dozen other travelers for a three hour 'Tour4Tips' trip through the offbeat side of the city. Bus 612 got us off our feet and into an arm-wrenching uphill slalom to another panorama, Plaza Bismarck, vestige of the Germans who helped build Valparaiso. Busses zoom their routes because drivers are paid by the passenger. The more times they run the route, the more passengers, the more money they earn. Valparaiso bus drivers are famously surly. Not ours. Our group is a goldmine. We get a smile as we fill the seats…and his wallet.

Andrea talks of the hopeful days under Allende, the world’s first elected Socialist President, murdered via CIA sponsored coup, replaced by the repressive tyranny of Pinochet, and dark years of repression and death. The murals began as protest Pinochet, hastily scribbled at night by a few, then embraced by all Valparaiso, art as hope. Pinochet is long gone, dying peacefully, unpunished, bitterly remembered, but fading into history. The murals remain. And are renewed.

2017-04-27 - VALPARAISO DAY 3

'The city is full of surprises.’ And Christian throws open the windows at the back of his shop, like a magician at his 'big reveal’: Valparaiso.

Christian lives next door. Like our house, his hangs over the city, way up atop Cerro Allegre. His gallery offers first rate, one of a kind pieces, from local artists, and he offers hints of one of a kind places not to miss in this city of one of a kind places not to miss.

Valparaiso is all nooks and crannies. And we’re nooks and cranny types, secrets seekers, revelers in the small places folded away. Today we twist, turn, climb, drop, hump up, and clump down, crooked stairs, bump up, and whooppee down, the 19^th century funiculars'. Every street is a find, a one of a kind twisting canyon of color.

We meet many dogs. They drape across the cobblestones and stairways, sprawled with that happily satisfied 'what, me worry?' expression of sleeping canines. Awake they are never aggressive---except to four-legged interlopers---and not shy or afraid of a pet on the head from us two-legged passers-by, proof they’re not mistreated in this laid-back city. One only barks at 'speeding' cars, ignoring anything at a walker's pace. (Note: we see no female dogs, and no puppies. Somebody please explain.)

Lunch is one of the 80 varieties of empanadas on offer at 'our' empanada place way down the hill where vertical Valparaiso skids into the narrow flat strip along the bay. Empanadas are everywhere, but our Empanada Lady is the Michelangelo of Munchies. We’re working our way through her list. Number 56…or is it 2?2, or 33?...is cheese, artichoke, corn, spinach, basil.  Deep-fried to order, the crust hot, not greasy, tender and, flaky, these are the apotheosis of street food, right up there with the potato samosas in Harar, Ethiopia, and the New York hot dogs of my childhood memory.

We’re way up the hill at 9pm, joining early locals in the nightly search for dinner. The restaurants are tiny, folded fit into the nooks and crannies, so tiny they are themselves nooks (or is it crannies?). Our find is a small room, so, tiny, and colorful, unforced, real. They hand-make thin crusted pizzas, the one food that may be universal, though rarely done this well.  I can do no better than to say this tiny nook (or cranny) is worthy of Valparaiso.

We are glad we have more days here.

2017-04-28 VALPARAISO DAY 4

'…and if I love you, watch out!

The would-be Carmen tosses her warning, high note, hair, and skirts at the crowd and bows. Applause trickles in. Most shoppers wander by, a few drop coins in her basket, continue down the street. She's not bad. Her tenor buddy is not 'not bad'. He's criminally awful. He darkens the sun of 'O Sole Mio' with notes so exuberantly flat they lie like pancakes on our ears. Same applause. The crowds of Viña del Mar appreciate the effort. Our coins join theirs and we walk on. Quickly. Tenor is revving up to almost scramble up the heights of my least favorite Neapolitan folk song, the one about funicular railways.

We’re wandering in Viña del Mar, Valparaiso's other half, 45 cents, and 15 minutes to the north, beach, not port, looking for a museum with artifacts from Easter Island.

Viña is pretty, of the vapid runway model variety. It is Valparaiso bleached, nooks and crannies ironed into flat rectilinear graph paper, surprise and twists banished, usurped by polish, glitz, angular, high rise glamour, suitable home for those flat tenor high notes. But, there’s hope for Viña yet. This is Latin America, life and color and music will erupt. Carmen was the real thing.

Viña has sprawling parks and plazas. We find the museum under trees. The museum tells the story of Easter Island, Rapa Nui to its inhabitants. They got there in one of the great adventures of our species, the peopling of the tiny dots of land in the immense Pacific. They invented a written script, (yet to be deciphered), a great accomplishment, defoliated their island (not so great), erected the immense stone heads they’re most famous for, and, like many of the non-European peoples of the planet, were carted off as trophies, their culture trashed. 

The story is compelling, collapsed into clear images behind glass in a tiny room. The glass rattles. The museum lurches sharply in one direction. We stumble as it lurches back. The attendant yells again, again, again. No need to translate. We run….

2017-04-29 VALPARAISO DAY 5

Our fifth day begins with a wave frim Anita, who runs a lunch-only restaurant down the hill. At 3, our Empanada Lady smiles an ‘Ola' and squeezes my arm in welcome.  After 4 days, we’re regulars. We have a neighborhood. 

And we’re getting good at scurrying through…uh, up and down…its twists. My knees may complain but those thigh, calf, and butt muscles are tuned and revved up. (Note to Butt Watchers: Valparaiso's get a 20, a full 10 on each bun. My, my, my …and Ole!).

Today we test those muscles out on a long walk on Cerro Bellavista, north and east of our Cerro Alegre, and waaaay up into the non-touristic heights. Our neighbor, Christian, says there are some good murals up there. 

'La Sebastiana?'

'Si'

340 pesos (about 50 cents) each changes hands and we plop down onto our slippery seats for the Bus 612 Slalom up Avenida Alemania (German Avenue). We lurch, slide, and slosh, experts after all those earthquakes.  For a while, the higher we go, the smaller and more precarious the houses. They drip in clunky chunks down the hillsides, up here almost vertical. In the past Valparaiso's wealthy stayed on the coast. The less so, climbed the hills. Now, way up where the views reach west across the Pacific and north to California there are sleek high rises, gifts of the automobiles that replace Bus 612 for the newly wealthy.

'La Sebastiana!'

We clank out of 612 in front of a blue and red high rise, no prettier than those anywhere else, and with no murals. Across the road is La Sebastiana, one of the homes of Pablo Neruda, Chile's Nobel Laureate poet. We pass on the voyeurism such places suggest to me, and head downhill. 

A cluster of murals painted by art students in protest during the early days after Pinochet wrested legitimacy and debased Chilean democracy, history, and promise, is now an open-air museum. There are only about two dozen, but they are courage written large, in bright colors, unmistakable protests of that wrong. Perhaps one day, our Women's March will be so remembered.

The walk is steep and long, but Valparaiso carries us. A detour takes us past a row of small curved benches, croissants tiled in abstracts. A blue fantasy woman ten stories tall blocks the harbor view briefly. Passionfruit ice cream so deeply flavored on my tongue that it makes me squint sits atop a chocolate sibling scoop, frozen and distilled hot fudge.

We end at Empanada Lady. Empanada Number 60 is cheese, tomato, arugula, onion, olives, red peppers wrapped in pastry heaven, and dusted with her 'Ola' of recognition.

Aching knees don’t matter.

2017-04-30 – VALPARAISO DAY 6

The cigarette cantilevers off her lip, dripping ash into her handful of playing cards. She offers the King of Ash. It plays. It’s a man’s world here on the street by the market, tables of men fingering chess pieces, clicking dominoes, sliding royalty and mere numbers from hand to table. She's on her own.  Maybe beating the odds.

We’ve done a dry run for tomorrow’s trip to Santiago. The Terminal de Bus is in 'the other side' of Valparaiso, on the flats, close to the sea, and working class.  There are no murals here. Either they have not gotten here yet, or they never will, people here busy living life close to the bone, undecorated.

We walk back home passing the gamesters, scoping the 'book and antiques' market, ecumenically making space for hats (winter is coming), Vinyl LPs (Janis Joplin, the Village People, Donna Summers), and food venders. My favorite display, blanket on rough sidewalk, is 'El Bazar de Diogenes', offering large lanterns to whomever might need one to search, as did Diogenes of Athens, for one honest man.

In the produce market, grapes, almost plum-size, purple as eggplants, are 2 kilos for 1000 Pesos---almost 4.5 pounds for $1.50. They are too beautiful to eat, but even they are upstaged by baskets of red peppers, glowing with captured sunlight.

Everywhere there is music blaring, feeding energy to the crowd, people packed so tightly there is almost no room for the notes to slide in and build their rhythm.

The walk back is easy and cool. Early morning fog, then clouds, have captured the blue sky for the first time since we arrived. It’s Autumn in this hemisphere, 7 weeks from the first day of winter, an unnoticed blip in the perpetual Spring of Valparaiso. It’s flat until we start uphill to Empanada Lady (Number 60, again, and 'Ola'). We puff up the 147 steps to our part of Cerro Alegre, lungs getting better at it, legs already there.

'I forget the word for friends of the bride.'

'Bridesmaids'

'Yes’, and he laughs. The vice of that curious mind grips the word.

After two days of semi-conversations over fully-bad connections we finally talk with our son, Abel. He loves the pictures of our adventures here, but now has his own discoveries. He has been to a wedding in Addis Ababa and is describing how it is different from weddings home 'in the north'. 'In Addis, the bridesmaids (now, firmly gripped, he won’t forget it) also get butter in their hair.' 'And we had meat. Chopped raw beef with butter, too'. He's matter of fact, as befits the son of an anthropologist. Once again, he surprises us.

Our adventures in Valparaiso may be winding down, but Abel is always a surprise. He may be the great adventure of our lives.

2017-05-01 VALPARAISO-SANTIAGO-DFW-TAMPA

It’s our last day in Valparaiso.

One of the charms of our slow travel is the hellos as we acquire a neighborhood. The goodbyes are less fun, but we disguise them as hellos, then go off, disappearing ephemerals to our neighbors, our memories intact, and sturdier for the long days we have been here.

Last night at our third meal in 4 days at La Bruschetteria, the young waiter knows what beers we drink. Across the cobblestones, and at the end of one of our favorite alleys, the wooden walkway drops off over a courtyard. Below, twenty-somethings stand still, draped in arched and glued pairs. The old man presses a button on the boom box. The statues melt into the tango, still glued shoulder to thigh, under the night sky. Is there a more achingly beautiful dance? We walk down the hill. The night swallows the music, but not this memory.

Breakfast is again at Desayundo. They won’t remember us, but the scrambled eggs, omelets, and homemade bread and the view out onto a busy corner way and across to a pastry shop up Cerro Alegre will stay with us.

Next door neighbor, Cristian, waves us into a long chat on the street, adds bubble wrap to protect the glass plate that will be our souvenir of Valparaiso and of him, then hugs us goodbye. Maybe Sarasota next for we three?

Ms. Personality, MarYSol, the cat, comments on every step of the packing from her Imperial Perch atop my new patchwork bag, then demands and gets a spot in Dennis' lap. Well softened, we look susceptible, and she tries to scan us into filling her kibbles bowl 'catmmentary' and instructions varied and vociferous. She’s well equipped for leading the next guests to do her bidding. I doubt she’ll miss us as much as we will miss her.

Empanada Lady and Anita, purveyor of wonderful cheap Italian lunches (‘made with love', she says, and it shows) are closed. We wave anyway, carrying memories.

Three buses, three hours and twelve dollars later we’re in the passport line at Santiago Airport. In front of me, a burly guy bends to check his backpack and flips me a Jose, the Plumber view edged in red Ralph Laurens. The Andes and Himalayas are bulging parentheses for a---thank you, Travel Goddess---shallow view of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Some memories are best left behind.

So to speak.

 

CRUISE AROUND CAPE HORN APRIL 10, 2017 TO APRIL 25, 2017

CRUISE AROUND CAPE HORN

April 10, 2017 to April 25, 2017

Bob Francescone

2017-04-11 - TUESDAY-CRUISE DAY 1-BUENOS AIRES

As I gallop around on my anti-cruise high horse (fed, I admit, on total ignorance of cruise life), Norwegian Sun surprises us. Our bargain inside 'stateroom' is not in a lifeboat, but is on the ship. It is spacious, with twin beds, a couch as a third berth, a pull-down bunk as possible fourth berth, desk, acres of closet and drawer space, a desk, TV, and a bathroom of origami perfection, everything folded into a tiny space, compact, efficient, comfortable. There are multiples of all in the huge mirror that is our ersatz win…er, porthole. Stateroom 4110 is bigger than our guest room at home, with a private bathroom, and it will carry us to Tierra del Fuego and around the far tip of South America. Dr. Who, eat your heart out!!

This is our home for 15 days, today lolling in Buenos Aires, tomorrow in Uruguay, then out into the Atlantic.

Insistent rampaging lust to 'have a good time', is packaged, and presided over with diabetes-inducing cheerfulness by Cruise Director David, Aussie accent and voice launched into squealdom, sacrificing content to hyperbole. The Grand Canyon is awesome. The 'Drink of the Day' is not.

But, the efforts are inclusive. There are special mixers for people traveling alone and for LGBT passengers. I forgive the chirpiness.

Fellow passengers? Imagine our super-annuated Sunday matinee opera patrons. In bathing suits last trotted out several sizes ago. Bulging Hindenbergian is the look du jour. Judging from behavior at the food trough things will not improve on the cruise. The sights at the four bubbling hot tubs suggest cannibalistic treats might be sneaked onto the menu in the Specialty Restaurants. Boiled Behemoth?

We’re a multi-national and polyglot bunch. Announcements are made in Australian, German (this IS Argentina), Spanish, and Portuguese…the first and last totally unintelligible.  There is potential for interesting conversation between bites.

We climb 7 flights up to the Alpine heights of the observation deck.  We are many feet higher than we ever get in Florida. Dennis' many-functioned camera tells us we’re 52 feet below sea level, news indeed to the captain and the complacent sea licking our shipside stories below. I chalk it up to the effect of the Antipodes.  If the point of a vacation is to escape from reality, the camera is leading the way.

We ignore instructions about how to have a good time, find a deck chair, sit in the sun, slip into 'dolce fa niente' mode. I slide off my high horse. I start to get this cruise thing.

We eat again (When in Rome, after all…), walk the decks, descend into the Stygian depths of Deck Four.

'Skopje? ' a smile tells me I have guessed right. Sweet-faced and handsome, Dragoan is from Macedonia (truth disclosure: Skopje is the only town I know in Macedonia, so it’s a lucky guess) and is our cabin steward, sprucing up Stateroom 4110 for us.  Cruise-staffing is a major draw in Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, eastern Europe. Without Dragoan and his crew mates there would be no cruise, no cruise industry. It sails on the labor of migrants, refugees.  Like us, he’ll live down here on Deck Four, a fellow troglodyte. Unlike us, he won’t get a chance at sunlight.

2017-04-11. BUENOS AIRES

Sex.

Entwined, entranced, the tango dancers dance their primal narrative of attraction. This is a sexiness deep below the obvious beauty of the dancers. They dance on. The tango stops being about sex. It is sex.

We are astonished. Any tango we’ve seen before has been diluted, purged, decorated, prettified, sanitized, trivialized, demeaned…reduced to the form, as pornography reduces the erotic to the obvious.

2017-04-12- MONTEVIDEO

We wander Montevideo’s old city, sea all around. At first, it’s a scratch and dent version of Old Buenos Aires. Dennis says it reminds him of photos of Cuba. Then the laid-back charm seeps in. There are no cars along the pietones only streets, and very few of us pietones.   Wild latinate street art spills over the walls, animal fantasias, Che, Fidel, a magnificent owl, a supple and languid senorita. The art deco facades are not so much worn as lived in. They’re a bit like old aunties, watching over us pietones, and with make-up a bit askew.

2017-04-13 – AT SEA.

At sea, almost, we hug the coast of Argentina. South America is a blur to the West. We are slowly released from land and given to the sea. On board we wander the decks, now our home for the next 2 weeks. We join the lemmings on their march to the endless food on Deck 11. ‘Seven pounds a week' bubbles insufferable David, our Aussie Cruise Director, describing the effects of endless food on the typical cruiser. The crew are svelte, the passengers spherical. Many have opted for 'cruise wear', skimpy, tight, fluffy and decades too late.  The Brits describe it perfectly: 'mutton dressed as lamb'.

2017-04-14 – PUERTO MADRYN

I love ports. 

The ships draw me out across space to their home ports stenciled on their rusty rumps. Then they drag me back across time. I wonder: how long have humans sailed the seas?  At least 40 to 60 thousand years it seems. That long ago our distant relatives, reaching the end of land in their great migration out of Africa launched into the seas between southeast Asia and Australia. It had to be in boats. There have never been land bridges linking Australia to Asia. And the Dingo Paddle is not an option.

2017-04-15-AT SEA

This morning Norwegian Sun carries us into the South Atlantic and out of sight of land. Our bearing is Southwest towards The Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas to Argentines), where we will awake at dawn. At this latitude, the ship can sail eastward around the world until it bumps into the other coast of South America. Some time tonight we will cross an invisible spot and be closer to Antarctica than to Buenos Aires.

All around us is sea and horizon, all blue, brighter in the sky, deeper beneath. We are alone on the surface of the sea.

Almost.

In the far distance Dennis spots, feathery columns erupting from the sea: the deep breaths of spouting whales. Will they sing of us?

2017-04-16– FALKLAND ISLANDS

Easter Sunday

Remember Easter, the ancient fertility festival appropriated by Christians, who added some powerful rebirth symbolism, but now degraded to a holiday  where we celebrate rabbits who lay colorful hard-boiled eggs that hatch into little chickens? We spend it anchored in Stanley.

Stanley, the only town on the Falklands puts up a  brave front. Stanley-ites paint their houses in bright Easter egg colors, defiant rainbows against the grey world around them. The islands are miniscule bits of rock, windswept, cold and dreary. It’s hard to imagine why 2,000 people choose to live here. The Brits and Argentines fought a war over these bits, some say because Margaret Thatcher needed a 'cause' to prop up her falling ratings. As if the Brits needed more fog, rain, and cloud cover. Perhaps, like me, they like the adventure of being in wildness, far away, at the ‘end of the world'?

But, we board the Norwegian Sun anyway. Deck 11 calls, louder than the call of the wild.

2017-04-17 CAPE HORN

400 miles from Antarctica

At 18:11 we round Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, leave the Atlantic Ocean and slip through the Drake Passage and over the waves into the Pacific Ocean. The water temperature is 48 degrees. Antarctica is 400 miles straight south.

The waters in this spot, where the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans meet are among the most turbulent, unpredictable, and dangerous on the planet, as each ocean wrenches currents into water mountains whipped by hurricane force winds.

The Bounty, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, tried for 31 days to round the Horn into the Pacific, gave up, canvas sails defeated by water and wind, turned, and sailed back across the Atlantic and around Africa to the Pacific.

Today, great corkscrews replace sails.

We are lucky. We float on bare ripples, the winds only angry not vindictive. Our captain nudges Norwegian Sun into a 360 degree turn, a soft spin in the hard silver steel, son everyone on board gets to see Land’s End. There will be no more crossings this year.

2017-04-18-  PATAGONIA

The Andes tumble into the Pacific in Patagonia, strewing archipelagos, great shards of rock capturing slips of ocean walled in stone. We thread the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel, following the routes of Magellan and Darwin, journeys that changed how we perceive the world, Magellan tying the continents into one accessible whole, Darwin tying all living things into his Web of Life. I wonder if they saw the beauty here, even on a day like this, greyed and fogged. The sea is calm, hammered silver in the late afternoon light, smoothed by our wake. It ripples against pinnacles of black, their tips iced with sunlight caught by glaciers.

Three thousand kilometers (1900 miles) from Buenos Aires we dock in Ushuaia, southernmost city on the planet, gateway to Antarctica, two days sail straight south. It’s a lively place, a strip of color between Land’s End and no man’s land.

Delegated by travel buddy Luis to get the skivy about Antarctica trips, we luck out with TIERRA DEL FUEGO AVENTURA run by bouncy Solange and ridiculously handsome Patrizio. Yes, there are triple rooms, the best deal because they are low in the ships and so less affected by those roiling seas and sea sickness.  Yes, the ships provide boots and clothing, or we can rent whole outfit for about $100. Solange takes a good look at us, listens to our travel tales, and adds: 'you know you can spend the night ON Antarctica in special sleeping bags’. BINGO! I’m hooked. Dennis? Not so much.

Norwegian Sun is the last cruise ship to round the Horn this Autumn and we’ve already turned north. No more ships will head south until November, leaving Antarctica to the cold, ice, wind, roiling seas, and darkness.

2017-04-19 – PUERTO ARENAS

'What did you buy?’

'Is there anything to buy?'

‘There’s nothing to buy.'

Overheard conversations don’t very much. It’s an old crowd, not much for adventure outside of the shops.

It’s national holiday, 'Census Day’ and most businesses are closed. Frustrated on shore, credit cards are voracious on board. Passengers stack up to buy gold, Columbian emeralds, 'art', …and most obvious, the $79 a day drink package: 'Drink anything, anytime, anywhere, as much as you like.' 

The super-annuated '79ers' are everywhere, 'getting their money's worth', wine glasses, beer, or 'drinks of the day', in hand…. everywhere, all day, in corridors, elevators, on decks, and staircases.  Immoderate imbibers, endless food, undulating floors, and Norwegian Sun' policy to hide bathrooms, make for some messy possibilities. Barf bags appear.

We stick to ice tea.

2017-04-20. PACIFIC OCEAN

Toto, we ARE in Kansas.

Fifty mile an hour crosswinds and 20 foot swells (aka 'moderate to heavy’) under metal grey skies rock 'n roll us out of the Straits of Magellan and north into the Pacific. The coast of Chile has slipped off the horizon, now a blur, hazy wisps of white caps holding it onto to the metallic sky.

Norwegian Sun dances on the waves. Topside, on decks 11 and 12, passengers careen, lurch, and stumble-bounce to the Maritime Mambo, always a step behind.

Eight decks below, stateroom 4110 is dead smack in the middle of the ship, in maritime Kansas, halfway between north and south (aka bow and stern) and halfway between east and west (aka port and starboard) and close to the water line and away from engines. Nothing extreme happens in our Kansas. Norwegian Sun rolls and pitches around us. 4110 remains unperturbed. Middle of the road, bottom of the heap, dirt cheap?  Sign me up.

But, we keep barf bags handy just in case.

2017-04-21 to 23 CHILEAN FJORDS

To the east beyond the clouds, Chile rises into the Andes. To the west, the Pacific stretches to the horizon. In between, mountain and sea are zippered into one of the world’s great landscapes, the fjords of Chile. Heading northward, we go east, west, south around forested Andean chunks rising straight out of the sea, threading through the rock and water lace of the fjords.

Tiny Puerto Chacabuco, folded deep in the fjords, has the self-sufficient feel of a mountain town, but at sea level. It’s inaccessible by land or air. Dogs doze on the road. They ignore us. They all look related, variations of scruffy. The tiny café has empanadas, hot chocolate, iffy internet. Café Lady dispenses all and juggles calculations in Argentine Pesos, US Dollars and Euros. Chacabuco has 2,000 lucky inhabitants. Norwegian Sun adds 1900 cruisers. ‘There’s nothing here' says one. The soaring walls, untouched forest, pristine waters, refuse to grant her an echo.

Later the clouded skies and late afternoon light drain color from the sea and cliffs. The fjords flatten into a Chinese scroll, washed in endless shades of grey, unrolling into the soft white light of sunset. Nothing here? Really?

2017-04-24 LAST DAY IN CRUISISTAN

The big seal snorted at us out of his grandfatherly, myopic, and rumpled face and sank out of sight into the shallows ten feet away, just off the main market street of Puerto Montt. Lonely Planet's Chile Guide describes Puerto Montt as 'of minimal interest’.  Hardly!  Bustling and eye-engaging like all active fishing ports, it has an unwrapped vitality, Chile's best salmon and mussels, and resident seals offering commentary on passersby. We would have lingered, tasted the town for a day, or two, or three.

But, this is Cruisistan, home of 'Will of the Wisp', ephemeral travel. Lingering isn’t part of the deal. The voyage is the point, not the destination. The 900 native inhabitants welcome and manage us guests, all 1980 of us, with trained aplomb. They are delightful, friendly, accomplished, efficient, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural. The food is delicious, and omnipresent. The beds are magnificent, the showers hot and strong. Entertainment is nonstop. Opportunities to bleed money are everywhere, but are avoidable. Cruisistan provides a seamless, challenge-free, smooth, comfortable 15 days’ traverse of the tip of South America. We couldn’t do it any other way. And we’re glad we did. No complaints there. We’re just not Cruisistan types. We’re lingerers.

Lesson learned, but satisfied, we savor the voyage on our last day as we smooth sail north to Valparaiso, our final port of call, almost 5000 miles from Buenos Aires on the other side of South America. We have ‘rounded the Horn', and followed Magellan and Darwin, and in great comfort. Maybe sometimes the voyage is the point.  I’m glad we didn’t have to swim. And there were hot showers…

 

ARGENTINA APRIL 6, 2017 TO APRIL 9, 2017

ARGENTINA:

BUENOS AIRES

April 6, 2017 to April 9, 2017

Bob Francescone

 

APRIL 5 AND 6, 2017 – TAMPA-MIAMI-MONTEVIDEO-BUENOS AIRES

For the third time in less than four months I cross the equator, five miles below, again in the dark.

When I was a kid my favorite expedition with my father on our weekend visits was to the airport. He loved to watch the planes take off and land. I’d map the places the planes had been, or were going to, imagination flying, my feet landlocked in Bellerose, Queens, New York. In the last four months, I have walked on five continents, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and, now South America. My feet are catching up!

American Airlines 989 is perfunctory, unimaginative, snooze-worthy. There are no movies. Breakfast is à la Motel Five and Half. My seat mate, doppelganger for salsa star Ricky Martin, (and therefore none of the above) creates angular origami fauna and flora from the pages of the airline magazine, muggle-stuff become magic.

We catch a local bus in front of the Montevideo airport to Tres Cruces bus depot where we board the Seacat long distance bus for the 2-and-a-half-hour trip north west to Colonia, Uruguay. Buenos Aires is an hour and a half ferry ride across the brown Rio Plato, here ocean-wide. Midway, we are out of sight of land, Uruguay and Argentina below the horizon.

Argentina’s national sport may be 'futbol', but strikes are a close second.  Today there is no public transportation.  We walk the last mile and a half through the streets of Buenos Aires to our AirBnB digs. It is a smidge over 34 hours and a smidge over 5,000 miles since Roger and Greg picked us up in our driveway. Little Bobby F. has come a long way from Bellerose, Queens, New York. And my feet hurt.

APRIL 7, FRIDAY – BUENOS AIRES

'Do you eat meat?' It’s a question with only one possible reply in beef-enamored Argentina. Sebastian and Iris, our young guitaristo and drummera (?) AirBnB hosts, are eager to please, and very sweet. I squeak out a “yes" I hope carries enough bloodlust. It does.

A half hour later we are in their favorite local carnivortorium, the gently named 'La Poesia'. There isn't much poetry on the menu, though the Spanish words slide gently into our ears if not our comprehension.  The many pages of ways a cow and barnyard buddies can be dismembered and served up defeats us. Huge tankards of local beer are smooth, but unhelpful.  Dennis chickens out with hand-made, fresh, cheese and rugula sorrentinos (a size 24 and full-figured ravioli like my Sorrentina grandmother used to shovel onto my plate) in a version of basil pesto, fresh basil, walnuts, garlic chopped, not ground. (Note: you pick your pasta sauce and pay extra for it.)

The waiter (a Sorrentino version of the usually svelte, tight-jeaned, local gaucho types) speaks no English, but is bountifully helpful, and points to a long line of Spanish nouns attached to one of the higher prices on the menu: 'Especialidad de la casa'. Sure, why not? Eyebrows rise. 'Rojo?' 'Red?'  'Si'. He nods approval. A very sharp pointed knife joins our loaf of bread. I regret not paying more attention to my uncles, the butchers in the family store.

The 'Especialidad' arrives with a two-handed flourish. It is stupefying. The steak, a full.8 inches by 4 by almost 1 inch is sacrificed bovine perfection, 'rojo’, delicious, almost too tender for that knife. The special touch of the 'casa' is to make it the canvas for a whirling Jackson Pollock stack of everything the casa has to offer:  a field of perfectly fried circles of potatoes, an ocean of fresh peas, onions, red peppers, and a topping of fried egg. Curly strips of salty bacon add an ecumenical touch from another part of the barnyard. 'Especialidad' is heart-stoppingly good in too many senses. Poetry, indeed.

That was last night. Today we absorb the effects of the 34-hour trip, that tankard of hefty local beer, and all that beef. Sebastian makes us jerba mate, caffeine-dense local drink of choice and we all spin travel stories. Ours will get him to Ethiopia. His will get us to Bolivia.

Late afternoon hunger pangs get us back to La Poesia. We share a potato tortilla (think thick quiche, not thin pancakes) and a cheese and veggie omelet, semi-antidotes to yesterday’s carnivorous indiscretion. Our waitress, of a 'certain age' and rich in expressive flourishes, semaphores delight when she excavates from our 'Spanglish’ that we are from the USA. Then she adds a coda of wrinkled forehead, raised eyebrows, shrugged shoulders and two clear words in English: 'Trump'. 'Crazy'.

She gets a big tip.

APRIL 8, SATURDAY – Buenos Aires Day 3

There are homeless people sleeping in the streets.

Buenos Aires is one of the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan, beautiful of cities. It has been called 'the Paris of South America', as if every continent needed a Gallic clone. The architecture has the same roots in 19^th century elegance. But this city is more than gracious brick. I feel a luscious Latin warmth, energy and pizzazz, a hint of a tango about to take over the streets. Paris is logic. Buenos Aires is passion.

The look of the people is European. I don’t see the font of genes from the original peoples so obvious in Peru and Central America...not until I look carefully at the faces of the people living in cardboard, on piles of rubble, wrapped in jetsam. There I see the cheekbones and eyes and noses of the Americas.

In one of those magnificent buildings is a museum of the native peoples. There I found this quotation:

'It is a paradox of the Western world that it cannot know without possessing and it cannot possess without destroying.'

And, there are homeless people sleeping in the streets.

APRIL 9, SUNDAY– BUENOS AIRES

'My father worked on the building many years ago.'

It’s one more of the spectacular stone portraits of 19^th century elegance that make the streets of Buenos Aires. We mourn the graciousness of that era. But our old friend, Mario Lorenzo, is happy, resurrecting days walking these streets with his father, a 'dandy' with a feather in his fedora, and a love for his adopted city. We’ve known Mario for years, but only on the turf of his adopted country, ours. He was happy there. But here he is rooted, spinning stories decades in the making.

We walk for hours, pushed by his memories, pulled by the allure of the city.

Buenos Aires is famous for its doors. Next to one massively bronzed set is a small sign: La Prensa. My pixilated memory burps a sound bite of a teacher telling our class that Peron had just closed this newspaper. Way across a park a stylized profile of Evita herself stretches for a dozen stories across the facade of a skyscraper. 'That is new.' Shrug. 'The decline of Argentina started with Peron.' And he leads into more stories of his life here.

Lunch is fried calamari and then we gild the lily of a mound of flan with a side puddle of dulce de leche in Mario's favorite restaurant. Both are served by a bronzy waiter, shapely head wrapped in a samurai haircut. He thumbs up the photo of me as samurai in Madama Butterfly, an ally in fantasy, communicating via hairdo.

Now, we, too, have a story of Buenos Aires.