Magellan´s Revenge

Montezuma is not the only one who wrecks revenge on the intestines of visitors. Our ship has an outbreak of the norvovirus and yours truly has fallen prey to some invisible bug that has laid me low for a few days. Surprisingly and fortunately, Mike has escaped the bug. The buffet lines have been modified on the sip to disallow self service, so we have longer lines as we eat one of our hundred meals a day. We were committed to eating healthy foods this cruise, and for the most part we have stayed true to our commitment. A few desserts here and there, but mostly three healthy squares a day. Even if they don´t stay in the tummy long enough to be digested.

We are at the internet cafe in Montevideo, Uruguay today. We took a bus tour of the city with lots of photos to share whenever we get a chance to download. Yesterday we had a long stay in Buenos Aires, and we took lots of photos as we roamed around on the bus tour there. One day is hardly enough time to see either of these cities, but after these short visits we aren´t sure we need to see much more of Montevideo. After all, on a highlights tour they are probably showing us the best they have, and well frankly, there wasn´t that much to see. Buenos Aires on the other hand looks like a grand city...Paris of South America, with lots of charm worth a second visit.

Our cruise ends on Sunday morning when we arrive in Rio. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan our Carnival tickets will be waiting for us when we arrive and the cheap hotel we found will be both passable and within a reasonably priced taxi ride from the ship´s dock. We hope to get better access to the internet so that we can keep in touch more regularly.

Til then,
Deanne

Greetings from the Bottom of the World

We are in Ushaiha, Argentina, the self-reported bottom of the world. The last city before Anarctica. We went on a bus tour of the National Park, Tierra del Fuego earlier today. Now we sit in the Internet Cafe in the little town with the big banner reading, "Bottom of the World and the Beginning of Everything". It is a magnificently located town surrounded by jagged mountains covered in snow. They only experience thirty days of sunlight here (and you thought Seattle was bad!) but lucky for us we hit a gorgeous sunny day.

Mike just called time, so I have to run. We spent time doing our bills and answering e-mails so we are out of time here. I Will write soon.

Deanne

Our Last Port in Chile

We just took the tender boat in from our ship into the small port town of Punta Arenas. It is so foggy outside the window of the internet cafe on the dock that we can't see the ship sitting outside the window. These little internet cafes seem to have sprung up on the piers where the boats dock. There are rows of tiny phone booths for the crew and passengers to make internet phone calls to home, and a wall of computers for us to access the internet at the princely sum of $2 per hour. Compared to the exorbitant rate of 50 cents per minute on the ship (which we are currently boycotting until we are more desperate) this is heaven.

Punta Arenas is our final city in Chile. We have traveled down the entire southwest coast of South America, past the Chilean fiords and through the Magellan Straits and we are in the final city before we start up the other side of the continent. Punta Arenas was a powerful trading city for ships making the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa before the opening of the Panama Canal. Since then it has languished so that it is now a beautiful little town with several mansions left from the days of rich wool traders now turned into museums for the tourists coming through on ships. We have seen numerous other ships both in front of, and behind ours as we make our way through relatively narrow channels such as the Magellan Straits and the fiords. It is clear that the trip we are on is popular with other tourists as well. Unlike the other cruises we have taken, this one appears to have a minority of North Americans and many others speaking languages we don't recognize. There are also many Spanish speakers on board, giving us a chance to practice our deadly Spanglish on the poor staff and fellow passengers that we encounter.

Our last stop was Puerto Montt, Chile. We took a long, 8 hour bus trip called a photo safari around the countryside to see the sites. I have some beautiful photos of the lake, volcanoes and city that I will post when we next get access to wifi. The town itself was rundown and poor, but the countryside was spectacular. The nearby town of Puerto Varas was much more prosperous and worth another visit someday when we get back to Chile. The major industry of the area is Salmon farming, and it seems that every tour into the countryside included a salmon lunch at one of the restaurants catering to the cruise tours. Farmed Atlantic salmon is not really a big treat for residents of the Pacific Northwest who are able to eat fresh Alaskan salmon most of the year, but it was accompanied by some traditional foods as appetizers (a small empanada and sopilla) so we were able to try some Chilean food. Our bus was nice looking but missing some important part that holds it steady. We shook and swerved on the country roads. Most of the time it was fine, but it was a little scary coming down the narrow, curvy mountain dirt road at the volcano.

We are enjoying the company of our table mates on the cruise. We come from the four corners of the US, and the center (Seattle, New York, Florida, St Louis, with a nod to my origination in LA). The group are frequent cruisers so we have been able to hear about other great trips they have made.

Well, the fog has lifted enough for us to see the dock outside, but still not our ship. We are going to set off to explore the town. We may log in again in a few hours after walking around. If not, we will catch you in the next port of call. Until then,
Deanne

Awareness served up by a tiny Peruvian waitress

Tiny Peruvian waitress, Andrea served our lunch at the highly recommended restaurant, La Casita de Barrealas. I described finding this little Peruvian treasure in another blog entry, as today was our second meal at this delightful little restaurant hidden in a roadside house. Andrea, young and sweet, readily agreed to posing for a photo (I will post them shortly when they are finished downloading) at the beginning of the meal, and utilized her superior English skills and our totally inferior Spanish to take our order. As the various courses were delivered (first a shared vegetable salad followed by a shrimp curry for me and a fried shrimp meal for Mike then profiteroles for dessert) I took a photo of the food. At the end of the meal Andrea asked to see the photos. She seemed pleased and touched with the results, particularly when I offered to e-mail the photos to her. She returned to our table with a business card that included her e-mail address and asked me to send the food photos to the restaurant. I am not sure what transpired in that interaction except that I understood her to be touched by my desire to share them with her, and I was touched by her sweetness. I hugged her, and she said goodbye with her hand to her heart and a kiss to her fingertips. I walked back to the car with tears running down my face.

I am currently downloading the photos to attach to the blog and send to Andrea and her manager. I feel like something special happened in that little restaurant.

Thank you, Andrea.
Deanne

Meeting Friends Along the Way

Every day we have been traveling has reinforced the charm of visiting each new location for a minimum of several days. The rushing two day visits of our European whirlwind tour, while providing exposure to many fascinating places, missed the joys that familiarity bring. Today is our seventh day in the Colchagua Valley at the Vina La Playa Hotel. We added an extra night to our stay so that we now leave here tomorrow morning, drive to the airport and throw ourselves on the mercy of the cruise transfer buses to take us the hour drive to Valparaiso to board the ship. When we leave here we will miss the familiar smiles of the staff when we pass each other in the hall, the laughter that our fumbling Spanglish brings as we try to order our food and the intuitive assistance we are provided because we have become familiar to the staff(towels and sunscreen appearing without request when we head out to the pool or a third egg for Mike at breakfast). Due to our cash difficulties we have spent a week without tipping anyone (a problem we rectify tonight and tomorrow as we say our final goodbyes to everyone) yet the staff has been wonderful to us. We recommend this place to everyone.

We have also made friends of other guests, no one visiting for nearly length of the week we are here. Each group of Americans that come through seem to gravitate together. Roger and Sue from New Jersey stayed three nights and shared meals and lots of laughter. Because they were here a shorter time they crammed in more wine tastings than we did each day and were able to point us to the ones they enjoyed the most. Last night three travelers from Pennsylvania came in. Only in Chile for a few days before boarding a cruise to Antarctica, they had hired a driver and guide to accompany them. They were seeing the countryside on the back roads. We enjoyed their company at dinner last night and had the pleasant surprise of a packet of information on Brazil left for us by Barbara. She also asked for the blog address, so Barbara, if you ever read this, we appreciate your kindness.

Also checking in last night was an Argentinian family from Mendoza, the wine country capital of Argentina. Their beautiful little girls, Clara and Emilia have captivated us with their sweet looks. Trained in Texas as a Longhorn, the father (name unknown) of these little girls has offered to provide us with ideas of places to stay in Mondoza when we get there several weeks from now. He is apparently in the wine and tourism business, so he is currently off working today, but we look forward to his ideas.

Yesterday we had a terrific wine tasting with a young, well spoken college man, Christian (photo in the set of the wine country). He is studying for a career in English translation and provided a wonderful overview of the wine making process and the unique qualities of wines in Chile. We were so impressed with Christian and his knowledge of wines, not the mention the great wine that we left the tour with bottles of wine to take with us on our cruise.

On our final day in the Chilean wine country we are off to the ATM machine to load up once again. We will probably take in another wine tasting and some pool time. It is a wonderful life!

Adios, Deanne

New Link to Photo Library

I took out the European photos to make the page load faster. If you want to see any of our photos, including the deleted photos, just use the link shown in the photo column to take you to picasweb. This site, http://picasaweb.google.com/WanderingGypsies has all of our photos which are available to anyone to download to their computer. I hope this makes it easier and faster to see the new photos.
Deanne

Eating our way through Chile

Finding the restaurant was the most difficult part of lunch at the Peruvian restaurant yesterday. We had a flyer with a map showing the location as directly across from the Laura Hartwig winery on the road into Santa Cruz. It takes about ten minutes to get off the property of our hotel and its accompanying winery. The long, dusty and very bumpy rocky road from our door out to the public road through rocks up that we hear banging against the underside of our car. Each trip out to the road we see one or more of the hotel or winery staff riding in or out of the property on their bikes. They always give us a wave and continue bumping their way along. Once out to the main road, a left turn leads past small but clean and nice homes. Another fifteen minutes of driving past small homes on the road interspersed with corn fields and vineyards leads out the main road. That fifteen minutes of driving requires vigilance as there are many dogs, children, bicycle riders and folks waiting for the bus along the road. As we pass people, we usually are met with friendly curiosity. They look at us while we look at them, and mostly everyone is pretty friendly about the stare off. Eventually that road leads to the main road which is evidenced by the broken down and abandoned train station. It is our landmark for the turn.

We saw sleek, modern passenger trains on our long drive up and back to Santiago, but those trains never make it down here. In the Central Valley we have multiple track crossings marked on the roads only by a stop sign in front of them. Judging from other drivers, apparently the train track stop signs warrant a slow down before crossing, but nothing else. We haven't seen a train on these tracks yet, but I guess once is enough if you don't see it in time.

After turning off the main road onto the road into Santa Cruz, then crossing the train tracks, we drive down a long road littered with tiny towns. Some of these towns have huge speed bumps to slow down traffic, so this road requires a little caution. The homes alongside the road are not as well tended and modern as the ones near our hotel, possibly because the higher paid jobs are at the hotel rather than the town. Who knows? Eventually we pass a few signs for wineries, all of which are marked with large, clear tourist signs. The Laura Hartwig landmark sign told us the entrance was 150 metres ahead. We never saw it so we ended up in Santa Cruz to turn around. Coming from the other direction we saw a similar sign telling us that Laura Hartwig was 160 metres ahead. We finally determined a little gravel road hardly visible through a growth of trees was the entrance to the winery and one of the three or four houses across the road was our targeted restaurant. Driving slowly, we saw tables in front of the pink house and knew we had found the highly recommended Peruvian restaurant.

We chose to sit out on the front porch beside our car parked at the side of the road. Perhaps it wasn't the most attractive place to sit, as all of the other patrons could be heard inside, but it was fun to watch the action on the street while we ate. We had been told by the proprietor of another restaurant that the National drink- the pisco sour was worth ordering at the Peruvian place because they were almost as good as his homemade ones. Mike was designated driver for this trip, so I had this blended drink or lemon, sugar, ice and Chilean whiskey while we kept to a single glass of wine. Wonderfully refreshing. Our waiter, Mort and his assistant, Lady (introductions made with lousy Spanglish) recommended the Cebiche (I had the salmon version; raw salmon in lemon with thin sliced red onion which was wonderful while Mike had the enslada mixta- a huge salad with avocado, hearts of palm and artichoke) followed by our main course of tacu tacu (beef chunks for Mike and seafood for me- stewed and served with a slab of rice, tomato and bean mixture). A bowl of salted huge puffed corn kernels sat in the center of the table for snacking. We never made it to dessert, as the servings were huge. That was about $20,000 pesos, or $40.

Our hotel includes breakfast with our stay, so each morning we enjoy a small plate of fresh fruit, mostly honeydew melon and watermelon, but sometime nectarines or cherries. Today we had figs from the tree near the pool that has been dropping fruit in the walkway all week (I have been quietly taking a fig or two sometimes). Along with the fruit we get pan, or little round biscuits that are served at every meal at every place we have eaten. Butter accompanies the pan at every meal, and jam at breakfast. We drink coffee con leche; fresh coffee is served here rather than the Nescafe that many places serve when you order coffee. Finally, eggs cooked to order. We ate them scrambled for the first few days after ordering with nods to whatever was offered, but eventually we figured out how to order our Oevos Fritos, or fried.

Included in the price of our lunches and dinners (we still have no idea how much they are) is unlimited wine. We are staying at a winery after all. Given the small number of guests here the meal selection is limited to salad with or without shrimp for the first course, two main dishes which are usually beef, chicken or salmon but has once been lasagna and once gnocchi, then two desserts which are always custard or ice cream. We have been trying to get out to lunch so that we get a little variety, but have eaten our dinners in so that we can walk rather than drive after the wine.

For all of you following our trip, we are doing our best to eat and drink everything offered so that we can save you the guesswork of what is good or not when you get here. I had better take off to prepare for another round. Til later....

Deanne