6/26/17 Watching out the front windows with clouds low and sea flat.... just chugging along where the scenery stays almost frozen at this speed. Bigger water and grey skies.

I shouldn’t do a comparison but memories of my couple years in South America 1979-1981 have been coming back. On the reverse season schedule I traveled in the summers (Dec-Feb) to many places. Twice to Chile as it was a remarkable place. The first trip I crossed northern Argentina from Paraguay and over the Andes to Santiago. From there north and then west back over the Andes through the Atacama Desert on what was the old British built railway from Antofagasta Chile to Bolivia ….I kept going north through Santa Cruz,  La Paz, Bolivia. Puno, Cusco Huancayo, Ayacucho Peru and over the Andes again in the world’s highest railway (over 18,000 ft) and down to Lima: Up to Chan Chan and into Ecuador…. back down to Arequipa, Peru then home to Paraguay.

The second ‘summer’ trip was back to Chile… This time with a letter from the Embassy stating I was a scientist needing passage to Tierra del Fuego for research. This ruse was needed as there was still hostilities between Chile and Argentina and it was not long after the Allende coup. Needless to say military ran everything. Travel was restricted and there was no travel past Puerto Montt (being the last place with a road or rail) south. The only way south for the last third of the country to Puntarenas on the Strait of Magellan was by freighter (the other place I wanted to get to was the Torres de Paine). I presented my letter to the shipping owner in Santiago and was granted a free berth south on a freighter. Nothing like using the South American system at the time to advantage. 

This does get back to the ferry trip but all this out the window has me traveling ‘upstairs’ as well in memories. The Chilean archipelago south is nothing other than magnificent. Andes thousands of feet high going straight into the ocean… the freighter sailing a hundred feet off shore. Waterfalls, glaciers, porpoises, giant king crab…. it is all so similar to what I see out the window now. I am in the lap of luxury now compared to that trip. The storms in the southern Pacific once the boat left the safety of the passage where …. ‘highly unpleasant’.

Having seen the route of this ferry I invested in a box of a few Bonine pills. (I surely wish I had had them back then) and use them once so far when we went across Pacific open water where the swells and my inner ear came in conflict. I will use them again without shame after leaving Juneau. Memories of “driving the porcelain bus”  for three days makes it an immediate command decision.