Puerto Natales and Navimag Cruise

THE SCENE

Coming off the mountain of beautiful landscape in TdP, we come upon beautiful coastline in Puerto Natales.  I am staying at Hostel Natales which is a little more expensive than other places at $18USD, but it has super fast internet, a yoga room, oatmeal for breakfast, hot showers, and spacious rooms.  I hear that the place to stay is Erratic Rock hostel if anything just to hear people mispronounce it. 

As I strolled though town I noticed that either men are very romantic here or chicks rule.  Almost every accomodation in town is named after a woman... Casa Cecilia, Lodging Anabel, Hospedje Laury, etc.  I'm guessing that it is the later.

Another thing I find interesting here is that there must be some sort of law about having to give handwritten receipts in Chile.

  I received them everywhere in Santiago too.  Even if you buy some small little item, they make you wait around while they write up the receipt.  Actually, it is helpful as I have found myself not understanding the amount and sometimes giving them a 10,000 peso bill instead of a 1,000.  Luckily, they are very honest people and show me on the receipt that I gave them too much. 

The people at Comapa Tour agency where I was to pick up my Navimag ticket were very nice.  They let me sit on hold with Visa for an hour to verify that they had charged my credit card so I did not have to pay them the $316 USD in cash.  They offered me coffee, breakfast, etc in exchange for putting the Gloria Estafan hold music on speaker phone for all of them to enjoy.

  I asked if they had any turkey, mashed potatoes, etc, but I had no luck.

The cruise ship was a little late coming into port due to weather, so they told the Swiss girls and I to leave our bags and come back at 1AM (yes, AM!) to board.  Looks like we will get to see the nightlife of Puerto Natales before leaving.  Now here is where you all feel sorry for me.  The girls had a late breakfast and I was starving, so I had Thanksgiving dinner alone in a restaurant.  Before you boo hoo for me, I have to say it was probably the best meal I could have had if I wasn't going to be with the family eating turkey.  The restaurant was called Afrigonia (half Africa and half Patagonia.)  How appropriate is that for me?!  I got the best seat in the house next to the window where I could observe the cute short little, high cheekboned, and mustached Chilean people walk by.

  I even got to watch an interesting custom I also noticed on the streets of Buenos Aires from my window seat.  When kids have to go potty, the parents just whip down their pants and hold them like a swing over the curb.  Once the kid has tinkled, he/she gets a little shake and off they go down the street again.  Appetizing!

Now, more about the restaurant.  African music played in the background.  Many of the selections on the menu were from East Africa.  I've had my fill of ugali this year, so I opted for something more Patagonian...Salmon in coconut sauce.  The appetizer before that was a taste sensation...crab and avocado over pears.  They kept bringing out apetizers I didn't order while my food was cooking too.

  I was just as stuffed as I would have been at home after turkey, stuffing, yams, mash potatoes etc.  Usually at this time I would be having Uncle Stu's famous fog-cutter as a beverage, but I am in Chile so I opted for their famous Pisco Sour.  It hit me just as quickly as the fog cutter in 2 sips.  It was a Happy Thanksgiving... made even happier when I got to skype the family and hear everyones voices as they prepared for their big meal.

My wild night on the town here consisted of watching some local kids sing and play instruments in a heated outdoor community center.  Made a few pitstops for chocolate.  Met up with a few other people aimlessly walking the streets waiting to be allowed on board including Pete from Wales who has spent big bucks on a AAA room.

  We are all doing our last chance emails before heading over to see what the bunk beds are like in our 22 bed luxury dorms.  Do you think the 21 other people are all immune to seasickness?  They better be.  Apparently, if I want a private room it is triple the price.

So, let me also say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone at home!  Then, give you that bad news first.  You will be without daily blog entry reading for several days as the Navimag ship does not have internet.  The good news is, I can recommend another blog for your reading pleasure in the meantime.  Check out www.stephletloose.blogspot.com for Steph's side of everything that occured while we travelled together the last 3 weeks.

  I think you will find it very funny reading...if you like that special kind of English humor.  I should be back on land in about 5 days.  At that point, you and I will find out where I decided (or the airlines decided) I would spend my last 3 days in South America.

NAVIMAG ANTICS

I made it safely to port.  Lots of funny stories to tell.  I will give you just a few right now as I have no time right now because I have to get to the airport soon.  Enjoy some photos in the meantime and I will catch up when I get to Brazil.

Put 500 backpackers on a boat for 4 days with nowhere to wander and you are in for some interesting times.  We boarded the Navimag at 1am on Friday morning, met our new bunkmates, and went fast asleep leaving checking the boat out until the next morning.

  My bunkmates were Begona de Espana and oh no! another Brit named Tessa.  Another Brit that I was about to get in alot of trouble with over the next 4 days.  My Swiss Miss friends Mariana and Nicole were on the opposite side of the wall from me.  Surprisingly, this C class room was much better than what I had expected.   The dorm holding 22 people shared 6 showers, 6 toilets, and each set of 4 bunks had a thin wall between.  We had a window with a nice view, a locker, a heater...just no door.  Which was probably best as you don`t want to feel clausterphobic when the seas get rough. 

We were awoken over the loud speaker at 7:30am by our co-cruise directors Andrea and Hector inviting us to see us passing through the narrowest part of our journey and have breakfast.

  We made friends instantly with Rodrigo de Mexico who is in marketing for Loreal and amazed us with his knowledge of beauty products.  Then along came Lucy and Alex an engaged couple doing a 6 month honeymoon before the wedding from Tazmania.  Alex was our vodka supplier for the cruise.  Then along came Swiss French speaking boys Eric and Frederick.  And the list goes on of the many friends we made in the 4 days.

At breakfast some of us talked about how the boat kinda smelled like cows.  Then when back in our rooms, we heard mooing.  I recalled hearing mooing when we boarded in the middle of the night, but I thought it was just some wiseass making a funny while we all walked en masses up the stairs.  This realization was the start of our list of things to do while couped up on this boat.

1)  Find the cows.  This task was accomplished the next day as we got off the boat at Puerto Eden.  These poor cows were in crates just below my room.  One was outside the crate and as we approached it, we could see that he had very wobbly legs and was very scruffy looking.  This led to our next task...

2) Free the cows.  Okay, this one never happened as we thought it might be worse for the cows to be released into the ocean.  Technically, they were released by the ship's crew at the same time all us humans were released.

I will tell you about more of our tasks in a little bit.  Let me go back to the Puerto Eden excursion.  It is not easy for a bunch of wanderlusts to be stuck on a boat even if it is moving, so they have worked in one excursion along the route.

  We got up very early on the one day that it rained and jumped on little painted wooden boats to visit this little town for about 45 minutes.  We were all soaking wet on these little boats getting the bright yellow and red paint from the benches applied to our pants.  When we arrived to the island, we were told to keep our life jackets on.  I guess they want the locals to know immediatley who the tourists are.  We strolled along wooden paths admiring the handcrafts that were on display for us to purchase.  The oddest thing struck us as we walked by this little locked up shack that was blaring disco music at 7am...Tessa and I immediately broke into dance in our life jackets on the deck.  Video footage was taken of us and the confused locals walking by at the now named Puerto Eden Disco.

Now for the third task.  We had been giving my friend Pete that I met before boarding a hard time about  how he has 5 course meals with the Captain while we are in the school style cafeteria eating orange jelly (jello gelatin to me.)   He had purchased a AAA room to himself and was complaining about his obstructed view from his porthole.    He had never invited us to see his fancy room.  So, we decied that on this limited information about his view we were going to find his room and have a wine party in it.

3)  Crash Pete's AAA Room with Wine  This one was accomplished eventually.  It did get around to him that this was our plan in advance though.  So, he and some others had another plan to foil ours.

  Before I tell you about that, I have to tell one other task.  You see, Pete and 4 of his AAA friends would sometimes come slumming in our area.  They told us of this man who was at their table for all meals, but never said more than 1 word answers or grunts when they tried to engage him in conversation.  This was a challenge I decided to take on. 

4) Talk for 20 minutes with Silent Passenger I located said gentleman on the deck taking photos.  I took a few next to him and then asked him a few photography questions.  Soon we were talking up a storm.  He was travelling alone as his wife gets seasick.  He is Swiss, but lives with his wife in Thailand where they own a rice plantation.

  I, of course, had an audience who were taking photos from afar.  When one came over to try to save me, I did not want to leave.   I was enjoying the conversation.  Thirty mnutes later we parted.  I heard later from the AAA passengers that from that point on he was smiley and chatty with them.  My work is done.

Now back to task three.  These same AAA passengers decided that it would be funny to get someone to act like they were giving me a tip by telling me Pete's cabin number so that we could do the wine party.  But, instead of Pete's real number, they would give me Alex The Silent Passenger's cabin number.  Then I would show up with Tessa and a bottle of wine at his door.  I guess they really wanted to see how friendly he would be after that.

   Props to them for coming up with the plan.  They chickened out on going through with it.  Eventually, Pete invited Lucy, Tessa, and I over and we enjoyed the goodlife for about 30 minutes.

5) Ride the Dumb Waiter We didn´t have waiters in the cafeteria, but if we had I am sure they all would be smart.  There was this cute little elevator the kitchen crew used to transport plates from one floor to the other.  We got caught a few times pushing buttons and trying to figure out if it was possible.  My Euro friends tried to convince me that the maximum capacity displayed in kilos would work for me.  I wasn´t sure that I could trust them and we were on some of the crews bad list for previous attempts, so we settled for me crawling in for the photo and getting out quick.

6) Get Hector´s Sunglasses off  Hector was one of the cruise directors.  The entire trip (day and night) he was wearing sunglasses.  This item made it to the list on the first night, came off the next day as we realized that it was due to a medical condition, then made it back on the last night.  Our last night at sea was one big party.  It started with bad keyboard playing and singing of hits from around the world by cranky crew member Christobal.  Then we moved onto Bingo Bingo Bingo before the discoball spun until late in the evening.  I seem to be vey skilled at a game that requires no skill.  I knew before we started that I would win.  I always do.  And I did.  I yelled Bingo proudly and ran up with my card to prove it.

  Hector checked the numbers and said I messed up on one.  Everyone razzed me and said that my punishment was to dance to some song Christobal played on his keyboard for the 200 observers. Great!   But then Andrea came to the rescue and determined that I had won.  This meant that Hector had to dance!  He got all embarrassed when Christobal played striptease music.  Thank goodness because I was the one having to sit in the chair in front of him.   So then he played some latin music.  Hector threw off his glasses, grabbed me, and I just tried to keep up.  Everyone cheered....mostly because Hector finally took off his sunglasses.  My prize beside the dance?  A Torres del Paine baseball cap and a chance to check this one off our list.

7) Shave a Traveller Beard  You know how guys don´t shave when they are on vacation?  Well imagine what the beards look like when you are RTW travellers out for several months to several years.  We are surrounded by them.  However, this is a task that we saddly did not accomplish.  We had a few potential takers, but they were the ones that actually looked good in the beards.  We just didn´t think it would be right.  Plus, I was on my way to warm weather again where my legs would be exposed.  I didn´t want to dull my razor.

8) Dance with a Dishwasher     This is a hard working crew.  I learned from my dishwasher buddy Luis that they are on board working 90 days straight before they can get off to visit family for a few weeks before getting back on.

 The hours they keep are tough also.  I have seen the same people who dish up our 3 meals also cleaning the deck and making the beds at all hours.  So it was a delight to glance up to find Luis and Berta (the hardest working and oldest woman on the boat) dancing up a storm back in the kitchen during breakfast.  We were jealous.  So, when Luis walked by the disco in his orange jumpsuit we snagged him for a quick spin before the captain could find him on the video cameras.   Poor guy was always looking over his shoulder for the captain or the angle of the cameras.  Which made the next task even more difficult.

9) Wear an Orange Jumpsuit     It took a little batting of eyelashes and asking a few of the crew members in our broken Spanish before we were able to get a couple to jump out of their suits for just a minute so Tessa and I could pose for pictures in their outfits.

  It was all very sneaky.  The boys told us the precise time that we needed to go to an unlocked storage closet near our cabin.  Inside there we would find a trash bag with 2 orange jumpsuits in it.  We were to take these jumpsuit into our cabin outside of view of the cameras to take the photos and return them promptly. 

10) Talk to on the PA System      What was pretty cool about this ship is that they let any passenger anytime come hang out where they drive the thing.  We would stand up there searching for whales.  We could sit in his seat at the controls.  It was on automatic pilot, but no one else had to know that. We almost had Andrea agreeing to let Tessa announce the musical entertainment for the evening when she came up there to do this usual duty of hers.

  Just as the microphone was about to be turned on, cranky Christobal came in and told her about how we could not be trusted as they had caught us at the dumb waiter on camera a few times.  Drat!  Get a few drinks in Christobal later as he spins tunes at the late night disco and there is no problem having Tessa give commentary about the next Madonna song to be played.

We obviously had a fun time on this boat.  The passengers and crew were all great.  The scenary going by us was surreal.  An occational sea lion or dolphin would be seen.  As expected, the occasional ¨whale!¨would be shouted.  Cameras would come running, but it was always a joke.  There was plenty of food, but I can´t say it was terrific.

  We never did find out what that neon pink jiggly desert was.  There were lots of movies and talks about the local area to keep people busy.  For the most part we were on very calm waters going by glaciers and through fiords.  There was one 12 hour stretch that we were warned about when we were going to have to go out into the Pacific.  The waves were just level 5 on the 12 point scale but they were big enough to get alot of people sick. 

There is one thing you learn about when travelling on your own.  Always carry a supply of something to share.  This will get you in good with other travellers who might be heading your way.  Well, on the ship Alex was the vodka supplier.  Rodrigo was the chocolate supplier.

  And so on.  I was the seasick pill supplier.  About an hour before the expected waves I offered up free drugs along with a swing from my water.  (You have to pay for both items on board if you need them.)  I made sure that all who wanted them got them.  Fredrick and Begona opted for a drug free experience.  I even helped with tying their makeshift marble with rubberband on your wrist pressure points bracellets to help fight off the nausea.  Once everyone was taken care of, I snuck away to my bunk to try to make myself stay asleep for the full 12 hours thinking if I didn´t know it was happening I´d be fine.  But, kind travel partners that they were I had a few people come to wake me up thinking I wouldn´t want to miss dinner.   Others came bearing bread and other things that might be needed thinking I was in there getting sick.  In the end, those who took my drugs were able to make it through the night as did I. 

There were lots of deep conversations to be had also during the Pisco Sour happy hours each night.  Frederick was unsuccessful at teaching me more than 1 word in French.  Eric tried to convince me that the whole world doesn´t hate Americans.  He´s Swiss, of course.  There was talk of how the Europeans came in the the area we were cruising through and made it very rough for the natives to survive.  Stereotyping and making fun of each of our nationalities is typical.

We also analyzed the instant bond travellers have.

  How is it that you can spend just a few days with strangers from afar and know that you will remain friends forever?  Is it that you are so starved for an intimate conversation because you are away from your usual friends that you open up rather quickly with these strangers?   Is it that although your usual friends have common interests with you, they may not share your true passion of travel like these new friends do?  And, to top it off they get to experience it with you right then and there.  The answers to these questions are yet to be answered.