Navimag - Day 3

After dinner and the horrible movie last night, some of the younger passengers gathered around one couple and their guitar. It took “Country Roads” and a little bit of wine to get me moving and to branch out of my comfort zone. I had a great time, and ended up staying up until almost 4am, sharing and finishing off the magnum bottle of red that I never thought would be gone. Unfortunately, we go started talking about politics. Everyone was very nice and open-minded about things except one British guy, who’s been living in Germany for the past 5 years. He is the first strongly anti-American person I’ve met on this trip, and maybe one of the worst I’ve met anywhere in my travels. Maybe. He prefaced everything with “no offense,” “in my opinion,” etc., trying to be nice, but after a while, it was just plain rude. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that your average American is completely ignorant of topics concerning the rest of the world, and also how the US affects the rest of the world both politically and obviously economically. But he was making generalizations that were just insulting, about how he can’t stand Americans because they are ALL loud and obnoxious, coincidentally a description of the way he was acting at the time. Everyone else was very, very polite, mostly Brits, an Irish guy, and a couple of Aussies. We had a wonderful time, aside from the politically-charged banter from the one guy. I was actually glad his girlfriend had gone to bed early; if I was her, I would have been mortified and sent him to bed.

Because we were trying to beat the storm, we will be arriving to Puerto Montt much earlier than scheduled. We were supposed to arrive at 5am tomorrow; instead we will be there at 8pm tonight. We are allowed to stay on the boat, since we did pay for 4 nights, but we are not allowed to leave the boat and come back, making a run to the bus station tonight impossible. I’d love to have just an hour to run and check the schedules, which are not online or easily accessible without actually going to the terminal. Instead, I will have to wait until tomorrow to figure out where and when I will go next. The ideal situation would be a night bus to Pucón, or to the nearest town where I can make that connection, and take a day trip to Chiloé beforehand. But who knows. I love having flexibility, but I do prefer being able to access schedules, book, and pay for bus trips online.

After Pucón, I will head back to Santiago to meet friends, return my guide book and bip card, and take a day trip to Viña del Mar. My crazy German boys will be turning 24, and I’m sure it will be a wild couple of days. From there, a 24-hour bus to San Pedro de Atacama, then to Cusco and Machu Picchu for yet another grueling hike before returning to Buenos Aires via Lima. Then to Texas!