I sent a photo to the affordable tour guide in Valporaiso so he’d recognize me at the meeting place. His response? How about I meet you at the bus station? You look too Hollywood. You’ll get robbed by or scammed. That’s all it took for me to put personal safety over penny-pinching and sign up for a cram- in-a-can sardine […]
How not to get robbed in Chile
Lost Pérdida
The list was worthy of a world record. Umbrellas. Fountain pens. Three cell phones (actually two, as one was stolen), two favorite pair of sunglasses, one being retro Bausch Lomb scored for two dollars at an estate sale in Detroit, then left at a bus station in Vietnam, and another in a coffee shop in China, and a pair of […]
Colorful Chiloe Island
I’m at that part of my vacation where I’m totally tired of living out of my backpack, wearing the same old socks that are embedded with Patagonian sand (sink-washing with a squeeze of the complimentary hotel soap isn’t doing the trick). Not to mention my mauve yoga pants, which are in a state if shavasana…dead for the rest of the […]
Laguna de Do It!
This is not a good place to drop your cell phone.
Patagonia by bus.
I reread the email again thinking it was a mistake. WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THE DEPARTUTRE DATE HAS BEEN DELAYED BY FOUR DAYS The trip being a four-day freight ferry excursion from Peurto Montt to Peurto Natales, Patagonia, where I’d be unplugged for ninety-six hours and float past the fjords of southern Chile. The trip being the linchpin […]
Chile Christmas
If Santa is going to gift you the stomach flu, Peurto Varas Chile is a great place to unwrap it. Yes, I’ve been sick, my ailments beginning in Santiago and following me all the way to the lake district, specifically, Peurto Varas, where I’ve been nestled under a thick down blanket for three days. Life is good….even when it’s not. […]
Thanks Gracias
Sometime today, between the Lions game and second slice of pie and melting jello or dressing that isn’t as good as your mom’s, we say thanks. We pray for parking spots and good lab results and for lost dogs to be found and for wars to end and for willpower to lose the ten pounds we put on after the […]
Church
Ok. I work at a Christian school. Along with grading papers, I am required to go to church– but not at the same time. For a while, I went to a bilingual church in Miraflores near the Malecon. It met in a four star hotel, lets call it Holiday Heaven, where I hoped to sneak in a buffet breakfast before […]
69 after 60
Am I too old for this,? I asked myself as I grappled for my morning pills and supplements in my travel pill case. I was about to venture Laguna 69, a hiking destination near Huaraz, Peru, and about half a mile in the sky. I checked my supplies: water, fiber-rich trail mix, several sole coins for toilet fees, my tried […]
lluvia
This weekend in Lima, I saw something rather unusual. It wasn’t seeing a guy getting beat up downtown –which I did see–near the used bookstore street–about five guys pummeling one guy. Yep, just another day in the Lima city center. The unusual thing I saw in Lima wasn’t the rare yellow-tailed oriole–which I also saw– the bird looking like a […]