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Published: November 5th 2006
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The Navimag Boat
Sailing Past Puerto Chacabuca on the Way to Patagonia I have just spent a fun four nights and five days on a boat in the South of Chile. Didn’t really know what to expect when we booked the trip as our Spanish is too poor, so we just took a chance. It turned out to be really good and we spent the whole time cracking up. When we first got on the boat we thought it was going to be absolute hell as we had to sleep in what was basically a bus seat for four consecutive nights. I am looking forward to sleeping horizontally tonight!
The first few days were spent sailing down towards our final destination, the San Rafael Glacier. We reached it on the third day and spent the while day there. We were taken out in small speed boats in groups of about 15 to see the glacier up close. It was so amazing. I felt as if all those hours of sitting in geography lectures had paid off! It was soooo cold as we were sailing through huge icebergs. I had never realised that they are actually blue and not white until I went there, and we decided they looked as if they had been doused in toilet-duck! The touristy gimmick of the trip was a glass of finest (?!) whisky served on the rocks with a piece of glacier ice which you life right out of the sea yourself! I hate whisky but had to drink it. The Chileans on our boat seemed to love it and were totally merry by the time we went back.
The boat itself was a total laugh. Every night they turned the cafeteria into a cheesy disco playing nothing but Latino songs (Susan, you would have loved it!). We were just about the only foreigners the first night so all the Chileans dragged us up to dance and we somehow ended up in the middle of a circle with them all dancing around us! The next day we had to sing karaoke en-masse from song sheets to old Chilean folk songs. We had no clue so just sang any Spanish words we could think of! However, it got worse...
The next night was competition night. All the boat was split into teams according to the colour of your ticket. Us blancos got together for a meeting to plan and somehow I was put in for the “best legs” contest. Oh my God, nightmare! The only consolation was that Ken (the American guy we are travelling with) had to do the same for the men. We talked about it and decided it couldn’t be that bad. We figured we would just have to stand on stage (in the freezing cold) with a bunch of other people whilst they scrutinised out legs...
The night of the contest we tanked up with 3 litres of cheap wine (felt like total students) and gathered with the others in the basement of the ship where the competition was due to take place. It was NOT what we had expected. Instead of just standing there, we had to go up on stage alone and dance for about a minute (felt like 3 hours!). Ken danced to the Full Monty song and I got some Latino song - great! Thank god our competition was diabolical , so we both won hands down! The worst bit was after the dancing when the judges had to prod and poke your legs. I am NEVER allowing myself to be roped into the kind of thing again!
Just when we thought the humiliation was over, an announcement came over the loud-speaker the next day, and we were mortified to discover that they were showing a video of the whole thing, so we had to re-live our shame and humiliation a second time!
On the last night there was another disco in the cafeteria lasting until 4am. Again it was the same Latino music as the three previous nights. We are all now danced out and I think I will scream if I hear another Latino song in fact!
We are heading to a volcano tomorrow and then off to Santiago at some point soon. Please keep me posted on what you are all doing and I will hopefully see some of you during my travels.
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