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Published: November 17th 2007
After several days of being lulled by beautiful spring weather, I woke up this morning to the slap-slappity sound of waves lapping against the hull of the Maggie B pushed by a strong northeastern wind screaming down off the Andes. I'm still struggling to get my bearings as far as directions go. At night Orion and his companion Canis major (which I thought I would not be able to see this far south) stand on their heads in the northern sky, and the city lights of Puerto Montt drown out most other stars that I'm excited to get to know in this new austral sky.
Chile, or the tiny bit that I've been able to see in the week since arriving, is a place I could fall in love with. Imagine California after a north/south tug of war, stretched to a length of 2700 miles and an average width of 97, the Sierras a mere 30 kilometers away as opposed to 300. Puerto Montt, where we have been in port since I arrived, doing boat repairs and making the good humored locals laugh with our attempts at Spanish, sits on a south-facing hill at the northern shore of el Golfo de Ancud, which in turn is the northern terminus of Chile's Region de los Lagos, a (justly) world famous place of fjords, islands, islets, inlets, stunningly gorgeous glacial lakes, and towering needles of granite blanketed with snow and ice that make up the southern Andes. Hiking up the hill from the Marina del Sur one is rewarded, on a clear day, with the breathtaking view of Volcan Osorno and Volcan Cabulco across the azure waters of Lago Llanquehue, the bulk of Puerto Montt's residential district spread out over the ridge in a funky carpet of corrugated metal, wooden shingles and the crayola yellow flowers of a type of ubiquitous bush in possession of 2 inch long thorns that really like catching blundering gringos unaware. This is the landscape that shaped the aesthetic core of Neruda, and in the heavy-lidded eyes and honest, hardworking hands of the people who live here, I see that same groundedness in the everyday that I have always loved about his poems.
Speaking of the everyday, toilet repair is an exercise in humility, and the head on the Maggie B has been my teacher these last few days, as I have been trying to seal a leak between the bowl itself and the flange that connects it to the hand pump that moves the contents into the blackwater tank. I thought it fixed, but I have just received word from Hannah, the first mate and bosun, that the trickle remains. Oda al bano.
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Catherine
non-member comment
into the sea you go
Hey big brother it probably has already been a big adventure and you have much more to go. It is a great experience to be able to explore the world. I am looking forward to hearing about more of your adventures. I am doing wonderful and I am home for Thanksgiving break. It is so nice to be almost done with this semester. I just have a huge paper due and I am not looking forward to writing it at all. I love you so much and I will be checking this regularly.