Puerto Natales, Chile

Trying to recover this afternoon in Puerto Natales, Chile, having dug down deep to make sure I did my part to contribute to the festivities and reveries aboard the cargo ship Magellan over the past four days while it passed through various fjords and channels in Chilean Patagonia. After years of taking bribes from eager travellers seeking passage, the owners of the Magellan finally just added "tourists" to the array of freight they´re willing to transport and built some no-frills accomodations into the vessel. The result is kind of a backpackers´ Cancun on water, complete with "pub," "dining room," "meals," a visit to South America´s largest glacier, and a heavily-encouraged day-trip to a completely uninteresting island community which survives by giving tours highlighting the degree to which the island is unremarkable.

Spent days lounging on deck in the sun while mountains rolled slowly by, catching up with various folks I´ve met along the way, getting sunburned, reading, and then tearing into a vastly enjoyable string of grade-school era cocktail activities, most of which were initiated by the Brits who apparently have elevated the common "Drinking Game" to a form of High Art. A Columbian guy we met introduced elements of counting in Spanish to a game I remember from 6th grade Algebra and I´m quite certain that I remember another game we played, which combined stomp-clapping in rhythm and various ludicrous hand-gestures indicating the identities of various participants, from my brief stint at Aunt Betty´s Pre-School in Wheaton, IL.

Also, the views and vistas were breathtaking.

One of the Irish guys was up all night last night and arrived at breakfast this morning insisting that he´d slipped undetected into the bridge during the early morning hours only to be confronted with the alarming and stupifying reality that the boat had been navigating through twisting, 80-meter wide channels on auto-pilot for the entire night.

It is not known for certain whether this is true.

Tomorrow we head to Parque Nacionale Torres del Paine for 4 days of hiking along a route we´ve coined "The Bolivian Prance" in honor of Pedro, the Columbian guy with all the good info.

In other, more important news, Tom Brady and Marvin Harrison went absolutely berzerk last Monday and led my fantasy football team to a stunning, 60-point comeback victory over the Montlake Maulers.