Christi and I drop our backpacks among the Samsonite and Louis Vuitton suitcases at the offices of Cruceros Australis and receive our cabin assignment (room 114 on the Patagonia deck). We can’t board the boat till 6 pm, so we kill some time at the Punta Arenas municipal cemetery which is a site to behold. It’s an elegant city of the dead; an evolving piece of art. There are enormous mausoleums adorned with statues, together with more modest graves of immigrant laborers. The cemetery is immaculately maintained with lines of topiary cypress trees and named avenues. It appears that Punta Arenas takes better care of the dead than they do the living. And of course there are stray dogs, including a bedraggled mother and puppy. For once Christi has no food to share and is heart-broken as the dogs whimper for help.
At 6pm we walk excitedly along O’Higgins Street to Arturo Prat pier (both O’Higgins and Prat are national heroes in Chile, so you can’t make fun of their names). Even though we’re in the cheapest cabin (relative phrase) our accommodation aboard the MV Mare Australis is delightful. We have large windows with great views, two sumptuous beds to ease our tired bodies, and a spacious bathroom with endless hot water. It’s about as different to the MV Samba (our Galapagos Islands boat) as it’s possible to get. We’re ecstatic and quickly unpack, stowing the evidence of our previous backpacker existence in the closet.
On the desk I notice a copy of our itinerary and it begins with welcome cocktails in the Sky Lounge at 7 pm. Well let’s go! At the reception, Captain Enrique Rauch S makes his welcoming remarks, and this is followed by a display of Chilean folk dancing. Next we have a safety briefing, which focuses primarily on the protocol for using the Zodiacs (the small motorized rubber dinghies that will whizz us ashore). I’m so enthralled by the whole experience that I barely notice the boat slip quietly and seamlessly from the dock.
The gentle motion of the boat doesn’t last long, however, and as we sit down to our posh dinner the old, familiar feelings of mal-de-mer return. Belatedly, I take a Dramamine and curl up on my luxurious bed. All around me people are enjoying their roast beef with Chilean wine pairing and generally having a much better time of it than I am. Much, much later Christi staggers back to the cabin with the rather slurred news that there is a free bar for the duration of the cruise.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching, laugh-wrenching tale
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