Travel with Indigo

1. One day while wandering around the centro in Santiago I came upon a small coffee shop arrestingly named Cafe Passion. Its large shop window had been fully blacked out adding to the allure. Once inside the first sensation was heat. The place was at least 80 degrees. Then there was the dark. For a coffee shop, its ambiance seemed unusually intimate, especially for the mid day. Once my eyes adjusted, it became immediately clear why a coffee shop should be both hot and dark. Behind the counter from which the coffee was being served to seated customers were a bevy of lovelies clad in …well, not much. Thong bikinis and airy halter tops seemed to be the uniform of the day.

I had happened upon an institution unique to Chile and confined by law to a few square blocks in the center city, called cafe con piernas, or coffee with legs. Beats the hell out of Starbucks if you ask me.

2. Our route from Juan Fernandez to Easter Island did not follow the crow. Instead we took a northerly arc around an enormous patch of famously bad water. The route was the result of a two hour briefing of our Captain John Watson by senior officers of the Chilean Navy who, of course, know the waters like, literally, the backs of their hands. That briefing on navigation, as well as anchoring in Juan Fernandez and Easter islands and a lot more, occurred thanks to Captain Sergio Bascunan. It saved us many bumpy days at sea.

3. Chilenos are among the world’s most genteel and unfailingly polite people. Upon the most superficial of greetings, as to a total stranger on the street or a sales clerk, they always begin with “Buenos dias” or “Buenas tardes” or “Buenas noches” and end with “Gracias” or even “Muchas gracias”. When two women or a woman and and a man meet, even for the first time and even if otherwise strangers, a perfunctory kiss on the cheek is exchanged along with a spoken greeting. When two men already known to each other meet, there is a traditional handshake accompanied by a manly hug, and the same upon departing. They are unabashedly friendly people, and I like it very much.

3. Chile is the most culturally conservative and strongly familial of South American countries. They are nearly priestly when contrasted with the libertine Brazilians. The business class is hard working, entrepreneurial, and innovative. The country enjoys the strongest, though one of the smallest, economies in the region thanks in no small part to the free market economic reforms put into place by the Pinochet regime with the aid of a panel of economists from where else but the University of Chicago. Crime and corruption, the twin devils of all Latin America, are here but at modest levels.

Recently, international economists who rank countries according to their progress advanced Chile, lone among those of South America, from developing to transitional. This last is a new category intended largely to commend Chile and distinguish it from those still striving for the top rung. If you want to invest in a non-U.S. market, buy Chile.

4.The country has powerful and truculent labor unions and plenty of communists and socialists yet its government, following the military overthrow in 1973 of Salvador Allende and the subsequent regime until 1989 of General Augusto Pinochet, is among the most stable in South America. My many new friends, including those in the navy, say they can’t imagine another violent overthrow in Chile’s future so closely fused are the civilian and military leaderships. We shall see.

5. The traditional, and hackneyed, toast in Chile is the nearly universal “salud”, meaning health. Another and slightly more inventive toast is: “salud, dinero and amore” meaning health, money and love. I frequently offered up a still more raffish toast: “bigger boats, faster cars and younger women”, which my new friends welcomed with great howls of approval. I am, after all, in a wonderfully macho world, quite apart from the puritan/protestant politically correct world of gringo America. Ah for the good old days.

6. I have probably not given adequate remarks and thanks to the many people who bestowed memorable gifts upon me and Indigo. These were too many to recount fully but each was given with a warmheartedness that I will cherish. We had to create a special locker to store many of the gifts. Others decorate the salon for all to enjoy.

7. Our terrific chef Fiona gets the award for best motto for our round the world voyage: “Growing Old Disgracefully”. Gotta love it!