Category: Countries
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Impressions of Santiago, Valparaiso, Viña del Mar & Riñaca
We spent our first month in Chile in Santiago and the Valparaiso areas. In general, Chile is a fully developed economy. There is very, very little that is available in the U.S. or Europe that isn’t available here or won’t be within a week or two. The country is run by accountants, so it is…
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Green – Green – Green
In NASCAR parlance, we’ve come off the red and out of the yellow. We are Green – Green – Green. Currently south of Santiago about 100 miles, camped for the night. We are on our way to Ushuaia, Argentina – the southernmost city and the southernmost roads on the planet. At the Jumbo in Viña…
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The Next Sunday
One week ago, our rig came off the ship damaged. We didn’t know if it was destroyed or not. One week ago, a couple of kids playing with matches started a brush fire that became a wind driven firestorm that destroyed 88 homes in Valparaiso’s Cerro La Cruz neighborhood. That fire became known as The…
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The Inferno of La Cruz
Thursday, 17 January, 2008 Our rig came off the ship at 6:20AM on Sunday, 14 January. We had a chance to partially inspect the rig later that day and knew it was damaged, perhaps destroyed. We sold our house to clear the decks for these years of travel, so this meant we may have lost…
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Mystery of the Universe
File this one under: Mystery of the Universe When we opened up the camper on the docks here in Valparaiso only one thing was out of place. Our wine opener, a heavy, boxed SrewPull, was on the floor. The door on the cupboard it fell out of was latched closed. But that wasn’t the mystery.…
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Fuso vs. Valparaiso Dock Crew – Part 2
We returned to the docks on Wednesday, 16 January, 2008. We were scheduled for an inspection meeting involving three of the parties that operate on the docks: MARVAL, the overall operating company; TPS, the German company that operates the portion of the docks that our ship came into; and San Francisco, the subcontractor to TPS…
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Fuso vs. Valparaiso Dock Crew
The ship carrying our Fuso, Seaboard’s Thor Nectar, arrived late morning on Saturday, 12 January. Thor Nectar
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The Long, Dark, Dead End Alley
Have you ever been in a new city, in a new country and done something that broke every safe traveling rule you’ve ever been told or learned? Have you ever been in a new city, a gritty port city, a city renowned for danger around every corner, a city every native of the country…
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Blowing the Glass Balloon
While we were in Lincoln City, Oregon, Steph arranged for us to learn how to blow glass at the Jennifer L. Sears Glass Studio. I’ve been interested in learning more about glass blowing for years, so this was a chance to finally have some hands-on experience with the process. We both made hanging glass floats, and had…
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The Dorymen
In the first light of day, before even the dawn, they come. Down to the base of the dune cliffs, down to the sea’s edge, they come. . They come as men have always come, to go down to the sea in small boats. These boats, the Dorys, and these men, the Dorymen, go to…