South America

I've been on many cruises in my life. 30+ so I've sort of been conditioned to consider each cruise to be a continuation of the last experience and program myself for 7-10 days of “more of the same”.  This trip was way beyond the “norm” and I don’t mean wonderful.  Everyday brought something new and bit of a hassle to deal with. My first trip South of the Equator began with a flight from Houston via DFW to Santiago Chile.  I traveled with my friends Sandra and John Lopez who I have shared many adventures in the past.  
We arrived earlier in the morning of New Years Eve.  The New Years Celebration is taken very seriously in the Latin culture, so to no surprise.  Everything was closed.  I mean banks, restaurants,

stores. So I was unable to withdraw any local currency. It didn’t matter because there was no place to spend it. The weather was nice so we spent 2 days walking around looking at closed, shuttered storefronts. We did manage to find the most important square in town and there were a few street food vendors open, but the stuff didn’t look appetizing. We walked to a wine store and bought some very nice Chilean Reds for our cruise and we spent a couple hours at the Zoo which is situated along and up the side of one of the mini mountains in town. Fortunately the hotel was nice comfortable and had food, a bar and good wifi.

The third morning we were picked up at our arraigned hour and driven directly to the port which is an hour and a half away.  We traveled through miles after miles of vineyards and wineries.
We had plans to spend the day in the port town of Valparaiso after dropping our bags.  Didn’t happen that way.  The port and the Terminal were hard to navigate and dysfunctional, we gave in and just spent time in lines waiting to board which we eventually did after several hours.  This was just the beginning of series of events which led me the opinion that this cruise line wasn’t ready for prime time. 

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