“April is the cruellest month,”
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Our cruelest month was on the road through New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, the three eastern lands that make up Canada’s Maritime provinces. We had snowstorms, slippery highways, rain, and fierce winds, at times so bitterly cold, I hesitated leaving the car to take a photograph.
For this next time in Munich our accommodation was the boutique Hotel Splendid Dollmann where we had stayed on our first trip to the city in the winter of 1989. It is comfortably located in a quiet part of the Old Town’s Lehel District near an interesting bar and a couple of fine restaurants. We were happy to be back in Munich, especially after some unpleasant hours in a crowded train and the miserable task of getting from the train platform and through the station under construction to find a taxi.
Kay and I weren’t strangers to Munich when we arrived for a three-day visit on July 7th of this year. We had been twice before, and it only testifies to the city’s greatness that there was so much more to see and do. I won’t pretend that our first full day was free of frustration, though. The large train station near where we stayed at the Hotel Metropole was surrounded by long ongoing and ever-changing construction that made it a confusing point of reference. We encountered more confusion relearning how to use the U-Bahn system. Finally, a gastrointestinal disorder made it impossible during the morning for me to be too far from a restroom.
Despite these irritants we managed a short visit to crowded Marienplatz with the Neues Rathaus and other icons.
Although my Road to Rio wasn’t as much fun as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s, I got there anyway, at the end of a long three-and-a-half months of travel. It was a fitting capstone to my Latin American odyssey. Why? Because of all South American destinations, Rio de Janeiro was the most famous. It had figured in movies (Notorious) and song (“The Girl from Ipanema”). It had always seemed like a special place, one I had wanted to visit.
When I stepped off the plane at Puerto Iguazú, I was surprised at how warm and humid it was. A second surprise was that the airport was in the middle of a national forest and surrounded by trees. A taxi driver named Sergio drove half an hour along a dark tree-lined road to reach the Mercure Hotel where I would be staying. He drove slowly due to the risk of hitting an animal like a tapir that is large and heavy. Like the airport, the hotel was ringed by trees and referred to by the locals as a jungle but which to me felt like a forest.
My particular reason for visiting Uruguay was curiosity. As a sixteen-year-old high-schooler, my wife Kay went to Montevideo as an exchange student. Off and on, she’s mentioned what an adventure it was, how it boosted her self-confidence and had her experience a summer very different from one in Michigan. Kay has given me a good feeling about Uruguay, and I wanted to see for myself.
A note from Kay: After reading Eric’s write-up about his time in Uruguay, I read my daily journal from the two months I spent there as a summer exchange student when I was 16 going on 17. Up until then, I’d been a wall flower, or as my best friend in Montevideo put it, a “flower wall.” In Uruguay, I blossomed, living an active social life with the girls and boys in my school and others I met along the way. So many parties and other get-togethers! Lots of talk and dance, no alcohol but lots of cigarettes (my one puff was enough to convince me to never smoke). My first almost boyfriend. Looking back, I can see how the experience helped me become the person I am today.
I came to Buenos Aires prepared to like the city, and I did. What I had heard and read earlier in life predisposed me to expect a city influenced by European culture, one that conformed to my tastes and interests. Buenos Aires with its wide boulevards, many parks and monuments, and its historic opera house went a long way to meet my expectations, but to get there involved a turbulent flight from Santiago over the Andes. Jostled in my seat, I thought of the film Society of the Snow that dramatizes the true story of the young members of a rugby team whose plane crashes in the mountains just below me, one of the world’s toughest environments.
To board the plane to Easter Island — and by the way, there was only one plane a day operated by one airline — I had to fill out a form on the internet. I tried in vain to do so the evening before my departure when the system wouldn’t let me. Dragging my case to the airport the following morning without the completed form had me drag it back to the hotel where the system, then working, allowed a woman at reception to help me complete the form. Why the system worked in the morning and hadn’t the night before is one question. Why a form was necessary at all is another.
It was on January 10th that I flew from Istanbul to Mexico City to begin a long Latin American voyage. Now, at the end of March, I’d been on the move for more than two-and-a-half months. During that time, I had experienced a variety of microclimates — hot, humid, cool, rainy. April is autumn in South America, and there were days ahead in Patagonia that would feel like winter. It didn’t seem to rain much, though; the skies were often bright blue.
The four-day tour package I bought from the internet turned out to be less than that. It did include four days, but days one and four were transfers from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales and back. The only real tour days were two and three in the middle.
Valparaiso was founded in the 16th century as Santiago’s sea port. As such, it is close enough to Santiago’s airport that I reached my portside Ibis hotel by taxi in an hour. Ibis is a chain of budget hotels familiar to me from past travels. Valparaiso’s lived up to its economy standard by giving me the plainest accommodation since my poolside room in Tortuguero, Costa Rica two months before.
