March 7th

March 3, 2009

Valparaiso, Chile

Valparaiso is the second largest city in Chile. It is also home to the Chilean navy. This blue collar city is a jumble of colorful clapboard houses and Victorian mansions balancing precariously on a circle of steep hills. We wandered around the lower part of the city, our favorite place being the fruit and vegetable market. We have never seen produce as beautiful as we saw here – it looked fake it was so perfect! There are about ten funiculars or ascensors as they call them that take people between the lower parts of the city to the upper part. These are all extremely old, many built in the late 1800s and they looked and felt it! Unfortunately for us it was a cloudy day so the views from the top were not as spectacular as they would be on a sunny day.

LuAnn and I wanted to visit Vina del Mar their sister city on the Pacific which was only five miles away. Vina del Mar was founded as a weekend beach retreat and garden residence for the wealthy of Valparaiso and Santiago. We took a bus and the bus driver took us under his wing making sure we got off at the correct stop for the center of town and told us what bus to get back. Vina del Mar wasn’t quite what we expected which was a beach town, it was more like a city so after an hour we caught another bus back to Valparaiso and headed back to the ship.

From Valparaiso, Chile

March 5, 2009

Man Overboard

This morning we went to breakfast at 9 with Bob & LuAnn. A shot time after we arrived they asked Dennis Lowe (I think that is the spelling of his name) to call the purser. A little later Bob said, “It looks like we’re making a U turn.” We all joked it was to get someone who fell overboard. They then made the announcement that it was URGENT that Dennis Lowe call the purser. About 10 they said a man had gone overboard around 4:30 am and we had to go back to the place he was last seen. So, yes we were making a U turn and heading back to where we had come. Of course, the rumors began. On a ship this size with about 3,000 people you can just imagine all the stories we heard! We found out the truth the evening of March 6 when they gave us all a letter saying….A 63-year-old make guest traveling on board the Carnival Splendor was reported missing by is wife while the ship was off the coast of Chile. The guest’s wife notified shipboard personnel at 9:30 am after she found a note that suggested a planned suicide.

The ship’s command immediately began a vessel-wide search for the missing guest and returned the vessel back to the area where the guest was last seen. All appropriate authorities have been notified of the situation.

At 3 pm we arrived at the location they thought he had jumped from and the ship began its search under the direction of the Chilean Navy Coast Guard. They had a lot of help from guest out on deck with their binoculars. We sailed in a grid pattern until 8:30 pm when they called off the search.

It’s very sad you know his wife and friends have to be grieving yet life goes on the same as usual all around the ship.

March 6, 2009

Arica, Chile

I think we made a wrong turn and are in Morocco! When I walked outside this morning, I was shocked to see this small town tucked into the sand! Arica is known at as “The City of Eternal Spring,” the temperature is always perfect! If you don’t like rain, this is the place to live because it rains only 2 to 3 times in every 100 years! The port is located just below the El Morro Hill (a huge sand hill!). It is located in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth. They get their water from underground lakes in a nearby valley or from a river flowing down from the Andes. They are only about 10 miles from the border with Peru.

We arrived at 12:30 instead of 8 am so several of the all day tours had to be cancelled. We had planned on just wandering around the city so we had plenty of time. The main site we wanted to see was the Cathedral of San Marcos. This was designed by Gustave Eiffel and built in iron and made the 3rd iron church of his that we have seen. The others were in Costa Rica and Baja.

There were several handicraft markets selling knitted garments, hand-made jewelry, alpaca sweaters and musical instruments that are popular items here. There is one street, 21 de Mayo, that is basically closed to traffic that is just lined with shops, Internet locations, pharmacies and restaurants. Of course, we had to check them all out!

The guys went to the Internet and LuAnn and I decided to hike up El Morro after saying “NO WAY” because it was so steep and we both had coughs! Well, when we ran into three women who just raved about the views we knew we had to do it. Yes, it was well worth it, even tough it felt like it was straight up at times! There was a statue of Christ the Redeemer on top similar to the one in Rio.

From Arica, Chile