Lucia of Brazil/Carlos Pueblo

Lucia of Brazil/Carlos Pueblo

At the cruise terminal waiting room of Valparaiso, Chile, I sat next to

Lucia and her friend. Later we met again in the Garden Café on Deck 12

and became good friends on board. She ran into me on a street at

Puerto Chacabuco and took me to the town of Coyhaique on an empty

returning bus. She is a widow of a Chilean spouse and speaks good Spanish.

Her group left her earlier to Coyhaiwue and she hoped to join them there.

The bus driver nicely chatted with her about the town, beautiful Simpson

River and big correction facility. She translated every sentence to me

because of my insufficient Spanish. She wrote a note to the driver and explained

to me that he asked her some medicine. She was a physician before retirement

in both Brazil and Chili. Later I learned that she was a plastic surgeon. We went

to a famous restaurant for empanadas, a kind of baking food with delicious inside.

We couldn’t find a seat on both restaurants and finally got one piece and could

only sat at a bench in a pretty city park. Several couples inside the first restaurant

came out and chatted with her about her specialty.

Then, she likes to have a beer. We walked toward the city blocks and found a

Japanese restaurant. We met a room full of cruise entertainers and beautiful Sandra

of the cruise program staff and her boyfriend, co-worker. The restaurant allowed me

to break my second US$100, first one was on the express bus from San Diego Airport

to downtown. Now I remember the sweet senior couple to guide me to my hostel on

two subway trains. I invited her to have some benefit of my platinum member status,

such as behind the scene tour, two free paid restaurants, a free drink party, etc. We had

had two dinners with her and her roommate separately; however, we got stop on the

behind the scene tour due to non-registered and then she refused to be embarrassed

one more time with me for the free drink even though I got an OK from the CruiseNext

manager, Paroma, another fine character on the ship.

Surprisingly, I ran into her again on the next disembark port of Punta Arena three days later

and had had another wonderful day, a taxi ride of the city and a delicious seafood late lunch.

She liked to dance every night and finally participating a farewell dancing program performed

by fellow talent passengers directed by Sandra, the same charming Filipino girl we ran into at

the Japanese restaurant. Because I was short of my cash and didn’t resolve my ATM card and

mostly not expecting to spend money at all, I avoided her invitation to join her on every other

stop since then, yet it was interesting.