On Thursday, I said farewell to the guys from Santiago and took a boat to return to Puerto Natales. Once there, I was really hungry after 8 days of eating on slim rations so I went to restaurant and ordered a huge churrasco (kind of like a hamburger, but a different form of meat, I couldn't tell you what). I went all out, which was a mistake. That night, I boarded a ferry that would take me to Puerto Montt after a 3 day trip by boat. I was going to take a bus all the way back to Viña del Mar (a 3 day trip by bus), but a discounted ticket opened up to take the ferry, so I decided to just go for it. This ferry has like 6 levels (3 of which are for passengers and 3 of which are for cargo, trucks, cars, etc) and is officially the longest ferry in the world (3 days).
On Friday, I awoke feeling quite sick. I'm pretty sure that the going all out at dinner the night before was not the best decision. I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick because my body had gotten used to eating a little bit and then it was an abrupt change. Either that, or it was food poisoning. Something. So the first day on the boat was a little rough. I read a lot and met some other Americans my age that I spent time with. There was actually a couple that had both graduated from Duke. Others from up north in Massachusetts. We passed through the endless sight of the archipelago of southern Chile (tons and tons and more tons of small uninhabited islands). I met a woman on the boat that had worked for many years with the United States Peace Corps, particularly in Africa. She was brought in after the genocide in Rwanda to help rebuild the country with social projects after the turmoil of the genoicde. Quite a challenge. She talked about how there was a group of European students that were on a tour to see the gorrillas of Rwanda (I have no idea why there was a tour into Rwanda only 8 months after the genocide, but that's a different matter) and a group of Rwandan guerillas took over their bus and stole all of their possessions at gunpoint. Quite the tour. She was a really interesting person.
On Saturday, we disembarked in the morning to visit a small isolated town that can only be reached by boat called Puerto Edé
n (Port Eden) just to see it. I felt pretty ridiculously touristy, because they put you in bright flourescent life jackets when you disembark, so basically it's 50 gringos that are walking around this little town and no one else is out. Only 2 people from Puerto Eden were out trying to sell trinkets to the gringos. The rest of the town was completely dead. If I lived there, I would stay in my house as well the 1 time a week that the gringos swarm upon the town. But they built tons of signs and boardwalks and lookouts to turn it into the tourist location that it is. The ferry is basically the only way for the people of Puerto Eden to get to mainland and buy essential things even though it's a day trip by boat to Puerto Montt 
(the nearest town). So a few members of the town boarded the boat to go with us. As we were leaving and the boat was sailing away, the people of the town began coming out of their houses and functioning as normal. So in short, there are two modes for the town: normal mode and gringo mode. This day I was still working on recovering completely from my stomach sickness.
On Sunday, we sailed out of the archipelago into the wide open area that is not protected by the islands. Therefore, the boat was ridiculously rocky. Swaying back and forth and back and forth. It was actually quite difficult to walk without falling over. This day was more reading and trying not to get sea sickness. haha. In the night, they had a dancing/bingo night (interesting combo) in the area with the bar. And of course, I was selected to be the King of the Ship with an honorary dance with the Queen of the Ship. Basically the selection was only based on one lady who served the food who decided to crown me. The "Queen" was a young married Spaniard traveling with her newlywed through Southern Chile. This made for an interesting 
dance as the husband seemed to be making sure that I didn't do anything funny. Anyways, it was a good night.
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