Having completed my ‘ultimate fly fishing’ adventure, I was demoted back to the ultimate eco-tour group for the final few ultimate days of the ultimate cruise.

FYI – an incontrovertible tourism fact I acquired on this trip is that you can make virtually anything ‘ultimate’ if you somehow involve a helicopter. Ultimate bird watching, ultimate knitting, even ultimate house of cards building, which would admittedly be pretty ultimate if you were able pull it off with a helicopter rotor spinning at over 200 revolutions per minute nearby.

I say that my return to the eco-tours was a demotion only because the eco-guides had seemingly run out of fresh tour ideas, due to the limitations of our location and seasonal options. And one of the only original excursions they could dream up, a volcano hike, nearly resulted in a pneumonia pandemic.

We were delivered once again in ultimate fashion to a point about mid-way up Corcovado Volcano. Since there was no place for the helicopter to safely land, the pilot hovered about two inches off the ground while we jumped out with all our gear like commandos tasked with chasing down the Predator.

The disappointing lack of alien life forms aside, the views from the slopes of the volcano were amazing. The lava field terrain was covered in scrub and sponge-like moss with slicks of late-spring snow refusing to melt and the occasional spindly tree poking out of the confusion, trying to subsist on the sparing nutrients in this unremittingly harsh environment.

We scrambled up and down the volcano, enjoying stupefying vistas for 90 minutes before a sudden inclement weather system rolled in. It wasn’t long before the combination of dropping temperatures, wind and rain made everyone distinctly uncomfortable. Meanwhile, denser clouds loomed that had the potential of preventing our scheduled helicopter pick-up. It was time to leave.

Though flying time between the ship and the volcano was only about 15 minutes, we ended up waiting over two hours for a pick-up, despite repeated satellite phone calls begging for an evacuation. Meanwhile, for lack of a better option, the guides marched us for untold miles to keep us from freezing. Why it took so long for the helicopter to pick us up was never revealed, though the likely explanation was that we were a bunch of expendable journalists and maybe paying guests would need the helicopter, the boat owner had taken the helicopter on a joyride with his young hottie friend, there were “scheduling problems”.

The following day we set out on a trip advertised as “kayaking to a waterfall”, that turned out to be “kayaking, then hiking through dense virgin temperate rain forest to a waterfall”. Knowing full well by this stage that our guides liked to underestimate the time and strenuousness of our tours by about 300%, I respectfully declined the kayak offer and sat in the accompanying Zodiac boat, as did everyone else, save one photographer. The forest hike was actually quite nice, our guides pointing out various flora and fauna (though the largest fauna that saw fit to present itself was a hummingbird), but since the guides neglected to mention that we were taking the scenic route through the forest, and the day being uncharacteristically warm and sunny, most everyone left their raingear on the boats. As such my fleece was liberally coated with decomposing forest grime, while we were soaked by countless mini-showers every time someone touched a tree branch.

That same day we were taken to see our fourth sea lion colony of the week. Now there’s no denying that sea lions are fascinating creatures and due to calm seas we were able to get closer to this particular colony than any other, but four? In a week?? Us journalists were running out of ways to spin this irksome repetition into material that would fill out our articles and photo spreads.

The next day we went on another hike through a temperate rain forest, though this time we followed an old, neglected fisherman’s path, climbing over and around dozens of giant fallen trees, splashing through spontaneous micro-rivers and skating down mud slicks. Highlights included spotting several exotic frogs and what was apparently a rare, gigantic black snail (the equivalent of seeing Brad Pitt for our ecology PhD candidate eco-guide – I thought she was going to pee herself). The outing was once again far more physically taxing than we were led to believe. The “one and a half hour” hike dragged on for over three hours. This was due partly to all the unexpected natural barriers, but also to us again being in the company of the elderly Chilean woman, who was as charming as always, but needed constant help negotiating the challenging terrain. Many of us were already running on empty due to the physical rigors and wine drinking responsibilities of the week, so the group’s already marginal enthusiasm for the hike dried up long before the end.

Sandwiched between this interminable tedium was an admittedly fabulous trip to a natural hot springs, where someone had artistically rendered a lava-scape setting using cement, then chiseled several sunken bath areas into the ‘ground’ which were fed by the spring via ingenious, gravity-driven, carved out gutters snaking through the area and emptying into the nearby lagoon. Once again, I was the only one who had the gonads to go the distance and strip down for a dip, which delighted the photographers, who carefully posed me, clicking furiously away until my body was noodle soft and the juice in my brain pan came to a boil.

Our frustration during the final few days over the dearth of tour variety, several productivity robbing delays and being left to moisten and chill on the side of a volcano like ripe vegetables notwithstanding, each night we continued to eat and drink like sultans of oil-rich nations. Dishes like ostrich fillets, lamb, Chilean sea bass, octopus sashimi, fillet mignon, grouper and more were artistically presented and consistently induced an I-saw-the-Holy-Ghost taste response.

After seven nights of tooling up and down the Patagonia coast, we returned to Puerto Montt and were released back into a world where there were gratifyingly few forest hikes, yet food was far less appetizing and one needed to open their wallet in order to obtain that food. It was pure ironic cruelty.

As I was driven to the airport in yet another Mercedes van, looking out the window I realized, bizarrely, that I’d been in Chile for a full week and seen none of the built-up parts of the country, culture or typical people. I imagined that this was what it must feel like when all-inclusive resort vacationers go someplace new. If they notice at all.

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My day of ‘ultimate fly fishing’ had finally arrived. I’d initially taken this term to be a mirthful oxymoron, but that was before I was rocketing past volcanoes and cruising mere tens of feet over forest canopy at a breathtaking 130 MPH in a Bell 407 helicopter to engage in said recreation.

OK, fine. It was pretty ultimate. Point taken.

After hovering next to a large waterfall and swooping past yet another sea lion colony, the helicopter deposited us on a small lake beach and minutes later we were in the boats, lines out. Though fly fishers usually go out in pairs, I was alone in a boat with my guide Ricardo, which was probably for the best as I had a lengthy casting learning curve ahead of me and the fewer people around to get hooked in the lip the better.

Being of the inaccessible by land or sea variety, our lake was deserted and perfectly still, with a stunning backdrop of impenetrable virgin temperate rainforest and snow-capped mountains further distant, shedding little puffs of clouds. During a conversation the previous evening with the lead guide, when I confessed that this would be my first attempt at fly fishing, he noted that the fish were so abundant where we were going that “you’ll catch four by accident”. In fact I caught 10, including a massive brown trout, snagged a mere seven minutes after leaving the beach while we trolled to our first site. It was that easy.

I could’ve just let my fly trail behind the boat and lazily reel in (and release, FYI) trout all day, but I’d come here to fly fish, and by God I intended to learn how to do it properly. How long could it take? Ten minutes?

Ricardo took me through the casting process in incremental stages, each new stage being such a cross-circuiting mind f*ck and dexterous challenge that it caused me to disregard the stage I’d just learned moments earlier. This wrought untold damage on my Juggler’s Ego. I used to honestly believe that I had near superhuman reflexes and muscle mimic powers allowing me to become an NBA point guard next week if I felt like it. Instead my streamer fly and 20 feet of unwieldy line twirled wildly over the tiny boat, like a lassoing routine performed by Mr. Bean. By some miracle I managed not to bonk myself in the head or snatch off Ricardo’s hat.

Ricardo was part fly fishing guide, part sport psychologist. When I’d go through stages of unremitting casting failure, seeing that I was getting tired, frustrated and cursing in several languages, he had a one word cure: “Trolling?”

Trolling (slowly puttering around in the boat with the lines trailing behind) was Ricardo’s all-purpose solution for fly fishing-related aggravation, particularly for irritated beginners. The primary objective here is to change spots, moving the boat to where the fish might be hiding and/or hungry, allowing the fly fisher to rest assured in the knowledge that the fish weren’t biting because it was an awful spot, not because the fisher was a hopeless casting spaz. Also, while letting my line trail behind the boat, I would inevitably catch one of the lake’s more gullible trout, which never failed to lift my spirits, even though it was fly fishing sacrilege.

Occasionally Ricardo would forget his role as fragile ego massager. After 20 minutes of my futile casting into what should have been prime fishing grounds, he’d get a disbelieving “what the f*ck?” look on his face, pick up his rod and give it a try himself. Two casts later he’d reel in a rainbow trout as big as my leg. I tried to look joyous on his behalf, but secretly I hoped the trout would bite his face off or at least poop on him.

At lunchtime, all the boats converged back on the beach where everyone dined on a seafood and chicken pasta stir-fry – cooked on the spot in portable woks – salad, cold meats, cheeses and of course wine. There was always wine.

By mid-afternoon, Ricardo’s patient, bilingual coaching efforts were finally showing results. Through a complex series of deftly timed rod flicks and line yanks, I was able to make my fly and line do several graceful crack-the-whip sequences just overhead. When I reached the end of my available unspooled line, I gave my rod one final flick forward and my fly whizzed out a distance of 30-40 feet and gently plopped into the water. The moment was so exquisitely Zen that I looked around, half expecting to see Buddha returning to Earth. However the fish didn’t agree, disappearing in unison, and I had to return to the ship that evening unable to proclaim that I’d caught a fish using genuine fly fishing techniques.

To make up for the indignity, I allowed myself to be cajoled into doing a short juggling display during cocktail hour with oranges seized from the bar. Ego avenged.

Any remaining fly fishing remorse evaporated faster than an unattended bottle of Strongbow later on when multiple platters of absurdly large king crab were paraded out for dinner. Though we had each been supplied with enough stainless steel tools and blades to castrate a moose, they were only for show as the crab legs had already been expertly carved up so you could pull off a panel of shell like a Tupperware lid, revealing the scrumptious meat within, ready to be gorged upon. Once we’d greedily devoured the legs and were looking around for something else to eat, a server walked by and with an “oh, that’s right” gesture yanked off the top of the crab’s body revealing even more specially prepared crab meat. It was so tasty I wanted to cry. True story.

The sun briefly made an appearance at the end of the day and we were treated to a wonderful sunset right before our nightly slideshow, this night featuring numerous fetching pictures of me trying to make it look like I knew which end of my rod was up.

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“Welcome to Patagonia!” our guide said with a huge grin that was partly genuine partly affected. The other guests and I were definitely affecting ours – to the point of clenched teeth.

Having just hopped off a powerful jetboat, our group stood on a haunting black beach in five layers of warm and water resistant clothing, suffering wind gusts powerful enough to stagger a food critic and driving rain that impacted like BBs. Admittedly this wretched ‘beach walk’ was entirely our fault. The guides repeatedly warned us that the weather would be iffy and their invitations to bow out of the beach walk (in retrospect they might have been pleas) continued all the way up until we were getting ready to leap off the boat into the soft, sticky sand that clumped on our shoes like wet cement. By this point the wind and rain implications of pressing on were apparent, but our group was still bizarrely gung-ho for the experience – though in our defense some of us were still punchy from 20-something hours of flying in from the US the previous day.

Why we were so resolute to submit to the suckiest of Patagonia’s chilly late-spring elements rather than chilling in an entirely more pleasant way in the finely appointed, four star environs of our ship, ‘Atmosphere’, with its comfortable rooms, open bar, platters of tasty snacks and complimentary spa is still hard explain. But our Chilean hosts were protégées of the “School of Never Say ‘No’ to the Guest”, so per our expressed wishes we were now being deservedly pulverized by Patagonia’s sucky elements, collective enthusiasm spiraling away like an untied balloon.

The black beach was certainly intriguingly stark and other-worldly, and if the rain on my face didn’t feel like I had an anti-riot water cannon trained on me it might have even been breathtaking. But even Michelle Hunkier, Natalie Portman and Rosario Dawson doing a choreographed, all-Jell-O, nude yoga recital couldn’t have been properly appreciated under those conditions. A half hour of staggering through that meteorological punishment was all we could stand. We hailed the jet boat and raced back to Atmosphere.

Shedding my clothing and gear on the run, I clamored for the warmth of the outdoor Jacuzzi where I sat submerged from the nose down, my back being buffeted by a dozen tiny jets. A Pisco Sour was offered to me for the 17th time in 24 hours, while I stared transfixed at a distant backdrop of mountains and temperate rain forest drifting languidly by.

Our ill-fated beach walk notwithstanding, it had been a rather lively day of bouncing and skittering around lagoons in a Zodiac Hurricane, catching glimpses of sea lions, dolphins, penguins and cormorants. Devouring beef with onions, rice and apple pie for lunch, king crab bruschetta, ostrich fillet and chocolate truffles for dinner. A river of wine throughout.

The following day was another story, however.

Upping the exertion factor significantly, our guides tempted us with an invigorating morning of sea kayaking. The others in our eco-tour group unanimously demurred, choosing instead to sit in the accompanying Zodiac. Sensing our guides’ disappointment, and being none too sharp after what could charitably be described as fantastic quantities of Chilean wine the previous night, I stepped forward and accepted the sea kayaking challenge.

Who’s a gonzo travel writer? Me, that’s who.

Launching the kayaks from the edge of Atmosphere, we first paddled serenely through mirror-finish water in the lagoon, then moved out into more open (read: rough) water. I’m from Minnesota. We’re used to gentle lakes. As such we like to do our sea kayaking with the bare minimum of sea. So when the waves started, they were accompanied by no shortage of private distress. Though in reality I suppose the waves were very tiny, they nevertheless seemingly crashed over the front of my kayak with menacing violence, splattering my face with cold salt water, pushing me backwards and requiring heroic strength on my part in order to maintain forward motion. Though my guide was infinitely more cool about it, it was clear he too was suffering an overall gratification evacuation, so we mercifully steered into a tiny lagoon for a break. The Zodiac followed, bringing with it refreshments. On a side note, I loved it that no matter what gritty activity we were engaged in, no matter the remote locale, there was never a minute in any day when an open bottle of wine couldn’t be produced in under 15 seconds.

Though my guide gave me ample invitations to excuse myself from the remainder of the kayaking trip and join the pasties in the Zodiac, I refused. This would’ve meant that the young, petit, female guide – who I would eventually discover was tougher than most ox wrestlers – would have to take my place in the kayak and there was no way I was going let my masculinity take such a profound hit.

We jumped back into the kayaks and headed to a distant rock teeming with sea lions. Though decidedly un-Minnesotan perpendicular waves battered us much of the time, I managed to make it all the way to the sea lions, dignity intact. The power of the waves and the defense-minded, 650 pound bull sea lions kept us from paddling too close to the colony, but it was nevertheless a true Tim Cahill moment.

Later that day, after a brief rest on Atmosphere where we dined on salmon, topped with salmon caviar on a bed of risotto, carrot cake and sauvignon blanc by Terra Pura, we were dramatically choppered in to hike up to Llanteles Glacier.

Dropped off at a safe (and flat) spot about two miles away, we scrambled over loose rock and scrub, heading for our looming objective while surrounded on three sides by mind-bending mountains, including a towering sheer cliff on one side adorned with tiny waterfalls.

With house-sized chunks of ice continually breaking off the glacier and tumbling down the mountain, we only dared venture to the outermost edge of the ice field. After an indulgent photo shoot (two professional photographers were in attendance), we retreated a hundred yards and enjoyed a picnic of cold meats, salami, salmon, cheeses, bread and wine. And whisky. An alleged Chilean tradition demanded that we sip whiskey chilled with ice chipped off the glacier. Again, I was the only taker. I’d earned it.

That night it was more wining and dining, highlighted by an amazing Chilean Sea Bass with wine by Viu Manent and Equus. The three hours of aggressive sea kayaking and two hours of scrambling up to a glacier had reduced my entire body to such a pitiable flaccidness that if you’d thrown me against a wall, I’d have stuck to it. Trying to self-medicate with countless glasses of wine and a tall, fruity cocktail that was shoved into my hands late in the evening had predictable consequences. The snowballing hangover, physical exhaustion and travel-related sleeplessness started me down a path of deterioration that night that I didn’t fully recover from until about a week after I’d returned to Minnesota.

Next time on the Chile Review: Ultimate fly fishing at the end of the world. Will our hero survive the day without a new, self-inflicted face piercing? Stay tuned…

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Now before I blow your tutti-frutti minds with the singular ass kicking that was my trip to Chile, let me state this disclaimer: I’m well aware that my smug bragging of enviable trips lately has far outweighed the usual abject misery for which I’m known and admired and perhaps this is becoming a little tiresome for you, my loving readers. It’s a proven fact, for whatever perverse reason, that people vastly prefer to read hilarious tales of someone else’s travel despair over reading hilarious tales of wine baths in five star hotels.

Well, you know what I say to that? You’re all sick, sadistic crapheads. After over four years of nearly uninterrupted negative 10 star travel, I think I’ve earned every wine bath and relaxation massage from unusually large, masculine women that I can get. Also, I’m still quietly trying to push the “Stupefying Envy” literary genre to the forefront of travel writing so I can finally score a deal for my Lambo book. Meanwhile, if you absolutely need to read about sustained suffering and corresponding losses of dignity, click on the “Romania” category to the left, read just about any post and you should get all the personal anguish you can handle.

So! Chile! Good times. And the good times started a full month before I even left. Usually when I travel for this magazine I spend weeks composing emails, sleuthing the email addresses of select marketing people, sending emails, waiting, re-sending, being ignored, drinking/sobbing/cursing, finally hearing back, replying and finalizing just to score a comped room for a few nights and maybe a comped flight. Not this time. The ‘adventure cruise’ line that invited me arranged everything. All I had to do was show up at the airport in Minneapolis, produce a passport and look cute, all of which I accomplished effortlessly, as always.

My flights out of Minneapolis and Dallas left pretty much on time, something that I had started to believe was a theoretical impossibility for flights departing the US these days. The only downside is that American Airlines has seemingly shifted their oldest and most abused planes to the South American routes. There were no personal entertainment systems for each seat (the AA flights I took between Rome and JFK in June had the best personal entertainment systems in economy that I’ve seen since Singapore Airlines) and the seats had been packed down by the steamroller butts of 3,364,949 previous travelers, making them about as comfortable and forgiving as an iceberg. I ended up sitting on both the little pillow and the blanket, so as not to damage the exquisite contours of my delicate tushie.

After 20 hours of travel, I gingerly disembarked in the southern Chilean city of Puerto Montt and was met by a representative from the adventure cruise line and purveyor of freebees “Nomads of the Sea”. Five minutes later I was being whisked to the port in a brand new Mercedes van. I began to get the sense that no expense had been spared.

Being the last guest to arrive at the posh, lodge-style welcome center in the marina, I didn’t have long to connect to the WiFi, send in the riotously hilarious Gadling work I completed on the plane and stuff my face with cold salmon, a savory plate of ravioli and flan before we were being led to our ship ‘Atmosphere’.

Atmosphere isn’t a large cruise ship. It only has capacity for 28 passengers (and 32 crew), but there were only 10 passengers on this particular voyage (four of us being journalists), so there was plenty of room to spare. Additionally, there was space left over for a helipad, a spa and storage for the approximately 75 bottles of wine that we consumed over the next seven nights. The main level, where we ate, drank and socialized, was open and comfortable, with two giant horse shoe couches, furry spinny chairs and cabinets stacked with wine and books on fly fishing, birds and Chile’s fauna.

We met the crew, I was force-served a Pisco Sour (a popular Chilean cocktail made with Pisco – a local grape brandy – lime juice, egg whites, simple syrup and bitters) and, with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack piped over the sound system providing ample goose bump ambiance, we shoved off into the open sea.

We inched out of the small marina, with a backdrop of low, scrub-covered hills and distant mountains dotted with small cottages, harking of Norway or New Zealand. With my Pisco Sour gone and the open sea ahead of us, no sooner had I uttered “what now?” than we were being lured to the helipad for pulse-quickening, impromptu helicopter tours of the local islands. We went up in groups of five and six in the Bell 407 (top speed about 150 MPH), taking off and landing on a moving ship I might add, to buzz low over sheep farms and countryside a million shades of green.

Back on the ship it was cocktail and appetizer hour. I immediately got to work on my tireless wine research while we were served oysters with salmon caviar, red onion foie gras and salmon cups with guacamole. Dinner started with grouper, then a beef entrée with lentils and potatoes. Dessert was pistachio flan, Cream Brule, ice cream and assorted chocolates. Since my wine was always refilled whenever it reached half-mast, I’m not entirely sure how much I had, but it was probably less than 10 glasses.

Stuffed with food and wine and more than a little tired, having just traveled from the northern hemisphere (managing about three hours of fitful sleep on that sadistic plane seat), I retired to my comfortable room, with an magnificent bed, topped with an absurd duvet that was almost as thick as a standard mattress, five star plush towels and robes and a surprise little chocolate box on the pillow (we were treated to one of these each night).

Though the boat was steaming to our first objective a 100 miles south, the ride was shockingly smooth. Gratuitous helicopter ride notwithstanding, as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered when the adventure on this ‘adventure cruise’ was going to kick off. (Note the overconfident, doomed foreshadowing…)

Next time on the Chile Review: “Oh, you wanted ‘adventure’? I got your adventure right here, you city-softened pasty!” said the five foot tall, 105 pound female guide as she shouldered about 106 pounds of food, turned on her heel and started purposefully marching towards the glacier two miles distant.

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Folks, I’m just a few hours away from wrapping up my four and five star trip through Chile. But am I sitting back and letting these final hours wind down unproductively? Perish the thought. I’m a professional. When I’m on the road, I work like a miserable dog right down to the final buzzer. That’s what makes an outstanding travel writer people.

As such I am writing to you now with only my left hand. My right hand is holding a generous pour of Carménère, a French wine grape thought to be lost forever until it was re-discovered in Chile in 1994. The rest of me, from the tits on down, is immersed in a Ritz Carlton Hotel signature wine bath. Don’t talk to me about dedication. I am Mr. Dedication. Where’s my goddamn Nobel Peace Prize?

I caved to the wine bath idea after repeated insistence by the hotel’s public relations manager. Strangely, I thought it was just a bit over the top after the one hour relaxation massage, swanky lunch, repeated trips to the whirlpool and three indulgent nights in one of his Club Level Rooms. But I am nothing if not cooperative, so I relented.

Though I secretly hoped they’d wheel an oak barrel of wine into my room and upend it into my bathtub, in fact, two very nervous maids – nervous probably because I was observing their actions intently, taking notes and wearing a lazily fastened hotel robe – poured two tiny bottles of bath foam oil and an entire jar of what appeared to be dried flower parts into my tub, then filled it to 3/4 full with water. They then carefully emptied about 500cl (2/3 of a bottle) of red wine into the mix, lit a candle, placed the aforementioned glass of Carménère on the edge of the tub and hastily took their leave.

I quickly submerged myself in the mixture and that pretty much brings us up to date.

The scent is glorious. How bad would it be if I took a little sip of the bath water? Is bath oil poisonous? And why didn’t they leave a three foot long bendy straw so I could sip wine without having to reach for the glass? I’m full of brilliant hospitality ideas like that.

The water is surprisingly red considering the modest wine content. Can you get drunk by absorbing alcohol through the pores? If so, how much alcohol would you need?

I reek of wine now. I’ve decided to not wash it off. I’m flying home like this. If I had enough time to let them dry, I’d probably dunk my plane clothes in here too. Why not? It smells divine, though my neighbor on the plane may not agree.

In truth, with the sheer volume of wine I’ve consumed in the past week, I doubt this bath is going to make much of a difference in my general odor. All I need to do is eat a clove of raw garlic and I’d smell exactly like my downstairs neighbor at Lake Trasimeno in Italy last spring.

Alas, the time has come to extract myself. I have to find food. A car is taking me to the airport in just over an hour.

Oh here’s a bonus What I’ve Learned for you:

Never get on an airplane hungry.

I have 16 hours of flying ahead of me and then serious work to do for the next few days, but regular posting will resume shortly with a full account of the surprisingly strenuous, seven night Patagonia adventure cruise I just concluded.

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