‘There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats’.
That’s what Mr Toad said in The Wind in the Willows. Had he been on board the Navimag ferry as it lurched about the Pacific like a drunk in a panic, he might have saved his tweedy mincings for another time.

The journey in question: a three-day gauntlet run down the Patagonian coast in a 400-foot ro-ro ferry during the worst Pacific Ocean storm in three years.

Money quote:

‘Careless diners somersaulted backwards off their chairs, their whirling limbs taking out neighbouring diners in a hail of expletives and mashed potato. The captain called through warnings of big waves on the intercom in urgent Spanish, at which everyone braced for impact.

Watery Peril in Patagonia – Sunday Business Post, June 24, 2007

Sailing slowly through snow-peaked Andean mountains, sipping wine on deck and watching whales; the Patagonian Fjords sounded like the trip of a lifetime. It was – but for all the wrong reasons, writes Markham Nolan. [Read more →]