After the briefing in Santiago, we proceeded to the eastern city of Valparaiso where the Chilean Navy is based. This is official days already so I have to wear my winter clothing.

North of Santiago is La Guardia where it snows and is near the Argentinian border. I am accompanied by the Chilean couple who served as my foster family for my 6 months of stay.

The sign that welcomes Argentinians to Chile.

Aboard the training ship "Esmeralda". This is part of our daily routine- climbing the ropes while the ship sways to huge Pacific waves. If you fall, you'll be lucky if you land in the water.

This the beach of Viña del Mar, Valparaiso. While you can ogle at the girls on the beach to your heart's content, the water is too cold to bathe in. The current that flows here just came from the South Pole.

Who says grapes are expensive. On the slopes of a dead volcano in the Easter Islands, these fruits grow in abundance and is for the taking by the brave of hearts who can scale the slopes.

These moais are the trademark of the Easter Islands. These giant stone sculptures are too heavy to be lifted by the technology on the islands 3,000 years ago. Local legend says they were transported by extra-terrestrials.

Bora-Bora is an island resort in Tahiti. The sea is as clear as glass and is warm as mother's milk. You can swim the whole day and could care less while the world passes away.

Nomea, the capital city of Nouvelle Caledonie, is a French colony in the Pacific. Their park in themiddle of the capital is such as idyllic place to write one's diary.

One of my fellow foreign student on the training cruise is this Uruguayan midshipman who is fond of scuba diving. He lent me his gadgets to serve as his buddy as we scour the depths of the Tahitian seas.

I met this French family in Noumea who were just too happy to meet a Filipino. They toured me in the island and brought me to this mountain resort that served fantastic fresh sea food.

Tahiti- with its prestine beaches! See the view at right.

Tahiti tourists don't give a damn to sightseeing Filipinos. They bare their uppers to the sun.

This is Oahu Island, Hawaii. You can tour the entire island in half a day. So as not to lose time, we rented a car in swimming trunks and swam in all the beaches we passed by.

We stayed to two weeks in Honolulu and I was met by the local Filipino community. They could not believe a Filipino was one of the visitors that came by the famous training ship Esmeralda. Our schooner, docked at the wharf, was an instant hit among the Hawaiians.

Here is the Esmeralda from a distance. We used the small boat to ferry us from the ship to the shores of Maui Island as we painted the ship prior to our entry to Honolulu.

The training cruise aboard the Esmeralda lasted for five months. From Valparaiso, we visited various exotic islands (Easter Island, Galapagos, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, Hawaii, New Caledonia, Fiji) that you could not normally visit aboard commercial vessels. The opportunity to be in this cruise is one experience of a lifetime that will not come again to any Filipino in a long while. ( You know why? - because the Chilean Naval authorities scrapped the program after my stint. This happened during the reign of Chilean President Pinochet whose visit to the Philippines was cancelled unceremoniously by Marcos in 1980 while the poor visitor was already half way across the Pacific en-route to the Philippines. I almost got killed aboard the Chilean ship when this happened. My fledgling diplomatic skills saved my skin!)