Bob Brophy - Inca Museum
"I came back down to sea level in Lima to catch my plane back to the United States. I went into the museum of the Incas, and it was a startling thing. I don’t know what the Inca people were thinking, but they had the most unusual figurines, way out of proportion. The museum was filled with Incan treasures."
Bob Brophy - Peru High Altitude
"I read everything I could get my hands on. I thought, “I’ve got to go see this place.” I went to Lima and spent the night in Lima. The next day I caught a flight up to Cusco to 11 thousand feet. When I got up there, I walked into the airport, and right away a group of people sat me down and made me drink a narcotic drink out of some kind of narcotic plant. I can’t come up with the name of it. Here I am, they made me sit down and drink some of this stuff. I felt better coming from the coast. I drank it and it was all pretty good. I went outside on the street and here comes a woman, very sick. I met her on the plane. As I found out later, she came up there with one thing on her mind – shopping! She ignored these people and went out shopping and got sick from the high altitude"
Bob Brophy - Nude Sailors
"After the storm was over we went in on the inland. We got on the canal and went out into Virginia…oh damn, my memory is failing me, but anyway we were sailing just the two of us on a yacht going north up this canal; and here comes a sailboat south, and as we passed about 20 feet apart, here’s a man and woman on board stark naked sailing the ship, and He says “Hi how are you, what’s going on?” They were buck naked. What am I going to talk about to these people? I didn’t’ have enough good manners to wish them a good trip too. I was so stunned. I remembered that all my life. It made me forget my good manners."
Bob Brophy - Yacht to Boston
"Twice I took a yacht from Ft. Lauderdale Florida to Boston. The second time I went it was a 45 foot yacht with the captain and myself. He had a contract to deliver the yacht to Boston, and he wanted company. He said, “Do you want to go along?” “Sure.” We were going up the coast and off the first few days there was no interest whatsoever, and we kept going north. We got off the coast of North Carolina and there was a storm coming in from the NW, we could see. So we turned sea-ward, going further out to sea. It overtook us. I couldn’t believe it. I was a newcomer at sea. I had been on a cruise ship, and he had been 8 years as a captain at sea. The storm overcame us. I would guess, to this day I could relive this whole thing - it was over with in 10 minutes. There was lightening about every 3 seconds, and a downpour like you were going under Niagara Falls. We got to sit down in the seats. Buckled down in the seats and just hung on. I was scared. He told me later, “I was a little upset too.""
Bob Brophy - Travel Interest
"I got interested in traveling because I grew up in a one-child family out in the country, and there wasn’t much to do except farm labor. I spent a lot of time reading. I discovered travel was the most interesting part. I could expand myself. I could be anywhere I wanted to be in the world. I got lost in thought. I got interested in Peru, South America, because I had been reading about the Spanish exploration."