Living La Vida Loca

While on our latest trip to Italy and down the Danube River, I decided to try my luck at letting ChatGPT write a story about two couples with wanderlust…I felt compelled to share this and keep it for posterity…Enjoy!

After forty years of marriage, Andrew and Esther still looked at each other like travel partners on their first big trip. Their home was filled with souvenirs: a carved elephant from Jaipur, a coral windchime from Samoa, a paper map of Iceland with coffee stains and laughter etched into the creases.

So when Esther’s brother, Noah, called one evening with a wild idea, they were instantly intrigued.

“I met this guy in Patagonia,” Noah said, practically vibrating through the phone. “He runs airship expeditions. It’s not a plane, it’s not a cruise—it’s like flying on a floating veranda.”

Esther glanced at Andrew.

“A floating veranda?” she asked.

“I mean… how can we not do that?” he replied.

Noah’s wife, Dalia, was already packing before they’d even booked the tickets.

The airship Aether Nomad awaited them in southern Chile, gleaming silver against the Andes backdrop. It looked like something out of a steampunk dream—mahogany paneling, glass observation decks, and rooms with wide windows that invited the world in.

They set off on a clear morning, the landscape unfurling beneath them like a storybook.

“I feel like I’m inside a snow globe someone’s shaking gently,” Dalia said, her face pressed against the glass.

“If this is retirement,” Andrew said, “I want it to last another forty years.”

They drifted over volcanoes that puffed quietly in the distance, valleys stitched with rivers, and forests so dense the canopy seemed like one endless green sea.

In Ecuador, they moored near a remote village. Children ran toward them as the airship descended.

“Look at their faces,” Esther whispered. “It’s like we’ve landed in a dream.”

That night, under hanging lanterns, Dalia and Esther danced with the villagers while Noah played a beat on a borrowed drum. Andrew, not much of a dancer, sipped something sweet and watched Esther spin, her laughter echoing through the trees.

Mid-journey, a storm sent them off course. Instead of Peru, they veered east—over the edge of the Amazon. Early one morning, a hush fell over the observation deck.

Below, in a clearing, a group stood still—men, women, and children, staring up.

“Are we… are they uncontacted?” Noah asked softly.

No one spoke. Even the birds seemed to hold their breath.

“This moment,” Esther murmured, “feels sacred.”

They passed quietly, the jungle closing behind them.

Their final night aboard, drifting above the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world became stars and salt and silence. Dalia opened the wine she’d saved. They huddled in blankets on the deck.

“To being completely off the map,” Noah said, raising his glass.

“To floating,” said Esther.

“To not knowing what day it is,” added Dalia.

“To still discovering new sides of each other,” Andrew finished.

They clinked glasses under the cosmos.

In a notebook she always carried, Esther wrote one last entry before they landed:

The world is wide. But with the right people, it becomes intimate and wild and full of wonder.

We floated, but it felt like we flew.