She couldn't stop thinking about the man she'd glimpsed when her ship visited a remote island. Then he wrote her a letter

CNN

29-03-2025

The first time Alfredo Ovalle and Paula Susarte crossed paths, they never exchanged a word. But both left the encounter feeling changed, certain the moment was significant.
'Something unspoken passed,' Alfredo tells CNN Travel today. 'A silent connection.'
'It was something special,' agrees Paula.
This unforgettable meeting occurred in 1986, in Melinka, a small village on Ascensión Island, in Chile's Guaitecas Archipelago.
Stunningly picturesque, sparsely populated and surrounded by water, Melinka was beautiful, but Alfredo, who'd moved south from his home city of Santiago, Chile earlier in 1986, found island life was also 'very hard, really intense.'
'It's a remote area, very remote,' he says today. 'And in that area of Chile, the weather normally is really, really bad. But when that cruise came to the island, it was a beautiful day.'
Alfredo will never forget his first glimpse of the Skorpios Cruise Line ship, which brought Paula to Melinka for the first time.
The ship docked in Melinka for just over an hour — an hour that would change the course of Alfredo and Paula's lives.
This was a pre-cell phone, pre-social media age, and Melinka was the only stop on the cruise ship's itinerary with a pay phone. The idea was the ship stopped off there briefly to allow everyone who wanted to make a call to do so, before continuing on its way.
Among the passengers who filed off the ship that day was Paula Susarte. A 20-year-old, Santiago-based photographer, Paula had been commissioned by a Chilean magazine to document the ship's voyage into the spectacular fjords of southern Chile.
Paula, who'd boarded the ship with one of the magazine's journalists a few days earlier, was excited to see a part of her country that was new to her, especially the incredible Laguna San Rafael Glacier.
'I was in a part of my life where I had a lot of freedom,' Paula recalls today. 'And then I saw Alfredo.'
When Paula disembarked the ship, she spotted Alfredo right away. She felt unexpectedly, instantly, drawn to him.
Then, as the passengers lined up to use the pay phone, which was 'in a little cabin at the top of a hill,' Paula nudged her colleague and pointed at Alfredo, down in the docks.
'He seems different from everyone else,' she said, not quite knowing what she meant.
Alfredo had noticed Paula right away too. He was the supervisor of a small seafood processing plant and lived on Chiloé Island, north of Melinka, but spent a lot of time on Ascensión Island. He'd headed south that day to the docks under the guise of checking on his workers, but really hoping to gawk at the incoming cruise ship.
'When the cruise came to this small place, this small fishing village, it was an event,' recalls Alfredo. 'People were running around, saying 'The boat is here. The boat is here…''
When the passengers disembarked from the ship, Alfredo spotted Paula right away.
'I saw her, then I couldn't take my eyes off her,' he says.
They each noticed the other's gaze.
'Our eyes kept meeting,' recalls Alfredo.
Before Paula and the other passengers returned to the ship, Alfredo spoke — briefly — to Paula's colleague.
But he didn't say anything to Paula. And she didn't say anything to him either. They only smiled at each other.
I don't know why I didn't say anything to her… I think I didn't want to interrupt this magic moment.
Alfredo Ovalle, on the moment he saw Paula Susarte
'I don't know why I didn't say anything to her… I think I didn't want to interrupt this magic moment,' says Alfredo.
'At that age I was maybe shy, too. With such a strong situation happening, I was like, 'Don't mess with this magic moment.''
As for Paula, she felt too overcome to say anything. She wasn't shy, exactly, she just couldn't make sense of what she was feeling enough to form words.
Just as Paula and her colleague began heading for the boat, Alfredo spontaneously handed his business card to Paula's colleague.
He wanted to make some gesture toward seeing Paula again — and this felt a less direct way to do so.
Back on the boat, Paula made her way to the top deck to admire the view looking back at Melinka.
'It was the evening, a beautiful sunset,' she recalls.
As she scanned the hills of the fishing village, she suddenly spotted Alfredo, standing at the water's edge, smiling.
'He was the only one there, looking at the water,' Paula recalls. 'I stayed on the deck, and I waved at him, and he waved at me back. It was a very special moment.'
Alfredo watched Paula until she was just a speck 'disappearing into the open sea.'
After the boat disappeared from sight, Alfredo stayed, looking out at the water, for some time.
He tried to make sense of what had happened, feeling 'overwhelmed by a sense of missed opportunity.'
The emotion seemed to manifest as a sudden surge of energy, and Alfredo decided to see if he could catch the view of the ship from a higher vantage point.
'So I ran up the hill to see the cruise going around the island,' he recalls.
As he started to run, Alfredo hit play on his Walkman music player. Phil Collins' voice started playing in his ear, singing 'Invisible Touch,' the lead single from Genesis' 1986 album of the same time.
As Alfredo ran up the hill, he felt giddy with happiness.
'I was kind of really dancing all the way to the top of the hill,' he recalls.
At the top, Alfredo got what he'd been looking for: 'This fantastic view of the cruise, the volcanoes, the mountains, the islands… I watched the ship drift into the sunset.'
But after Paula's cruise ship disappeared, and the last gold and amber clouds faded into darkness, Alfredo was hit with the reality of the situation.
'I guess I will never see her again,' he thought.
Weeks, then months passed. Alfredo held onto some hope that Paula might get in touch with him, given he'd passed on his business card to her colleague. But he also knew this was a long shot.
And then, in late 1986, Alfredo got hold of a copy of Paula's magazine. He flipped through the pages and there it was: the article about the Chilean fjord cruise, featuring Paula's photographs and byline.
Alfredo scanned the back of the magazine to look for a contact address and found one, for a building in Santiago.
'Okay, I'm going to write her a letter,' Alfredo decided.
As he started to jot down his thoughts, Alfredo felt, at first, like a bit of an 'idiot.'
It felt a vulnerable step, to put his feelings to paper.
'But I wrote to her and said, 'Look, I am the person that was in Melinka, on this island. There was something special that happened,'' he says.
'I don't remember exactly the words I used… But I said, 'I would love to see the opportunity to meet you and introduce myself properly.''
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Santiago, Paula had also spent the last few months daydreaming about the moment she shared with the stranger on the island, wondering if she'd been alone in her feelings.
Then, one day in the office, a colleague mentioned to Paula that he was planning to spend some time on Chiloé Island.
The coworker said his father had a friend whose twenty-something son lived there and worked in Melinka. This Santiago-born island dweller was going to help a fellow Santiaguino settle into island life.
Something about this description made Paula think of the guy she'd exchanged the wordless, meaningful glances with on Melinka. And then it was confirmed: 'He's called Alfredo,' said the coworker.
Paula had wondered a few times, over the previous couple of months, whether to reach out to Alfredo. She knew her colleague had his business card. But she'd never quite known what she'd say.
But this potential link was the push she needed.
'So I ran to my journalist,' recalls Paula. 'And I said, 'Give me that card that the guy from Melinka gave to you,' and it was the same name.'
It felt like coincidence, fate, luck… Paula wasn't quite sure what. But she was inspired to put pen to paper.
'So I wrote a letter and I sent it to him, along with the magazine for him to look at,' she says.
Paula mailed her package to Alfredo around the same time as Alfredo posted his letter to Paula.
'And so by some twist of destiny, the letters crossed in the mail,' says Alfredo.
When he got Paula's package, Alfredo assumed her words were a response to his.
'I didn't think that the letters crossed,' he says. 'I just thought, 'Wow, I think I need to call her, and I need to call her soon.'
Paula had included her office phone number in her letter, and so Alfredo immediately rang the number.
By some twist of destiny, the letters crossed in the mail.
Alfredo Ovalle, on the moment he and Paula Susarte decided to write to each other
Paula and Alfredo's first words to each other — after all this romantic build up — were kind of awkward.
'I answered the phone, and it was a phone in a big room with lots of journalists and photographers around,' says Paula. 'I didn't have any privacy.'
Alfredo picked up on Paula's discomfort, and wondered if he'd read the situation totally wrong.
But then she gave him her home phone number, and told him to call her again when she was back at her apartment that evening.
It was on that second call that Paula and Alfredo realized they'd both been inspired to write to one another at the same time. That their letters had crossed in the mail. That they'd both felt that same intense, undeniable connection on Melinka.
'Next time I'm in Santiago, maybe we can meet?' suggested Alfredo.
Paula agreed.
And so a few weeks later, Alfredo made the long journey north from Melinka.
'It was probably 12 hours driving,' he says.
When Paula and Alfredo saw one another again, it was everything they'd hoped it would be and more.
'The connection was undeniable,' says Alfredo.
'I was very certain I wanted to be with him,' says Paula.
The two started dating. And after that was never any wavering from that certainty for either of them — even as they navigated the distance.
'Everything was very honest and no games and was very easy,' says Paula.
'This was a heart-to-heart kind of deep communication,' says Alfredo. 'It was like being yourself.'
Three months after reuniting in Santiago, Paula and Alfredo were married.
'Everybody was kind of saying, 'Are you not going too fast? Three months after you met her? Are you out of your mind?'' recalls Alfredo.
Alfredo told his confused loved ones that his connection with Paula wasn't an infatuation. It wasn't even 'love at first sight.' It was 'more than that, like two souls meeting again, after many lives…'
Alfredo and Paula's wedding took place in the town of Chonchi on Chiloé Island, at a small bed and breakfast.
'It was very beautiful,' says Alfredo. 'It was outside and the fjords, you can see them from there.'
Paula describes the subsequent few years as a kind of extended honeymoon.
'For two, three years we were on the island together and it was very magical,' she says. 'Not many people live there. And we could be together. And it was perfect.'
Work eventually took the couple away from Chile's southern islands — first to British Columbia, Canada and then to the city of Puerto Varas, north of Santiago in Chile.
Around this time, the couple welcomed their two daughters: Josefa, in 1992, and Luz, in 1996.
'It was beautiful to have these little girls around,' says Paula.
When Josefa and Luz were still small, Alfredo's job took the family to the US. They settled in Georgia, where Paula took a break from photography to focus on raising her daughters.
Later, when they started high school, Paula began exploring her passion again, and today she works as a photographer and interior designer.
The couple remain based in Georgia today. They've never taken their daughters to Melinka, but that's on the bucket list. The dream, says Alfredo, would be to take the same cruise route Paula took all those years ago, this time as a family: 'To say, 'Look, this is the place where it all started.''
The first time daughter Luz heard her parents' story in full, she remembers thinking, 'How is this not a movie?'
She tells CNN Travel that their incredible romance set 'high standards' for her own love life. And whenever her mother would tell her to slow down, or take a relationship more slowly, Luz would raise an eyebrow and say, 'You have no room to talk, you got married in three months.'
Today, Luz is married, and her sister Josefa is also happily settled with a young daughter. Paula and Alfredo relish being grandparents.
Alfredo says they're lucky to be 'surrounded by the love' of their family.
Almost 40 years after that moment in Melinka, Alfredo and Paula still enjoy thinking back on their wordless, special first encounter. Alfredo feels like he and Paula were 'carried by the tides of fate.'
But their love story, he says, was really 'sealed with a letter' — or two letters, to be precise. Both he and Paula are grateful they decided to follow up on their first meeting, to see what it would become.
'I'm very happy that we didn't lose that moment,' says Paula. 'We were aware that something special and unique happened and we jumped into that feeling together.'
'I knew I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,' says Alfredo.
Their romance 'remains a testament to the magic of unexpected encounters,' he adds.
'Because sometimes, love finds you in the most extraordinary of places.'