At dinner, the most coveted spot is one of seven seats at the table of the Polaris' gracious captain, Juan Rueda. But the most fun seems to be wherever the Siriani duo is sitting. Six or seven women usually join them at a large, round table. Summer Lieu '80, a credit administrator for a bank in Honolulu, is there, as are Kathie Riedel M.B.A. '78, a spunky blonde enjoying retirement from her job managing architectural-construction projects, and Riedel's birding friend, Billie Minton, an effervescent redhead from Pine Bluff, Ark. Rounding out the group are Nan Lewis, a frequent UCLA Extension student, and a mother-daughter pair affiliated with the University of Washington, Alice Yee and Becky Wright.

By the second course, the ladies are generally convulsed in laughter. The cause of the gaiety on one occasion has to do with the inflated, red throat pouch of the male frigate bird. The giddiness becomes so raucous that Juan Villafuerte, the genteel headwaiter, reports that he fears for his safety upon delivering that night's dessert. On another night the conversation turns to women traveling alone. Lewis, an 80-year-old widow who has soft, white hair and an ethereal beauty, says that people are sometimes aghast at a woman her age traveling alone in a foreign country, but she sees nothing wrong with it. "It's just a fascinating world and I want to see all of it," she says determinedly.

Poised for the equatorial bump at 1° latitude

The Galápagos trip is Lewis' sixth outing with UCLA Alumni Travel but that is well below the record, which is held by Lori Lydeen '56 of Westminster, Calif. Having traveled to the Galápagos twice previously with UCLA, Lydeen is not onboard with us. But she will notch her 25th Bruin adventure in October when she sets sail for a shipboard tour of Patagonia. The former fashion writer's first UCLA trip was a Europe-for-beginners tour in 1969. "I was hooked," she says. "I just kept going and going."

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