Since it's summer here at the bottom of the globe, the sun never truly "sets"... it just kinda dips below the horizon for a while. If we were closer to the Antarctic Circle, we wouldn't even see that, because the sun pretty much hangs around all day long in December.
Tonight we took the zodiacs out for a spin so we could see some icebergs in the evening sun. Which usually doesn't feel much like "evening"... except this time it did. The clouds that rolled in this afternoon just kept piling up, blotting out much of the sunlight. Add a misty fog across the water and this is about as "nighttime" as you're going to get right now.
And it's sublimely beautiful.
The atmosphere coupled with the buttery light of the sun peaking through the clouds was a photographer's paradise, and I shot hundreds of photos of glacier ice... all of them amazing. Picking favorites to post here was no easy chore. But I whittled it down to a dozen shots just to keep this entry a reasonable length...
Amazingly enough, we found some wayward gentoo penguins hanging out on the ice...
And... here's where we ended up today...
©2017 Google Maps
Here's hoping the weather improves a bit for tomorrow's landings.
Yesterday's excursion had to be canceled in lieu of the medical evacuation, so this morning's landing at Hydrurga Rocks is my official first time stepping foot on Antarctica soil. So far as landfalls go, we couldn't have asked for nicer weather. The skies are a stunning blue-on-blue color that, I'm guessing, comes from having pristine, pollution-free air. As if that weren't enough, temperatures were above freezing, so I stripped off my jacket the minute I stepped off the Zodiac Raft.
This place is famous as a breeding ground for chinstrap penguins, and they are everywhere...
It's breeding season, so rocky "nests" are being built pebble by pebble in order to create a safe space until the eggs hatch...
The penguins are accustomed to humans, and will walk right up to you if you're not moving around too much. This guy wandered up next to where I was sitting and just stared at me for a good ten minutes...
In the water, penguins are graceful swimmers who can move with precision and skill. On land they are clumsy creatures that seem to fall over a lot. Watching them walk is adorable and high entertainment...
Bonus... there were also seals!
Not a bad first landing, that's for sure!
After we got back the the ship, the beautiful blue skies we had enjoyed all morning started to turn...
Guess the weather was good while it lasted.
And... today's progress...
©2017 Google Maps
Today the ship arrived at our detour to King George Island so the passenger who was thrown down the stairs yesterday could be air-lifted to Chile for surgery. The hope is that his circulation wasn't badly damaged by his compound leg fractures. If it was, he could lose his leg. The ship's doctor thinks he's going to come through fine despite the serious damage, so fingers crossed.
I can't fathom how much a med-evac for something like this costs. Tens of thousands of dollars, certainly. The flight-time alone out of Puente Arenas is 5-1/2 hours each way. Fortunately, the expedition group requires that you have comprehensive insurance for just such an emergency, so at least the poor guy won't have to mortgage his house after he gets out of the hospital.
But I'm ahead of myself...
Today was the day that we officially crossed into Antarctic waters. I think people were more excited about being in calm waters than they were about becoming "Antarcticans." Being able to walk without being thrown around is kinda a big deal.
King George Island has bases from countries around the world. According to Wikipedia, there are research stations here from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Ecuador, South Korea, Peru, Poland, Russia, Uruguay, and The United States. Chile's base "Frei" has the landing strip where the med-evac will happen. I snapped some photos of buildings and a helicopter, but have no idea which country they belong to...
And... today's progress...
©2017 Google Maps
After we've confirmed that the med-evac plane has reached "the point of no return" and will definitely be coming to pick up our passenger, we're headed into the Gerlache Strait and further down the Antarctic Peninsula.
And so... not the smooth sailing I was hoping for.
The open sea has proven so treacherous that the ship seems to be floating on its side from time to time. You look out your portal and you can see your own wake. Naturally, this has caused a lot of discomfort for a lot of people onboard. As for me? I don't get seasick, but I put one of those patch things behind my ear just in case.
Unfortunately the patch can't prevent a door from slamming on my finger.
I went to leave the cabin just as a big wave struck the side of the ship. This swung the door back with my hand still attached. Ouch. My right ring finger now has a pretty big chunk of skin ripped off of it.
It's surprising how simple things like sleeping, opening a door, brushing your teeth, and going to the bathroom become a major ordeal when attempted on rough seas. During breakfast this morning, a wave struck the ship and rolled it pretty hard. All the breakfast plates, glasses, mugs, and utensils went flying. It was then I learned that each season over half of the dishes on this ship have to be replaced. The cost of doing business in the Antarctic, I suppose.
And it's not just the dishes that are breaking... regardless of how careful you are, the potential for injury on a trip like this is huge.
Yesterday a guy tripped on a busted sidewalk in Ushuaia and couldn't board the ship because his ankle was jacked up. Then this morning during some particularly turbulent seas I heard a man screaming in the hallway. I went out to see if I could help and ran into somebody who told me that a man had just fallen down the stairs and broke his leg. Turns out he has a very bad compound fracture and has to be air-lifted to a hospital. We were going to head back to Ushuaia to drop him, but there's a hurricane-force storm to the north which means we can't. So... we are making a detour to the only nearby place a plane can land... King George Island.
Considering the seas are as violent as they are, I would not be surprised if there end up being more such accidents.
In better news... we saw our first iceberg today. It was kinda tough to get good photos when the ship was rocking and rolling, but I did my best...
And Antarctica is still a day away...
©2017 Google Maps
More rough seas ahead, I'm sure.
We were kicked out of our hotel room at 10am, but couldn't board the ship until 4pm. This resulted in a lot of sitting around, but also lunch.
The M/V Ushuaia was formerly a research ship (and is still registered that way if you look it up on a marine tracker), so luxury accommodations aren't really what you're getting when you sign up. Welcome to my new home in Cabin #210...
Still, it's a nice ship and she'll be on her way in mere hours...
The M/V Ushuaia has internet via satellite. It's slow and unreliable, but available if you want to pay for it. I've decided that, for this trip at least, I really don't. I want to completely unplug from events back home. I don't want to know what stupid shit President Trump said... I certainly don't want to know if he started a nuclear war with North Korea. I just want to forget all the bullshit for a week and be at peace.
Here's hoping for smooth sailing over the most violent waters on earth.
Because killing an entire day in our hotel room was not an option, last night was spent Googling for things to do in Ushuaia. Four-wheeling around Patagonia seemed like a fun thing to do, but there were no available spots. Then we discovered "Tren del Fin del Mundo" (Train of the End of The World). Originally used to transport prison labor to the countryside to collect timber, it eventually became a tourist attraction that runs into Tierra del Fuego National Park. Not everybody can say they've ridden "the southernmost functioning railway in the world," so plans were made.
We didn't know how many tickets would be available for the limited number of runs that the train makes, so we hired a taxi and got there plenty early. We were, as it turns out, the first ones to arrive at 8:30. You can ride the train one-way or round-trip for 800 pesos "tourist class" or 1400 pesos "First Class." We opted for the latter because the extra $30 US gets you a private compartment with drinks, a croissant sandwich, and souvenirs. Money well-spent...
And when it comes to the Train of the End of the World... you're not just First Class... you're First Class As Fuck. It's engraved right there on your seat...
The train itself is of the narrow-gauge variety, and looks like something you'd ride at Disneyland...
While charming, in its own way, the train ride itself is not overly-spectacular. Other than bragging rights of having ridden the southmost train on the planet, it's kinda slow and boring... despite the narration that tells you about the history of the train as a prison labor transport. On the trip into the park, you do get to stop at La Macarena Station, where you can climb steps up to a small waterfall though...
The main attraction along the way, if you can call it that, is the wild horses that live on the plains of the park. Apparently some of them escaped from local gauchos and started breeding, so now they're everywhere...
The nice thing about us having hired a taxi instead of going on a bus tour is that our driver warned us about the train being a bit boring. So instead of riding it back to the station, we hired him to wait for us at the end and take us further into Tierra del Fuego National Park.
Our first stop was "The Post Office at the End of the World" which sits on Lake Roca. Alas, it was Sunday so the office was closed... no passport stamps or postcards from the southernmost post office... but it was still nifty to look at...
Our next stop was Lake Acigami, which is so cold, windswept, and choppy that you can't swim in it. All you can really do is look at it...
The waves off the lake are so strong that they've carved out the area where they reach...
From there we continued on Route 3 to the literal End of the Road at the End of the World...
If you look at Google Maps, you'll see exactly where the road ends and The End of The World Begins. If you had the time, you could start at the end and drive all the way to the beginning in Alaska, which is 17,848 kilometers (11,090 miles) north...
As you can kinda see in this satellite image, there's a wood-plank pathway that leads out to The End of the World...
There is a large viewing platform where most people walked to, then turned around and walked back to the road. But if you look at the Google Maps satellite image above, you'll see that the large viewing platform is NOT the "End of the Earth"... for that you have to keep walking until you reach a smaller platform...
I won't lie. The view is pretty great, even though our beautiful blue skies were starting to cloud over...
I took a panorama shot of "The End of The World" with my crappy pocket camera... it's cool, but really doesn't do it justice...
Click to embiggen the photo in a new window.
Before heading back into town, our driver wanted us to see two things.
First was a beaver dam. No beavers... just a dam that the parks service keeps around for tourists to look at. The walk to the site is quite nice...
But the dam area is pretty much gutted...
The last thing he wanted us to see was the tiny wild orchids that grow in the area. I'd never seen orchids grow in the wild, so that was actually interesting to me. Turns out they are almost impossible to photograph because the wind is always blowing. I gave it my best shot though, and this is as good as I was able to get...
And... that was that. Back to Ushuaia we went, where we wait to be whisked away to our expedition orientation dinner.
For tomorrow we set sail...
It's pronounced "OOSH-WHY-YA"... but not really. There's a subtle accent thing going on somewhere in there which the locals make sound prettier than that.
As to what it is? At 54°56′ South longitude, it's the Southmost city I'll probably ever visit, that's for sure. Further south than Johannesburg in South Africa... even quite a bit further south than Sydney, Australia...
Flying in amongst the jagged mountain peaks as you land, you can't help but think "Oh, man... I hope that the pilot brakes in time so we don't accidentally go scooting off the end of the world...
The city itself is small, as you'd expect... but, at the same time, it's also much larger than the tiny village I was picturing in my head. I mean, it's big enough to have a Hard Rock Cafe (bringing my total Hard Rocks visited to 169)...
It's a fairly recent property, so it's one of the newer "hipster lounge style" cafes (which I hate) but at least they tried to work in more memorabilia than some of the latest Hard Rocks...
The surrounding mountains make the city a pretty one, and there's two jagged peaks in particular that keep popping up when you look eastward from anywhere in town...
The skies, as you see, are a deep blue. The local church in town decided to paint their building to play off the color beautifully...
Since the expedition boat to Antarctica leaves on Monday whether you are here or not... whether your luggage is here or not... I decided to play it very safe and arrive two days early (hey, when you're spending this much money to get here and equip yourself, better early than the alternative). This means we have an entire day to fill up tomorrow. And since we've pretty much seen all there is to see in Ushuaia, I guess that means we're heading out into the Tierra del Fuego region of Patagonia. Maybe. It's going to be Sunday, and I have no idea what that means in this part of the world.
So here I am for a single day in Buenos Aires... what to do, what to do, what to do?
After surviving an insane taxi ride into the city, my soon-to-be-cabinmate and I decided to walk around the neighborhood while we waited for our hotel room to be ready.
Coincidentally enough... La Recoleta Cemetery, which happens to be one of the biggest attractions in the city, is directly across from the hotel.
The reason it's famous is not only because it's eclectic and beautiful... but a lot of famous Argentinian people are buried there. Like Evita herself, Eva Perón (the real version, not the Madonna version). And, sure enough, there she was...
The cemetery itself is quite large (spanning several city blocks) and, as I said, is eclectic. A variety of architectural styles fill the place and something gothic and ornate can sit right next door to something stark and modern. You could spend a day wandering around the place. We breezed through in about an hour...
Found a pretty cemetery cat...
Then it was time for a walk around the corner to Hard Rock Cafe No. 167 for me...
Before we knew it, 2:00 had rolled around and the hotel was ready to receive us. And I wasn't kidding about the cemetery being right across the street... as this view from our balcony will attest...
To see a more detailed view, click on the image to embiggen.
When the dinner hour arrived, we opted to take the hotel desk advice and eat Argentinian empanadas at a local restaurant. I opted for cheese and onion and corn and onion, both of which were delicious...
Wish I could say the same for our dinner companion, which was right above my head...
And that's pretty much the extent of my day in Buenos Aires. Which isn't a lot, but probably to be expected after traveling for the better part of 20 hours on no sleep.
A long, long, very long day of travel. First a horrific one-hour-and-forty-minute drive to the airport in the rain, which was only 32 miles away. Then a four-and-one-half-hour flight from Seattle to Atlanta. Capped off by a ten-hour flight from Atlanta to Buenos Aires. Blergh.
The first flight out of Seattle was a little nerve-wracking because they changed the departure to 20 minutes later than originally planned. THEN after leaving the gate, we had to drive back to a gate to remove a passenger for additional security screening (whom we subsequently left behind). Then they kept saying "We should arrive close to our original arrival time" which wasn't true, because they kept referring to the revised arrival time, which was already 20 minutes late.
Ultimately we landed in Atlanta and I made my way from the A Gates to the F Gates just as they were boarding my flight to Buenos Aires.
That flight was not so great (even though my bag made it to the plane with time to spare).
First of all, there were at least six people on the plane coughing and sneezing their heads off. Travel while sick if you must... but at least have the decency to dope up so you're not coughing and sneezing on a plane-load of people making them sick. Heaven only knows what plague I'm going to end up with thanks to these assholes.
Second of all, the flight was plagued with mishaps. At one point a flight attendant dumped an entire cart full of First Class glass dishware, busting everything to shit. Luckily it was all dirty dishes, but still. As if that wasn't enough damage, a flight attendant later dropped an entire tray of glassware in the same galley section. But the highlight had to be when we heard "Is there a medical doctor onboard?" announced over the intercom. Yikes.
And yet... overall... all things considered... a pretty uneventful flight.
The most eventful incident was blowing by Lake Titicaca...
And then... at 9:00am tomorrow morning... we landed safe and sound.
Only time will tell if I've caught some kind of disease from the flight.
It seems like I just got back home.
And now I'm leaving again.
Tomorrow morning I'm off to Argentina followed by a trip to the bottom of the earth (unless you're a flat-earther nut-job, in which case I'm off to the giant ice wall at the edge of the world). I've been looking forward to this trip for decades... have been planning it for a year-and-a-half... and yet I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad to be leaving. I'm actually really broken up about leaving because my heart aches at the thought of abandoning my cats for 16 days.
Especially when Jenny is laying next to me here acting all adorable...
Of course they're not really abandoned. I've got a cat sitter checking in... neighbors checking in... friends and family checking in... a local security system... an internet security system... a home security monitoring service... they'll be well looked after.
And yet...
It's hard not to worry.
Be well, my furry friends.
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