21 December 2010

Today is the first time I have ever experienced December 21st as the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. The past six days have been a haze of lounging about mixed with serious endeavours like finding a mechanic to inspect my car, doing laundry, and searching for a cheap ship to Antarctica. I managed to find a ticket for $3500 which is the cheapest available to me. While I am exploring the Antarctic peninsula my car will hopefully be repaired. While trying to get an alignment it was discovered that the rubber grommets holding my front struts in place had rotted away and were now disconnected from the car.  Very dangerous.  And I drove in that death trap for I don’t know how many hundreds of miles with only God’s mercy to protect me.  I blame the rough roads shaking my car to bits. 

In Ushuaia the town erected a stage on San Martin and I saw the most bizarre ballet of Alice in Wonderland. All the dialogue was lip-synched. The scene with the Mad Hatter’s tea party had it’s dialogue ripped from the Disney cartoon. Afterward there was a beauty pageant but I didn’t stick around to watch. I also took a tour out to Penguin Island near Estancia Harberton and walked around the breeding ground of Magellanic penguins.

The cruise to Antarctica is nine days long. I can only hope to see many magnificent things. There is a family on board who drove from France to South Africa and are now driving their R.V. around South America. There is also a family here from Wisconsin. We chatted a bit The son, Otto, thinks he might know my sister because he attended UW Madison while she was there. My roommate is an older Frenchman who, I think, is retired and sails around on his boat. In the cabin which shares our bathroom is a man filming a documentary for South Korean television. Just before the ship set sail there was a champagne toast and large platters of fruit, cheese, crackers, chocolates, and cubed meat. I greedily scarfed down a few cubes of delicious raw steak.

The Korean documentarian

Goodbye Ushuaia.  Goodbye South America.