There is a palpable excitement in the air. Our ship has just come in to shore and off loaded its load of travellers who have just completed their trip to Antarctica. They are milling around the lobby where the rest of us are waiting for our turn to board the ship.
I get chatting to one of the passengers who shares a few titbits of her journey with me, and my level of excitement rises. I hear snatches of conversation from the other passengers also waiting in the lobby. I get the feeling that many of my fellow travellers are hardcore too. People who share my passion for travel, discovery and exploration at a very basic level.
We have chosen to be on an expedition ship, a smaller boat with just a hundred passengers. Not for us the big cruise boats that just sail past Antarctica. We will go on shore, do landings from a little zodiac and set foot on places like South Georgia, the Antarctic Peninsular and the Falkland Islands.
I can hardly wait. I feel like the little kid who couldn’t get to sleep on Christmas eve, wondering what Santa was going to bring this year. I remember staring up at the sky, wondering if I would be so lucky as to see the reindeer. Even back then, as a little child, I longed to discover the unknown.
I have longed for this trip for as long as I can remember. If you know me, then you know how much I have wanted to travel to all seven continents, before my 50th birthday, which is now looming nastily on the not so distant horizon :). In a few days, all going well, I would have accomplished that dream.
It is amazing that I will get to spend both Christmas and New Years on the boat. It will be fantastic to be so far away from the usual hype, the rush to buy presents, the insane madness that always precedes this time of year. Christmas has become so predictable! I have always found it to be such a contradiction from that birth in a simple manger. I wonder why your average Christian has never thought to question how Christmas is celebrated and chosen to do something a little different from the norm?
Away in a manger, no crib for his bed.The little Lord Jesus, lay down his sweet head.
I know that I will be in a place so beautiful, so peaceful and so amazingly spiritual. To me it will be just how I have always my Christmas to be. Experiencing a real connection with the Universe, far away from the horrible commercialism that seems to define it, in our world today.
My journey here has already brought me a new friend in Angela, my room mate here in Ushuaia. She is an American traveller, with whom I connected instantly because of our shared passion for travel, discovery and conversation. Together, we have explored this amazing little town called Ushuaia, in Argentina, at the bottom of the South American continent and we can’t wait to board that ship…to finally get to Antarctica.
Ushuaia is fringed with snow capped mountains and feels like a frontier town to me. The snow flakes were falling as my place touched down, and I had to remind myself, it was still summer here! Oh my gosh..I wonder what winter is like in Antarctica!!
(The noise you just heard was Angela letting out a whoop of delight as we walk the streets. Nobody even turns around to look at us! She assures me it will not be her last. I love her enthusiasm and passion for travel. No wonder we connected instantly)
We are walking the street toward the water to look for our boat, anxious and excited for 3.30 pm to get here. That’s when we go on board! I have heard there no WIFI, so it is unlikely I can post to the blog till I get back on shore, early January. It will be good to have a break from the internet, and just truly connect with the world outside me. Be one with the Universe. Please stay tuned though, and do write to me and tell you what your Christmas and New Years was like. I am anticipating that mine will be…very WHITE!!
“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.” Richard Dawkins
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