Antarctica Trip Part One: Shipwrecks, Icebergs And Ego-Free Perfection

After a number of very busy days of preparation in Buenos Aires, on the evening of the 10th of January we shoved off from the dock and began to sail south towards a major goal of mine for many years now. I am not going to spend much time on this point, because it is personal, and because it is not something that I feel needs much discussion in a blog. Throughout my twenties and throughout my travels, my goal was to get to know this great big world of ours in the best manner that I could. Mostly, that meant not just buying a round-the-world ticket and getting it all over with in one go. Starting with France and Spain in Europe in 2000, I decided that the only way to get any real sense of a place was to be there for a while. I decided to try to apply that idea to all the continents and since that time, to one degree or another, I have. Antarctica is sort of an exception to this idea because even while it is possible to stay there for some three or six months at a time, I don't feel particularly driven to do this, mostly 'cause I am not a fan of winter. That said, I have always been intrigued by the Arctic and Antarctic and it is certainly a place that I couldn't leave out in my more or less Quixotic 'quest' to get to know the 'Wet Planet'. The point of this is that my goal had been to visit and spend time on all the seven continents by the time I was thirty. In my psuedo-idealistic 'dream' (man I hate the cultural connotations of that word...) I would spend my 30th birthday sailing around in Antarctica. Well, due to the fact that Antarctica is still more or less closed for business in the first half of november, and due to the way things go, I am two months late, but here nevertheless!!! So that is it, the completion of a major life goal. (I drank a bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape in Antarctica to celebrate!!!) Of this I am proud, but more I am just in awe of the things I have seen in these different regions, the people I have met, the kindness and brutality I have witnessed, the food, the music, the manifestations of life...well, for more slop like this you can read the 30th birthday entry on this blog page...I won't subject anyone to it again here and now...and with that noted, we sailed southwards towards our first stop, the Falkland Islands.

You don't call the Falkland Islands the Falkland Islands in Argentina. There you call them Las Islas Malvinas, or just Las Malvinas. This is as a result of a war that occured between the Argentinians and the British over a seemingly random few peices of land off the coast of southern Argentina in 1982. Seeing as I was travelling with my Argentinian friend Manuela, we were calling these islands Las Malvinas.

After a couple of days at sea we arrived for a day in the Falklands/Malvinas. This day also marked the first day of our incredible weather luck for the trip. Leaving the mothership that morning the sky was a perfect shade of blue and the breeze blew just enough to keep the sun from feeling hot. As the day went on, small white-cotton clouds cropped up and travelled in small herds across the sky. Considering how far south this place is, it was indeed lucky, for about three quarters of the year they have fog and/or rain. We explored the island on foot and saw a bunch of interesting things. A couple shipwrecks that are still sitting there in the bays, a museum and monument dealing with the history and conflict over an island full of sheep, an anti-whaling display made out of whalebones in a guys front yard, a lot of nice british buildings, a horse that made strangely disconcerting but still funny faces at us, and a lot of flower displays. The place smelled terrific, with floral aromas riding every other breeze and the sea air cruising in between. It was bright and colorful and every one of the people I met there was quite friendly. (There are less than 3,000 human inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of sheep. Enter joke here...) We had a nice coffee and took in the vistas. When we saw the first shipwreck I got inspired and whipped out my iPod to play Manuela Gordon Lightfoot's 'Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald' and was shocked, awed and very disappointed with myself to discover that I don't have that song on there!!! What the deuce is wrong with me? Travelling the seas without Gordon's seafaring (Great Lake faring) classic. What a tard I can be!! So I played 'Carefree Highway' instead which is no substitution but it was kinda how I was feeling and it had to do. She had never heard of Gordon anyway so I guess any introduction is a good introduction.

Back on the boat we set our sails/motors for the South Shetland Islands, which are way the hell down there. When I first saw them I thought we were in Antarctica already and I was as happy as a little kid on Christmas morning. The 'Antarctica Expert' who travelled with us quickly set us all straight on where we were. He said that if we thought that the Shetlands were cool, wait 'til we saw Antarctica. That guy was really funny. Bernard. He is this old British guy who sounds, when he speaks, as though he is about to die. A punto de morir. He sorta grinds his throat and coughs a lot. When he was addressing us over the mic it was often tough for the non english speakers to figure out what the hell the guy was gurgling about. I did a lot of translating...to english speakers as well. That said about him, the guy was a stud. He spent many years of his life travelling around the Arctic and Antarctic on dogsleds and boats, and that is badass. Talking with him in person, you knew you were talking with a brave man. A man who had done many great things and regretted little. He was weathered from sun and cold, but he still held the exuberance of a man who was very interested in life and all it's follies. (Maybe a way of growing old gracefully?) Anyhow, despite the fact that we were yet to reach our real destination, we were all thrilled with the sight of the Shetlands. That day was a bit overcast at first, but even still, the moment you see an ocean full of perfectly square icebergs shifting stoically for the first time, you are a happy homeboy or girl. We sailed by slowly with the rails of the deck crowded with people looking out. (Suzanne noted from some of the photos on my myspace page that the boat looked really nice, and that is true. It was a really nice boat and we were, indeed, not roughing it for comfort. Indoors at least...) It had grown very cold and the wind was whipping at our faces. I turn rosy cheeked at almost anything. When I get hot, cold, drunk, embarrassed, exhilerated, etc., so you can imagine what I was looking like in the Antarctic winds that were to follow. That coupled with the fact that it was colder than I thought it would be, and I was sort of prepared, but not really. Thank god I had a sunday morning paper route for many years back in Montana when I was a kid. Good conditioning for Antarctica.

From the Shetlands on, we were pretty much constantly in awe of one thing or another. Everywhere you turned there were icebergs passing here and there and lots of penguins darting in and out of the water. We arrived at the Antarctic Peninsula and stopped at a number of research stations. Argentina, Uruguay, the old British site, Chile and Poland. The Polish site was the most interesting because we got to talk to a number of the scientists that were studying there. They study all sorts of things like animals, plankton, water, ice, weather and geology. It is a fascinating place and one of the guys gave this impassioned speech about how living on this base through the winter makes you realize that man is so small in the grip of mother earth's hand. It was my first real sense of how deadly the Antarctic is. Staring off into the black water later that night it really sunk in that if I fell off this boat, I would die in a matter of short minutes. Not enough time to get a life bouy to me, let alone a life boat. Even if they did get to me I would be in shock and most certainly die. One's body would freeze up so fast that they would have no chance to even tread water. I am telling you, IT IS SO INHUMANELY COLD there. It is no joke. They weren't joking around when they made Antarctica. As we continued to tour the islands and islas I wore four short sleeve shirts, two long sleeve shirts, a thin sweater, a thick sweater and my windbreaker. I wore two hats doubled over each other, and two pairs of gloves doubled. A scarf for my neck and one around my mouth, which ended up smelling funny. (Ha ha.) The point here, is that it is so freaking cold!! And it is summer time right now!! I could write a way-too-long blog about all the animals that survive here and how they do it, but that we can either talk about later or you can look up on your own. To put it simply, it is incredible that anything lives there at all. It also explains why no humans do. There are no resorts here. No towns, no tourism centers, no indiginous populations. No eskimos, no nobody. Most of the early explorers here died. Many whalers braved these waters and many of them, too, died. Only a handful of scientists and military people brave the winters down here, they say that there have been less than 300,000 people who have ever even visited the crazy, cold place.

One of the things that makes it difficult to stay on through the winter is that the light goes away. It is almost continually dark for months at a time and the seas freeze solid not allowing passage of any sort for boats. We experienced the opposite situation with days almost completely full of light. For a number of consecutive days there were midnight sunsets. We would stand, bundled and shivering against the wind, watching some of the most incredible displays of light that I have ever seen. The air is perfectly clear there, and the water takes on the emotions of the light. Icebergs would bob by in the twilight and mountain ranges would stand cristaline in the distance. It never completely got dark either. If the sun was completely down by midnight-thirty, it would be rising just after four, just a few hours later. It was quite something.

I could rattle on forever about all the details, so I will cut to the chase here. My favorite day was the day that we crossed the 65th parallel south and sailed through the Neumaier Channel. It was another perfectly clear day, with the sun making the water shine a blue I have never even imagined. The mountains are black and brown stone, but you don't see so much of that because of the glacial coverage. Basically this is a world of blue and white, and the air has a quality that seems to glaze everything in a dreamy sort of atmosphere. I hope it doesn't sound trivial to say that it looked like a fantasy world. Some sort of made up place, some chilly fairy-world or something from a Lord Of The Rings Movie. If that makes it sound silly in any way, then forget I said it...really what it was was a manifestation of perfection. The irony being that it was so perfect that it would not support human life, the very presence of which would taint it's perfection. It makes you wonder what other beautiful parts of the earth were like before humans where there to subjugate and 'improve' them. Antarctica on a sunny day will make your mind slow down. It stunned me. I didn't want to speak with anyone. I couldn't really speak anyway. I would just stare at the water and ice mountains and feel the burn of the cold and sun on my face. It was like everything you could ever hope for in inspiration while at the same time knowing that you could never take that inspiration and do it justice with your own creation. It would make you want to cry and at the same time you would have to laugh because you could never explain it. You could never transfer that vista into words or images or sounds, you knew that it would forever remain static there at the end of the world, and that it was so much better for it. It was a humbling thing. I remember thinking that all of our lives were at the mercy of a floating structure of metal and wood and that this perfection, although still alive in my memory, would be left behind when we again sailed north. I took over 400 photos down there and they are all terrific, but they are also only mere threads that I pulled from something so much bigger and greater...threads to take with me, still laughing with the feeling that they would speak so little of the whole.

So you see that I could just keep yammering in this direction. I sum the Antarctica part up by saying that it far exceeded my expectations, whatever those may have been, and that it was truly incredible. I am sure that I will speak in person with most of you about this later and maybe by then I will have thought of a better way to communicate my recuerdas of this place, but I am not gonna hold my breath.

After a number of days there, we turned ourselves around and headed towards Cape Horn and the southern tip of South America. Tierra Del Fuego and southern Patagonia. Towards the rough waters that swirled with maritime history and captain's lore. As we made this journey northwards I spent many hours, bundled in my department-store-load of shirts and hats, at the back of the boat looking out through the halflight across the churning sea. Spanish speakers use the word, impresionante, which pretty much means impressive. But I like it better because impressive seems to me to carry a sense of ego, and impresionante seems to be more of a reaction to something amazing, that doesn't have an ego per se. I would choose to use the spanish word in this case because Antarctica has no ego, and it would never need one, because it is more beautiful that almost anything else in the world.

Antarctica Trip Part Two: Natures Statues, Green Water And The Return To Summer

After a couple days in the open sea we came to a traditionally perilous region known as Cape Horn. This is the point where the Atlantic and Pacific tides crash into each other and cause a lot of problems for skippers. Back in the day, (not a wednesday by the way...) if a sailor rounded Cape Horn and lived to tell of it in his home country of England, he would get his first beer free in any pub he entered. If he rounded it twice, the first two were on the house. But if he made it three or more times he would always drink for free. It was quite something to make it around the continent even once, and there were very few who ever did it more times due to the rough waters. We, on the other hand, had some of the calmest waters our captain had ever seen there. In other words, our weather luck continued.

We entered in the sound that surrounds that actual cape in the early afternoon. There is a lighthouse and a monument and a flag of Chile that adorn the weather-lashed point of land that juts out into the dark waters at the southern tip of the continent. On the back side of this point the waves have been crashing onto the rocks almost continuously for hundreds of years, resulting in a set of pillars that almost look like they were carved with human hands. The skies were marbled with soft clouds at this point and there were drops of rain but almost no wind. One could see, even in this calm time, that this would be a dangerous place to try to maneuver in high winds. There were rocks jutting up here and there and from what we were told, the water isn't all that deep in many areas. As we sailed on by we were boarded by a duo of Chilean Naval Captains. By law of their country, they had to accompany any foreign vessel that made it's way through their waters. They were to continue with us the next couple of days, until we made our exit from the internal waterway system, out into the Magellan Strait. For the rest of the day we watched the islands and peninsulas go by. In the far off distance, the tail of the Cordillera De Los Andes could be seen, blue and white in its splendor. These were the same Andes that I walked the Inca Trail in, the same mountains that I traversed in Bolivia, the same ones that Russell and Jennifer and I trekked around in in Bariloche. This was where they either began or ended, depending on your point of view, and from here they stretched all the way to the north of Colombia where they run into the Carribean. For me that is quite something. A thing to think about. All the different ways of life that have gone on in the same string of mountains, over a great distance, over many epochs of man. And there I was looking at the end of them. I liked that.

Early the following morning we were docked in Ushuaia, Argentina, and Manuela, our Canadian guitar playing buddy Darryl, and I disembarked to check out the glaciar that sits above the town. We had a little time to roam the quiet sunday morning streets before buying some empanadas and sandwiches and heading for the mountain. The hike was not too difficult, but the terrain was beautiful. The woods there reminded me a bit of the Rockies, with pines of different kinds and lots of clean and rushing mountain water. I guess the difference here was that it all comes from a glaciar. We made our way up the mountian and ate our lunch next to a big boulder and a chunk of glacier, looking out across the valley with the little town and its little port below. It was a nice vista...a buena vista if you will. From there we came back down with enough time to stock up on wine and get back on the boat.

That evening was, for me, the best viewing outside of Antarctica. We drifted along through the Beagle Channel, a waterway that is shared by Chile and Argentina. On either side there were large mountains shooting up with all manner of glaciars adorning them. Many of them had waterfalls launching off the bottoms of them and from what our buddy Bernard was saying, these glaciars have gotten a lot smaller as of late. When he was a young man, so at least 120 years ago, these great glaciars came all the way down to the water. Nowadays, while they are still very beautiful and magnificent, they have melted to the point of seeming high up on the mountain sides. So as we watched and oohed and ahhed at the waterfalls, we were saddened to know that that beauty was as a result of something quite sad. The water of the Beagle Channel was quite green. Not contaminated looking, but just a pleasant, emerald sort of green. I found out a little while later that that was because of the high levels of phytoplankton that live there. Everyone loves phytoplankton. The photo of the trail of the boat that I have included was taken there and you can see what the water looks like. I really enjoyed this part of the trip. The light, the clouds, the glaciars, the water; all were just right, all were comforting in the right kinda way.

The next morning we docked in Punta Arenas, which again belonged to Chile. This is a place with a lot of history as well. It is a place full of resources that the European whites wanted to control, and so they moved in and destroyed a couple of cultures to do it. Sound familiar? Here we visited a history museum that was really fascinating. Lots of relics and artwork depicting life in this harsh land in that harsh time. Tierra Del Fuego has extremely long and difficult winters. While we were there the place seemed to be hopping with tourists and townspeople but we were assured that in the 'offseason', the town was a much quieter and more somber place. We visited a cathedral and a number of different historical buildings and then climbed up to a view point that looked out across the whole town and it's environs. Here there were no towering mountians or glacial sprawls. Here it was rolling grassland and open water. Here the wind blew strong and the waves had white caps. I wasn't sad to leave that place. It wasn't a bad place by any means, it was nice in its way, but there was a lonely feeling there. A feeling that such places tend to have. I have felt it elsewhere too, at the ends of the earth, where it is cold most of the time. It has it's own meaning in each place...but to decipher it would take time, and on this day, we didn't have enough.

After that we were back on the open seas for a few days, commencing with the Strait of Magellan. Again we were blessed with good weather and no one had to vomit. The sun had started to behave more like we were used to, going down at eleven, and then ten, and then nine, and coming up later and later. It stopped being so cold and started turning back into summer. By the time we docked in Montevideo, Uruguay, it was full-on summer again, and we were sweating as we hit solid land early in the morning. I must say that I really do fancy Montevideo, and so I was happy to be back, even if it only was for one day. We ate at a Chivito joint for lunch and Darryl looked around for some rugs, a painting and a guitar. We strolled the streets and I got to see my favorite beams of light slanting in through the eucalypt-lined lanes again. I will never tire of seeing them. They are a pleasure in my life that shares a space with some other faves like travelling with the window down and listening to a person playing an instrument in another room when they think they are unheard. Good things. We left that night to make the final short stint over to Buenos Aires.

You would think that would be easy enough, but, it turned out that it was not and we were delayed a few hours getting into port by some high winds. I got off the boat at around noon and found my way back to my little home away from home on Maipu. I like that place. I now have a couple days to get things organized, and then I head north to Iguazu, to see these big waterfalls that everyone keeps talking about. Then to Brasil. It is a funny thing, how fast the time goes by you. We all feel it, but perhaps sometimes more than others. I feel it now. I have been gone for almost four months now, and honestly it feels like a couple minutes and a lifetime all in the same moment. Puts you back a step at times, the point when it hits you. I guess it is also good to remember that we are on a constant set of waves, that are always going up and down. Sometimes the waves are bigger and last longer than others, but we always end up coming down through a trough, and sometimes those troughs can catch us by surprise. Coming back from this giant trip to Antarctica, I definately find myself in a trough, not a bad trough, just a big exhaling trough. Sometimes it seems hard to see how we can ever rise up again to that same level of glory that we felt before the descent, but somehow, we always do. I suppose that is part of what makes it such a cool ride; you can't think about it all the time, you gotta just ride it. So yeah, that, in a quick little abreviated nutshell, is my boatride to Antarctica and back. I hope the end of january finds you well, and I hope all your resolutions are working out as well...your buddy, Mateo

More Photos...

Of Bariloche

Time Flying, The Bamfer And The Blue Waters Of Patagonia...

Again this is going to have to be a short blog...things are spiralling into craziness as I ready myself to take to the seas on the way to Antarctica...this is not a bad thing, it just makes it tough to blog much. While I am gone, please read my older posts...unless you already have!!

I had a terrific New Years Eve and spent it with the Altube's in Buenos Aires where the weather is as hot as an oven. I made rabbit with Manuela, Alba's daughter, in a kitchen that was not unlike a sauna...we had a couple different forms of rabbit and a lot of alcoholic yummies. Stayed out real late and didn't get much sleep, but that was alright 'cause the very next day signaled the arrival of one of my best homies under the sun: Russell 'BAMF' Gaines and his lovely and talented better half, Jennifer. They rolled in after an insane trip from Bozeman to Denver to NYC to Washington DC to Buenos Aires. They were in good spirits despite not a lotta sleep and the fact that Russell's bag had been lost by the airline along with all his clothes. (He has this kind of luck...) We spent that day and the next one exploring Buenos Aires, eating, and sweating in the height of summer. Here we visited an ancient cemetary in the Recoleta of Buenos Aires...I may discuss it later...mostly it was just really cool architecture and really famous dead Argentinians...

On the third we made our way down to Bariloche, which is a small-ish mountain town in the northern part of Patagonia, a region in the southern part of Argentina. It is an incredibly beautiful place on the shores of the large and insanely blue Lago Nahuel Huapi. We spent the first evening trying to figure out when the hell the sun was going to set...it just kept staying light! Finally somewhere around eleven in the PM it was gone. We stayed out really late that night because we didn't feel ready for sleep so soon after the sun had gone.

We awoke early the next day to plan things for the week to come. That day we spent a lot more time eating delicious food and sitting by the beautiful lake. We discovered a wonderful version of churros here that have become something of a daily ritual. We also got things ready for the next few days.

The second day we were up with the sun and we took a local bus out along the lake to a place called Puerto Pañuelo, where we took a nice boat out onto the lake. We proceeded from the morning chill into the warmth of the crystalline sunshine and out across the vast blue water. The mountains were capped with snow and in the distance, the glacier of Tronador towered above the border of Chile. It was in that direction that we sailed. We passed beneath numerous giant mountains and across miles of water that was as perfect as water gets. The day was terrific as we hiked around a series of rushing waterfalls and explored the trails around the lakeside.

The following day we were again awake early, but this time we were on our way north to a small town called San Martin De Los Andes. On the way we visited seven different lakes, each amazing in its own way. We stopped at a Mapuche farm for a taste of local flavor and then we were back on the road. We had a nice lunch in San Martin and proceeded towards Junin to the northwest. From there back to Bariloche was a long string of mountainside stone monoliths and a series of man made reservoirs. That too was a beautiful day. (As you can see I am sorta doing the quick version of things here...no hay bastante de tiempo!)

The next day was yesterday and we spent the morning with our churros and hot chocolate and coffee and then in the afternoon we went to a place called Cerro Leones which is an ancient mountian made out of solidified lava. It has numerous caverns and for long periods of time it housed generations of indigenous peoples. We explored these chambers and learned of the history of the area by our rad guide Jose Luis. The highlight of the day that day was the cave that had a small laguna in it. To get in there we had to shimmy along for a ways on our bellies and wear spiffy red and blue and yellow hardhats. Once inside it was pitch black and totally silent. It reminded me of the Lewis and Clark Caverns when I was a little kid. The feeling of being in such darkness. Crawling through that crevice reminded me of how claustrophobic I felt in the Cu-Chi Tunnels in Vietnam, man that was crazy. Here I didn´t freak out, but I felt that throat tightening, muscle clenching feeling unique to such small spaces. On the inside it was moist and peaceful, with a small and perfectly pure pond against the far wall. That water has been in there for hundreds of years and evidently it doesn't ever get more pure than it is there. That night, back in town, we had a bottle of Malbec and chilled out a bit.

This morning we made it for churros and then hit the trail to a place called Cerro Catedral. After waiting for the bus for ages, we caught one and headed up to the mountain. This place is a huge ski mountain that is considered the most important in all of South America. We took a six person lift up to a spot above the treeline and then switched to a smaller one and went the rest of the way to the summit. Up there the view was quite something...and the wind was almost enough to send us out over the edge of the mountain. It was close to freezing temperature up there and the wind cut like it does in the winter. We explored a while and took in some great views and then headed back down. Those mountains are hard to explain, they are big, like most of the mountains here, but they have these huge stone spires that launch into the sky and these spires were the original reason for the name Cathedral for this mountain.

And now it is now and I have so much crap I gotta do to get ready to head south on the boat. Tomorrow I fly early back to Buenos Aires where I will finalize things and then it is off into the blue. I will be posting pictures from Patagonia before I leave so be sure to check those out! I will be off the email grid until the 26th or 27th of january, so feel free to send me some love and I will get back to you as soon as I am back in Argentina!! Love to you all and take good care of each other...Mateo!