"There is nowhere else I would rather be than here."
After breakfast I was out taking pictures of the hotel Los Nires and the stunning scenery. Then there was a coach trip to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We met a bunch of bikers who had ridden the length of South America.
British, of course.
We walked among the trees, learned about Chinese Lanterns and the burgeoning beaver population, which would soon outnumber the people there.
The Land of Fire started as the Land of Smoke, when Spanish explorers saw the evidence of native fires on land.
We lunched on a traditional Argentine barbecue - hot-plates of meat still sizzling at our tables, I chatted to John Paul Caponigro, an artist and photographer, one of the professionals who would be talking to us about digital photography and digital workflow during the trip. As well as John Paul and Michael Reichmann, there was Seth Resnick, Jeff Schewe, Stephen Johnson and the man who wrote Photoshop, Thomas Knoll.
Back to Ushiaia, where we were left to ourselves for a couple of hours.
Some of the other members of the group started wearing their motion-sickness medication as little patches, just behind the ear. Having never been to sea, I did not know if I would have problems or not. I was betting not, but the Drake can be the roughest stretch of water on Earth. Not the best place to discover you're not a good sailor. Oh well. I'll find out soon enough.
We boarded the MV Akademik Shokalskiy soon after, and I spent a happy half an hour photographing the ship, failing to notice when we cast off.
The voyage to Antarctica had begun.
We were called to the bar. Our expedition leader, Kirsten le Mar, introduced herself and went through the rules, the lifeboat drill, and how we were expected to behave near the wildlife. Oh, and the latest from the satellite - eighteen metre waves in The Drake. Bad luck, people. We met the captain, Igor Kiselev, who told us the history of his ship, leased from the Russian navy. After that, we put on our lifejackets and got the call to cram ourselves into the two lifeboats.
After dinner, I went back out on deck.
It was a lovely evening as the islands at the end of the world slipped by. The islands are mostly uninhabited, though sometmes a light shone out to guide mariners. Two of us stood on deck 6, above the bridge, totally lost in the scene unwinding around us and hardly finding it necessary to speak.
The pilot was dropped off at about 11. The sun had set. Tomorrow we would be in The Drake.
Back to Day 1
Forward to Day 5
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