Show me the way to go home....from Ushuaia
So I was going to end the blog with a lot of philosophizing on
the journey as a metaphor for life, of finding new things about oneself in the
most unfamiliar of places; I was even
going to quote T.S. Eliot for pete’s sake, after all, “In my end is my
beginning...” And I may still find a little energy to wax philosophic for a
moment, but first, let me add to the collection of bad travel stories we all have. Mine starts on the return leg of our trip, in Ushuaia, February 21,
2012. So after all the good-byes, the
collecting of email addresses from new friends, the photos, the packed bags,
and the hugs, we land at Ushuaia to spend a stress-free day walking and
shopping and killing time until our flight to Buenos Aires this evening. Except for the fact that it is post-Carnaval
and hardly anything is open. Ok, we can
still walk around, except that the main street is about 10 blocks long. So what do we do with the remaining 8 hours? Well, we did find a very cute little coffee
shop which has Wi-fi. So we plonked
ourselves down, had a coffee and lunch and checked emails. Soon some other passengers from the ship
arrived, a trio of Czechs with whom we shared a lovely dinner one night. We chatted for a while with them before they
headed off on their camping trip around South America. Eventually we left, spent more time
re-walking the street, stopping into the few open shops and making a few more souvenir purchases, making the
best of it before heading over to the airport. Finally we retrieved our luggage from the storage facility Quark provided us
with, hopped in a cab and went to the airport. All
seemed well with the world. We were
tired but on our way. We got to the
airport, checked in, and were waiting patiently
at the gate when someone noticed that the plane that would carry us to
Buenos Aires which was parked right outside at the gate, had the inflatable
slide deployed. And two flight
attendants looking like Laurel and Hardy were trying to stuff it back into the
plane while battling gale force winds.
It looked like they were trying to stuff a beachball through a mail slot. In any case, this did not look good. So after a while of waiting, watching, and
finally talking to an airline official, it seemed that some guy thought it would be interesting to
pull the handle to the emergency door while the plane was on the tarmac. Now kids, don’t try this at home, because not
only will it get you thrown in jail and blacklisted from ever flying again, but
it will make you very unpopular with the people who are waiting to get on the
now useless plane, people who have been waiting all day to get on this plane and
go home, or one step closer to home. So
when the police brought this guy through the waiting area it seemed as though
it took every ounce of restraint for this crowd not to tear him to pieces. So....to make a long story (and getting
longer by the minute) short, two hours later we were taken to a local hotel,
given a meal, a room to wait in, and a promise that we would be on another
plane by 2 a.m. Now here’s where the
philosophical part comes in. While
waiting at the hotel I did happen to look out at the evening sky, and the light
was absolutely magnificent. The winds had
picked up and were forming whitecaps on the water of the bay, the mountains
were dotted with yellow light streaming through the clouds; even a rainbow had formed and was arcing its
way up from the water into the sky. And
I thought, once I get back to Toronto, as much as it’s nice to be home, and
there certainly are some lovely sights there, I certainly won’t be seeing
anything like this. It’s like once
again, Mother Nature’s grand power was a reminder; but this time it was not a reminder of the
overwhelming power of nature, it was a reminder not to take these wondrous
sights for granted. So I snapped a few
photos, breathed in the sea air, and went inside to have a very nice dinner
with some more new friends who were similarly confined as we were.
The light at the end of the journey - Ushuaia
The last supper
The rest of the end of this tale is fairly routine. We got our plane, and thanks to some fancy
logistics work from Push, still had our driver waiting to pick us up in Buenos
Aires, still had rooms waiting for us at the hotel, and were able to get a
little freshened up before stepping onto the next plane bound for Toronto. In fact, we met up with some more shipmates at
the airport who were sharing our flight and had a good visit with them. When we finally reached Toronto 10 hours
later, we may have been a little worse for wear, a little cramped, a little
tired, but, and here comes the T.S. Eliot, we arrived at our destination which,
15 days ago, had been our
departure. But not only that, we had
arrived changed. We may have come back
to our homes, our departure points, our beginnings, but we came back with new
information, new outlooks, new knowledge.
We really had become ambassadors for Antarctica, because you can’t visit
a brand new continent, a continent so well preserved, so unchanged, so fresh
and unspoiled, and return to the ever changing rest of the world, without comparing. And there is definitely something to be said
for preservation, especially when that preservation comes in the form of
monolithic icebergs gleaming blue and white in the sun, or curious penguins
waddling up to peck at your muddy boots, or seals lifting their heads only long
enough to see that you are not a natural predator and going back to relaxing –
yes, we humans, not natural predators.
Where else on earth can we say that, either to the natural world or to
each other? So, “In my end is my beginning...”
and here’s to a new beginning for all of us that takes us to another end,
another beginning and on and on as long as the cycle will carry us.
Until then....
