{"id":4416,"date":"2011-02-18T17:14:40","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T00:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=4416"},"modified":"2011-02-18T17:38:44","modified_gmt":"2011-02-19T00:38:44","slug":"ushuaia-bound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/18\/ushuaia-bound\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting Penguins Before They’ve Hatched"},"content":{"rendered":"

The airport is a zoo. I stand in the wrong line for five, maybe ten minutes until I figure out what\u2019s happening. Then I see it \u2013 the web check-in counter. I checked in online last night, I\u2019m good to go. That line, it\u2019s got two people in it, rather than the crowd of humans at the non-web check-in.<\/p>\n

A guy leaps in front of me and interrogates the gate clerk. I don\u2019t care; I\u2019m so relieved to be out of the scary sprawling long line. She graciously handles his questions and thanks me. \u201cJust one?\u201d she asks, as I heave my bag onto the belt. \u201cSi, solomente uno.\u201d She hands me back my passport, my boarding pass with the gate number, and wishes me \u201cBuen viaje.\u201d I clear security \u2013 no 3-3-3 liquids rule, no unpacking my laptop, no taking off my shoes \u2013 and plunge back into air world.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaf\u00e9 con leche, por favor, y una media luna.\u201d I am trying. The gent next to me at the counter has a stack of dollars rubber banded to his documents. \u201cTime for a quick cup of coffee?\u201d We chat \u2013 he\u2019s off to Ushuaia too, boarding a ship not mine to Antarctica. \u201cHow many penguins do you think we\u2019ll see?\u201d he asks, and I laugh. \u201cThousands. Really, thousands.\u201d He\u2019s on a 200 passenger cruise, a new French ship, the Boreal. He\u2019s spent the last few days eating steak in Buenos Aires. He holds his hands out to show me how big, exactly, the steak was. I believe him.<\/p>\n

You can spot the Antarctica passengers, they look\u2026 well, ridiculous. One woman is wearing up to the knee overshoes, another wearing rubber boots and rain pants, she looks as though she stepped off the ice into the Buenos Aires airport, a four hour flight and two day sail from the Antarctic peninsula. It is 75 degrees here, muggy and overcast, yet the airport is dotted with expedition wear clad travelers.<\/p>\n

I feel enormous sympathy towards them \u2013 they could not figure out how to pack their boots. They are, like I am, in a cloud of transit based disorientation. They wander around, in their convertible pants and their turtle neck shirts. There\u2019s a woman in a maroon velour track suit, pants tucked into knee high rubber boots, her makeup and hair so neat. Save the boots, she looks straight from Boca Raton.<\/p>\n

\"Newberry<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m weighed down by my luggage. I haven\u2019t traveled this heavy since I was living as a part time expat, hauling books and unlikely objects across the globe. Because I knew I would stopover in the heat of Buenos Aires, I packed a small carry on with warm weather clothes. I\u2019m also carrying a backpack full of electronics, my video camera, this little laptop, power cables and batteries and more. I\u2019m pretending it\u2019s light but it\u2019s not and I\u2019m a stiff from carrying it across the vast slick airport concourses. So I laugh \u2013 in solidarity \u2013 with my fellow travelers, in their totally inappropriate shoes, their sweltering waterproof pants, their silly hats and excited smiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many penguins do you think we\u2019ll see?\u201d<\/p>\n

“The first one, that\u2019s the one that matters most,”\u00a0 that’s what I don\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, I am standing in the boarding line. \u201cOh My God,\u201d I think,”I\u2019m actually going to Antarctica.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The airport is a zoo. I stand in the wrong line for five, maybe ten minutes until I figure out what\u2019s happening. Then I see it \u2013 the web check-in counter. I checked in online last night, I\u2019m good to go. That line, it\u2019s got two people in it, rather than the crowd of humans … <\/p>\n


…read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[758],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antarctica-elsewhere","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4416"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4424,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions\/4424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}