3/9/2016: Set a Course for South… and Straight On ‘Til Morning
Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 9:04 AM
The night was dark. After a delicious dinner at Puerto Cristal (more on this in a moment) I got us lost… again. We were walking in a well-lit but discomforting part of town; we couldn’t be far from the hotel, could we? It’s just around the corner for sure.
We had stopped at a 25-Hour Convenience Store™ trying to find Meg an agua con gas. I of course was on the hunt for a Diet Coke, or at least the South American analog, Coca-Cola Light, a slightly sweeter version of DC that’s more akin to a Coca-Cola Zero in the US. There’s a Coke Zero in South America as well that’s perhaps closer to a Tab or Coca Cola Green. I’m a bit of a coke-melier. But I digress. We found Meg’s sparkling water but the DC was overpriced and I was running low on pesos. I had spotted another store up a block from us, a chain that had had cheaper prices in other parts of town. So we went there.
Quick side note: I don’t really understand how the calculations are done for transactions here in Buenos Aires. At the 25 Hour Convenience Store™, the clerk was insistent on the full payment of 32 pesos for Meg’s two bottle of water. At this store where I bought my two Coca-Cola Lights, the bill was 41 pesos and the cashier charged me 40. I don’t know if Argentina has a “take a peso, leave a peso” honor system or if this guy just didn’t feel like making 9 pesos change from my 50 peso note. I do know some friends on the tour had already been scammed by a local taxi driver, giving in their change counterfeit pesos. A sad but perhaps befitting souvenir?
Regardless, exiting the store, I immediately turned what would prove to be the exact opposite direction of our hotel. This well-lit alley therefore that we found ourselves walking in is filled with armed security guards and residents of a more colorful background smoking cigarettes and conducting, um, business.
As we passed El Shoppe De Sex, I was pretty confident we were on the wrong trail.
Eventually we ducked into a convenience store and checked out map and my partially working GPS google maps app. We were only 0.2KM from the hotel but it meant walking back through the alley of ill repute. All the warnings from Marathon Tours and the travel advisory notice the hotel had provided floated through my head as we tried to confidently walk the alley.
Meg and I had a delightfully filling steak dinner at a real Argentinian Steak House. Mark and Karen Bras, who I had met previously at the Outback Marathon debacle and who it turns out live a stone’s throw away from me in Florida, had shared the name from their TripAdvisor research. We actually bumped into them on our way in; they were just about to order and offered us to join but we didn’t want to impose and delay them further as we scanned the menu so we sat a few tables away. Argentina’s dinner hour is clearly much later than what I’m used to. While we sat down around 7:30 PM to a mostly empty restaurant, by the time we finished at 9:15 the place was quickly filling up.
Meg ordered an 8 oz. steak, thinking in her head it was s smaller cut and not a ½ pound slice of a cow. I ordered a house specialty of a beef medallion with nut sauce. I got a steak knife; Meg got a Crocodile Dundee knife. We both ordered it medium (medio) and, well, ultimately something must have gotten lost in the translation. On the plus side, both of us were quite happy with our Argentinian beef.
As a result of the portions though we both were only too happy to walk back to the hotel… but I think we both would have been happier not taking the detour through Mos Eisley’s earth bound sister cantina.
POST SCRIPT NOTE: This is really unfair. I’ve found far more wretched hives of scum and villainy elsewhere. But when I first scribbled down notes on this last night, I was still a little creeped out and frustrated that I had once again put Meg through my wrong-way Hanna directions.
Despite being tired, I had trouble sleeping. Whether it was nerves over the trip today to Ushuaia or anticipation of the forthcoming Antarctica voyages and adventures, I don’t know. Perhaps it was the awareness that the alarm was set for 3:50 AM to ensure we had all our bags packed and down in the lobby for the 5 AM bus call.
***
The morning was early. And warm. Warmer perhaps than any other day in Buenos Aires. I suppose this is the last gasp of their summer. But given that we were headed to Antarctica and I had planned on wearing my parka, it was too warm. I restuffed the parka into my now over-stuffed bag and grabbed a couple of layers. If it was 75 degrees here in Buenos Aires, it was forecast to be 50 and windy at Ushuaia. But we had to get there first.
A quick but full breakfast was available after dropping bags at the bus and so I indulged with the stuffed French toast. If the bag was stuffed, I figured, I might as well be too. No syrup here that I could find but there was honey and dribbling it over the good-for-me-because-it’s-terrible-for me FT, I opted to skip other potential sides of potatoes or bacon and grabbed some fruit. I failed to snap a photo of this but this hotel carried on a long-storied tradition for me: I was comically inept using the serving tongs to grab the food (and especially the fruit). Any attempt to grip and lift a kiwi fruit made it look like I was re-creating a blood spatter pattern on Vulcan (because, ya know, they have green blood).
I found myself on the 30 minute bus ride to the aeropuerto in a downward spiral mood. I don’t know if it was the heat in my layered clothes or too much food at breakfast, too much steak at dinner last night, or just a general malaise. But I was annoyed by fellow runners’ attempts at humor, their questions to our tour guides including, “Is there coffee on this bus ride?” or “What’s the wine selection like?” I’m as guilty as the next for trying to keep things light but I also think I know how to use an inside voice.
Pettiness? Party of one? Your reservation from yesterday has been extended. But if you could check out by this afternoon, that’d be great…
Aerolineas Argentinas, a member of the Sky Team, is our carrier for the trip to Ushuaia. When I get back to the US, I need to submit my boarding passes for mileage credit with Delta. How odd that THAT was the first thing I thought as we entered the departure terminal’s ticketing area.
Our Marathon Tours group makes up about 80% of the flight and the check in desk offered us a separate line. Unfortunately, some Argentinian flyers didn’t realize this and kept trying to muscle their way into our line, oblivious to the fact that they were only going to cause themselves problems. It did feel like an aggressive free-for-all amidst the local travelers. At the desk, there were strict weight allowances, even more strict than on US flights. My parka stuffed bag was a few kilos over the 15 kg total limit but the check in rep waived my fees; Meg who was checking two bags wound up having to pay a $15 excess weight fee. It was almost a replay of the convenience store charges last night – I’m not sure what the difference was except possibly that Meg had two bags. Her combined weight of the two at 20 kg wasn’t much more than my slightly over single bag. Still, she wound up having to pay USD$3 per kilo over or a grand total of $15.
Security was relatively painless, tantamount to TSA PreCheck in the States. No need to remove items from the bag, but all metal objects and toiletries were to be in the bag on the conveyor belt as well as your coat. All told, it was a fairly fast check-in and security clearance when you think 113 people turned up at once for the flight (our ship’s complement of passengers and Marathon Tours staff).
And so here I sit on flight AR1852, seat 36G. Meg is on the other side of the plane in 37A. The tour group is scattered throughout. To board we took a shuttle bus over; so by today’s end our transportation will have been by Bus, Plane, Boat. Meg and I need to see if we can find some other wheeled vehicle to see if we can’t up that count.
A large Argentinian man was a late passenger on the shuttle bus and he threw his duffle bag around like an 800 pound gorilla. It struck Meg and me more than a few times as he shoved his way through the tiny bus aisles seeking, what? Not a place to put his bag down. Not a spare pole to hang on to as there were handholds readily available throughout. People are weird.
I was tempted by two things in the in-flight entertainment offerings. Revisiting a George Mason episode of “24” held some allure, as did this kid cartoon show which has one helluva plotline pitch. But instead I’ve gone with typing up this interim blog post.
They’ve just brought an inflight service with snacks and drinks. The runner next to me, the third Ear Nose and Throat Doctor I’ve met on this voyage, winces as he sips the coffee. He says it tastes like a combination of dark brown tea and a warm Guinness. Not being a coffee drinker myself, I wouldn’t really know the difference between good or bad coffee… but I would know I wouldn’t like brown-ish tea mixed with warm Guinness. I asked for a Coca-Cola Light and the flight attendant poured me what I’d call a shot glass of the stuff. To her credit, before I could sip it she realized she had poured me straight Coke and not the Light and pulled it from my lips. I grew up on Coca Cola then Coca Cola Classic. The empty calories I sucked down in my youth could fill all the fat suits for Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick TV series and then some. That’s a terrible phrasing and I will hopefully one day come up with a better “fat suits” movie reference. The point is, after years of drinking Diet Coke, I can tell “the real thing” is far, far too sweet and caramelly for me these days and thus I appreciated her swapping out the full loaded soda for my requested lighter one.
The snack box itself consisted of tomato and basil crackers that had a Ritz cracker vibe, some lemon sandwich cookies, and a couple of chocolate crème filled biscuits.
I know this is excruciatingly detailed in mundane minutiae, factoids and diversions that are of interest perhaps only to me as a documentation of what has happened. But for some odd reason it feels like something I should do. My advice to anyone else reading this it to skip over most of these “Kevin’s Log Supplemental” posts and just scroll through the photos. I’ll try and mark the real running posts with a title header that may be of more general interest. Perhaps those will be set off as “Runner’s Log – Supplemental.”
The plane is getting ready for its initial descent into the Ushuaia area so I need to power down my laptop. When next I type into this update, I think I’ll be at the southern-most tip of South America.
***
Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 7:20 PM.
We have thrown the lines and set sail. The course has been set – south. The destination has been set – south. The trip has yet to go south metaphorically speaking… albeit there were more than a few hiccups in the town of Ushuaia.
The plane arrived around 12:45 PM into the fishing/tourist town of Ushuaia or Terra del Fuego, named by Magellan in the early 1500s. Unfortunately, a government employees strike had several services suspended (such as the information booth or the complimentary passport stamping). On top of that, many restaurants and shops were closed for the afternoon siesta from 1PM to 4 PM. So the place was either cerrado (closed) or jammed with protesting. We had hoped to grab a quick bite to eat and then find a bottle shop to load up on alcohol for the voyage, especially perhaps a bottle of champagne to celebrate my Seventh Continent Club completion. Sadly, Meg and I struggled with the fast food and each duty free or store we passed was closed. We never did find a bottle shop and the lunch proved poor. It was a bummer of a city visit as every decision we made seemed to be the wrong one. We did however snap a few decent photos along the way. It was just poor timing and poor planning on our part for enjoying this small town.
Be that as it may, things rallied with the embarkation of the Ioffe. Having spied the ship from shore…
It was something else entirely to be boarding the Russian research vessel.
I’ve cruised before, mainly on Disney Cruise Line, and there were parallels to what I’ve encountered and some marked differences. As the primary purpose of the good ship Ioffe is research, and as the passenger information guidebook in each cabin explains, the ship “therefore lacks some of the conveniences that are commonplace on passenger specific vessels.” Essentially, the deck layout and hallways are more robust and sealable. IT reminded me of walking a historical submarine docked in a bay as a tourist attraction. There are amenities, don’t get me wrong. The pastry chef in particular has so far brought her “A” game, including chocolate and peanut butter bars and a flourless chocolate cake dessert.
And I’ve cruised enough to know about the “cashless” society of a ship where everything gets charged to a shipboard account and the bill is settled at journey’s end. I wasn’t prepared for the exponential costs of soda pop. The bar menu and the dining room table made no mention of the price of a soda and I eventually broke down and asked. You know what “they” say about prices – if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. It took some digging but ultimately Christine, a Marathon Tours and OneOcean double agent, found out sodas are $2 per order. For me, that’s a charge that could quickly spiral out of control. Coupled with the typically inflated restaurant prices for wine and beer, the drinks on this boat could really kill me. The question is, will going cold turkey on the caffeine and soda out of frugality/cheapness lead me to turn into a psycho killer akin to Dracula crossing the English Channel in his coffin, an outcome that would leave the Ioffe as a ghost ship with words of warning to future sailors that the Diet Coke should’ve been free.
The bartender is from Portugal and his name is Joao (pronounced “Schway.”) “No schway!” I thought to myself in a terrible Mike Myers impression; even in my head, I can’t do impressions or voices. He advised us that there is a happy hour the hour before dinner with discounted daily drink specials. He was hailed as the most popular crewmember on board.
For me that honor may have previously been reserved for Tina, the kayak instructor. Or at least until moments before we boarded the bus in Ushuaia to be taken to the Ioffe’s slip. Tina collected all of our passports to hold for safe keeping she said and to prepare the ship’s manifest for immigration. This would help speed up the passport control process and enable us to bypass lines both in departing and returning to Ushuaia. It also meant she’d keep all the passports in a dry bag so that should anything untoward happen and we needed to abandon ship, she could bring all our passports with her into the life raft and preclude 113 people scrambling to find their passports in their cabins amidst an emergency. All well and good, if still a bit disturbing to have us hand over our passports. What made matters worse were the lighthearted, Southwest Air-ian attempts at humor and levity, with Tina offering up comments like, “I’ve just taken your passports and will sell them back to you… or the highest bidder on the black market!” to “I can’t believe how trusting you all are!” The kicker for me was when she had a stack of them and then dropped them all over the bus floor, not knowing if she had collected all of them thereafter and leaving all of us wondering if a passport had gone missing in the chaos. A rough place to build trust and faith from… but if she’s the one who will enable us to go for a kayak excursion in the coming days, well, then we accept the shortcomings with the promise of a highlight.
Now onboard and cruising along, we engaged in the mandatory life boat drill, complete with cumbersome life vests, and took time to appreciate the 66-person life rafts that would be our sealed tombs of hope should we need to abandon ship. Cody from Oregon was our muster chief and did a good job of conveying the necessary information and reassuring us that hopefully we’d never need to think about such things again.
***
Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 9:30 PM.
And so having just had a buffet cocktail hour and life boat drill, we were once again back to dinner at 7:30 PM. With the sun setting, we cruised through the relative calm of the Beagle Channel. We passed Puerto Williams, Chile’s claim to the southernmost town in the World. Argentina of course has the southernmost CITY in the form of Ushuaia. Words matter in politics, in tourism, and in life.
What was calm though promises to get rough as we enter the Drake Passage tonight at around 1 AM. The forecast is for 20-25 knot winds and a fair bit of rocking and rolling. At the crew’s behest, we’ve tried to Drake Passage proof our room, securing items as best we can to prevent them from rolling around in the night and causing us to curse the mysterious culprit in the dark. Breakable items and things more likely to topple have been put in lower levels or on the floor. And Dramamine has been popped. What tonight and tomorrow brings only time will tell.
I never did get to drop Mom and Steve a farewell from South America email and I’m too cheap to purchase the shipboard mail package for USD$30. It’s text only and has some weird requirements for bandwidth restrictions. On top of that, I was chatting with a fellow runner by the name of Vernon, watching the last vestiges of sunlight dissipate into the overcast night sky. He was saying he had never before completely disconnected and unplugged for 10 days. Maybe a day, two at most. And despite being a family man who went from signing up for the 2018 race to getting moved up two years to this expedition, he didn’t plan on a ship email. While Meg has signed up and emailed her folks that she’s aboard and sailing south, I feel like I had already warned Steve and Mom about my pecuniary stinginess. Besides, that email cost could pay for 15 Diet Cokes… and for everyone’s safety, that might be the better option.
As a last bit of safety advisory, I just saw the Argentinian pilot climb down a rope ladder to an awaiting tug. I can only assume it’s a union rule that requires this ship to have a pilot. There isn’t a lot to pilot through in the Beagle Channel. The ship’s crew raved about the James Bond style acrobatics involved but what it really was was a guy climbing down a rope ladder. And yet we all donned parkas and snapped photos and clapped at the end. But I wouldn’t say it’s a rave, Mr. Bond.
***
Runner’s Log – Supplemental – 10:20 PM.
It’s a relatively early night given the 3:50 AM wake up, stress of travel transit, and the blustery winds of departure by sea. And it’s my extreme hope that I’ll be one of the first signups tomorrow for kayaking. I had no real interest in a massage or treadmill time (treadmills on rough seas? I hate treadmills on level ground). But kayaking? Kayaking is of paramount importance.
I had a brief chat with some fellow runners about the running options on the ship. The deck is open but it’s blustery, cold, and potentially later strewn with ice and therefore not the safest of routes. And then there’s the whole research vessel layout of the deck that makes running a bit more treacherous. That leaves the blocks of time on the treadmill in the bowels of the ship, a living inferno in direct opposition to the cold of the outside. We all agreed that maybe this is a sign to take these days as “rest days” from running, that despite the cornucopia of food and unending buffets of multi-course meals and rich desserts, that we “cheat” and enjoy the adventure of the one ocean expedition to the last place on earth.
Or if they didn’t agree, I was most definitely a unanimous vote of one.