Off the Coast of Argentina
Southbound aboard the elegant National Geographic Explorer, we run down the coast of Argentina, chased by a gentle, following sea. Forty miles offshore, we’re in water only 60 feet deep, cradled on the continental shelf of South America. If this were the coast of Chile, where the continent plunges from the mighty Andes into the Pacific Ocean, the water would be thousands of feet deep. But we’re on the Atlantic side, headed for the rugged but friendly Falkland Islands, or “Las Malvinas,” as the Argentines call them. From there it’ll be 600 miles east-southeast to the Island of South Georgia, the island at the end of the world, the Africa of Antarctica, home to hundreds of thousands of king penguins and four species of nesting albatrosses, and countless seals, as well as the Grytviken whaler’s cemetery, resting place of Sir Ernest Shackleton. Many Lindblad naturalists, historians and bridge officers say South Georgia is their “favorite place in the world.” Time to find out why. The sky is an unblemished blue. The is air warm, the wind a soft breeze. That will change.
Our heads still ring with images of Buenos Aires, where yesterday we watched gauchos – Argentine cowboys – thunder by on their horses as they played games and performed riding tricks. After that, it was a polo match, like something out of the classic Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie. The Argentine hosts played the Roy Orbison theme song, Pretty Woman, at halftime as we walked onto the polo field to fill in divots. On our bus ride back into the big city, we passed a shantytown – miles of makeshift homes built of salvaged corrugated metal and concrete cinder blocks – that reminded us how too much of the world lives. Nearly one-third of the people in Buenos Aires survive in poverty.
Once on the ship, we left the busy, crowded world behind and slipped into a dream, where the sea and sky interplay with inventions of blue, each coloring the other, and nothing is worn down by the feet of too many people.
The dream goes on: lunch in the sunshine on the aft deck, a lecture about seabirds, a seminar on photography and how to use our cameras, a captain’s welcome cocktail, a lounge filled with laughter, a thousand little moments of reunion and relaxation, of the beginnings of making new friends and sharing old stories, of coming together and being thankful that while the world has many problems, it also has great beauty, and we are lucky enough to witness it and share it.
