Was it only nine days ago that we cast off from Ushuaia’s pier, trembling with anticipation for what was to come? Have we really come this far in so short a time? Perhaps each wave we passed was a mark of time, as if the ocean had replaced clocks as our timekeeping piece. Instead of 2100 nautical miles, it was ten million waves…
Or was it the few thousand icebergs passing the windows? Some so huge they earn a name, most simply beautiful, unique, and anonymous.
This expedition has meant a recalibration of the concept of time. How many whales can one see in a week? Days begin not with a sunrise, but by a soft voice from the PA system, a system that now seems a far more advanced way to tell time than any atomic clock.
Even a skilled penguin counter would utterly fail to estimate the total number of penguins we saw climbing the gangway in Ushuaia. Count the muddy web feet squishing through the guano and divide by two, then multiply by the passing flocks of pintado petrels…
This voyage began with a ship full of strangers with little in common other than a desire to explore. As National Geographic Resolution sails west down the Beagle Channel, she returns to Argentina filled with a single family, one-hundred and twenty-four brothers and sisters brought together by a place called Antarctica.
Tomorrow will be a day of farewells, of hugs and tears and handshakes, and slowly we will each fly off in our own directions – like wandering albatrosses, looking for new horizons…
