Like The Antarctic Explorers of Yore. . .

We had to gear up for the trip.  Waterproof outerpants, muck boots, wool calf-high socks.  Our expedition leaders had a very helpful checklist of clothing and gear to bring.

The last item we acquired for the trip was not on the lists of the Antarctic greats like Shackleton, Scott, and Mawson.  It wasn’t even on the list our expedition had put together for us.  But it shows we have arrived in today’s tech world.  Yes, the day before we left, Carol went to Target and purchased our very own, and first ever for us, selfie stick.

How we managed all of our previous trips without one, I will never know, but, dear readers, you can rest assured that we have a selfie stick.

As I write this, minute by minute we are going further south than we have ever been – a distinction that had been set by our last trip to Queenstown, NZ, which further south than Cape Town, S.A., the previous holder of that record.

We are flying LAN down to Ushuaia, Argentina after spending a long day yesterday in Buenos Aires.  Ushuaia, for the uninitiated (of which I was one), is semi-famous for being the most southerly city in the world (semi-famous because if I had never heard of it before planning to go on this trip, how famous could it actually be?).

The journey we are undertaking has been put together by Inspirato.com, working with a joint venture of Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic, on the Nat Geo ship Orion.  We’re just over four hours from boarding the ship for the more than two day journey to Antarctica.

While Carol and I are usually self-directed travelers, one doesn’t just pick-up and go to Antarctica on one’s own.  (Well, some might, but that’s more work and arranging than this, so we took the easier route.)  Our daughters, world travelers in their own rights, are all off at school.
So, why go during January of an election year?  First, I’m not working for a presidential campaign, so late January is good timing. Second, it is austral summer, so the days will be 22.5 hours long and the temperatures will not be bitter cold.  Third, email means I can work from anywhere, including the famed Drake Passage.

Carol has been to South America before – she spent six weeks in high school on an exchange program to Venezuela (yes, it was a thriving country before Hugo Chavez and Maduro sent it on a one-way trip to hell).  So this trip will be her seventh continent (that’s out of seven, in case you didn’t know), and my sixth and seventh.

You can argue we have not yet truly been to Asia – I’ve been to Israel and the Asian part of Turkey, whilst Carol made the same stops in Turkey, but hey – it’s still seven continents!  We do want to make it the true Asia – at the least, Vietnam and Ankgor Wat are on the list for us in the future, with China a possibility if the pollution is ever dealt with.