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| Looking down through the mist rising from the falls. |
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| Over the treetops. |
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| First view of a large stretch of the falls. |
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| Peeking past a tree. |
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| You can see how the falls are divided into sections. |
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| Another view of a long stretch. |
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| Looking down over the edge of a waterfall. |
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| The lip of another section of the falls. |
This entry is the first of many mismatches between what I'm writing about and what the photographs show. This is entirely down to what I photographed of course. I'll try to chronicle the actual trip including the parts not shot with the View-Master camera. I'll include digital photos from those periods in the Flickr link at the bottom of the page.
So, for quite a while the photos are going to be of Iguazu Falls, on the very reasonable grounds that it is a spectacular place. I hope you enjoy them as much as the photographs of Antarctica. Unfortunately there will be no more penguins, as it is too hot for them there, and frankly it was too hot for me too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Way ahead. Before we went to Iguazu, we returned to Buenos Aires, and before even that we returned to Ushuaia.
I was looking forward to seeing Ushuaia again. We wouldn't have long there, being reunited with our passports and evicted from the Ocean Endeavour shortly after breakfast. We said our farewells to our fellow penguin botherers and set about spending a few hours in town before it was time to get a taxi to the airport. The farewells were very premature of course, because Ushaia isn't very big and consequently we kept bumping into each other as we went about our business.
Even earlier than this, when we first crossed the Drake Passage, I mentioned that we both used scopolamine patches as a preventative measure against seasickness. Did I also mention that they came with dire warnings not to touch them without immediately washing your hands? After some initial and unspoken paranoia on my part that they might be making me feel peculiar, I began to trust that they were working and stopped worrying about them. If I'm perfectly honest though I touched the hell out of the thing. I was constantly worried that it might be falling off and kept poking at it for reassurance. Reader, how many times did I wash my hands afterwards? Zero. Nothing bad happened, or at least if it did, I didn't notice. The dire warning on the packet was clearly hyperbole, I thought. Many drugs list side effects you're only going to encounter if you're unlucky. Well, after the second patch, back in Ushuaia I would learn that I was luckier than I'd thought.
We had done a promenade of the main drag, marvelling at the prices being charged for some of the souvenirs on offer. Of note were the pink penguins. These were carved from rhodochrosite, which is apparently Argentina's national gemstone. I have no criticism of their artistry, however I simply can't agree with the idea of a pink penguin. A fleshy penguin. Urgh. This is the stuff of nightmares and it's also very expensive. Fatigued by a fortnight of Antarctic exploration and horrified by shrimpy penguins, we made our way to the Marcopolo Cafe, which we'd been to on the way out. They do great cheesecake! It was there, while scrolling through some of the gazillion photos I'd taken, that my sister returned from the loo with worrying news.
"I feel really weird," she said. I hesitated before responding. Those words are rarely followed by anything reassuring. It's probably only a good thing to say in the context of the lyrics of a psychedelic record.
"I've just looked at myself in the mirror and this pupil is really massive." She pointed to her left eye. I peered at it and concurred that it was indeed quite sauceresque. I tried not to panic. Clearly she was also trying not to panic. Being the only one with mobile data in Argentina I occupied myself with Googling how bad this could be while trying not to think about how bad this could be. It's quite a trick. At this point the scopolamine was strongly suspected but far from certain to be the culprit. Our hope, which was largely unspoken amidst the pretence of not panicking, was that it was in fact because she'd poked her eye with a scopolamined finger and that it would eventually go away. However this was far from certain. What would we do if it were more serious? We had travel insurance – very expensive travel insurance as was required to go to Antarctica, but negotiating the medical system in a remote Argentinian town when we spoke no Spanish beyond the basic pleasantries was a daunting prospect.
We considered visiting a pharmacy, but a previous visit to one for a particularly nastily swollen mosquito bite had been largely an exercise in pointing at things. There was a worry that presenting with one whacked-out eye could start an escalation of events beyond their severity. With a plane to catch later that day, we had to be analytical. Did the symptoms match those reported from poking your eye with scopolamine? Yes. Were they getting worse? No. Were there any other symptoms? No. With four degrees between us, none of them medical, we decided that in our unprofessional opinion we should hope for the best. It would probably be okay.
While we had been deliberating, our luggage had been taken from the ship to a collection point. We made our way there, stopping to pose for photos with the giant letters spelling Ushuaia nearby. The collection point was actually a bar when not being used to store suitcases. Sadly it was not functioning as such at the time. From there we took a taxi to the airport, where we ran into friends from the ship. This was not surprising. Many people on board were flying to Buenos Aires and the airport is tiny. We chatted casually about our trip and our plans in Buenos Aires and beyond. Life on the ship was already taking on a dream-like quality. Had I really been to Antarctica? I sorted through the thousands of photos on my digital camera as though seeking confirmation, but in reality I was back in the cosy, noisy wool of the internet and the internet demanded pictures. The internet also brought the last fortnight's worth of news. This was the longest I'd spent offline since we all started carrying the internet around with us. Had I missed it? Sure, some of it. But not the relentless, endless drama of the rolling news cycle. I was a little surprised to find that not much had changed while I had been away from the world, for better or worse. I made a mental note to pay less attention to the news in future, a recommendation I have yet to follow for any meaningful length of time. In my immediate future however I would be suitably distracted by the charms of South America.
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