Causing confusion on the way to the Seventh Continent

I’m no cheater. I play fair, even in silly marshmallow games.

By Day Five of my cruise, the natives were restless and, had we been any ordinary sea folk, probably would have mutinied. But bad weather is bad weather and, recognizing we couldn’t do squat to fix it, we went along with anything the crew offered, which included elementary school-type competitions.

I’m happy to report that my team won the paper airplane competition and tied for first in the overall competition. And that I am not a cheater – and there’s video to prove it.

My second polar circle crossing.

Yes, we had a competition involving marshmallows. This is when you take a miniature spoon and, relay style, dip into a cup of mini-marshmallows, put as many as you can on the little spoon and run down the lounge area of a boat that’s tossing and turning (I mean, we were doing this because the weather was too bad to get off the boat, after all) and dump it into your designated cup before passing the tiny spoon off to the next person on your team to lather, rinse and repeat.

Our team did crappy, in part because our first player dumped his in the wrong cup. Probably, had we cheated, we would have fared better. But we didn’t. I learned there was proof of this the evening after the games, just before the nightly wrap-up presentation.

 As people file into the little auditorium, the expedition team plays a short video file – maybe a minute. As I sat down, I realized it was the start of the silly marshmallow game. Mortified, I saw myself on the screen, hair braided and wearing an Iraq sweatshirt, in a progression that includes me:

• Running across the table with the cups, because I realized I needed to be in place to grab the spoon from the first guy and our cup was on the opposite end of the room.
• Frantically waving at the first guy to signal him to the right cup, which he didn’t notice. (It was loud; he was concentrating. Fortunately there was no sound on the video. I was yelling and waving all around.)
• Disappearing offscreen as I ran down a different aisle the bar to grab the marshmallows. I managed four.
• Running up to the cup as I hold a spoon containing a single marshmallow. You can also see three marshmallows in my hand; they’d jumped ship as I maneuvered people and a rocking ship.

Protocol dictates kissing a fish following a 
successful circle crossing. I don't know why.

Mortified, I saw this over and over because the video was on a loop. People were laughing at it because the whole thing was ridiculous; we had maybe five teams and everyone was an adult, so we looked pretty silly. (Being at sea for five days does this to you.) Gradually, though, I realized that most people’s laughter was directed to a different person on the video, my roommate.

Roommate was a fun one and we got along great, but boy, she cheated! While my on-screen likeness shows me taking great pains not to cheat, hers – over and over – displayed her also holding fallen baby marshmallows in her hand, and as soon as she arrived at the table, she dumped them in her cup. Because of the camera angle, you can’t see who pointed out that wasn’t allowed, but you seen her arguing and pleading her case – over and over. It was kind of an interesting character study.

We had a lot of characters on the cruise. There were about 120 guests and 80 or so crew. So far as I could tell, everyone got along. We had a decent amount of backpackers who had booked the trip late and just as many who had been waiting for 2-3 years to take the cruise. It was fun getting to chat with them.

Kurdagonia, not Patagonia
at the LeMaire Crossing

On of my unintended icebreakers was my Iraqi sweatshirt. It’s a pun on the brand Patagonia, but I didn’t bring it because I left from Patagonia; I brought it because I only have three sweatshirts with me now. But since we were so close to Patagonia, I had so many people ask what it meant. It says “Kurdagonia” and came from Erbil. I probably explained it to 10 people during the course of the cruise. One person even pretty much figured it out, saying he’d heard of both Kurdistan and Patagonia, but not Kurdagonia. I was like, yes, that’s it.

Now I am re-acclimating to Iraq; different desert in a different part of the world. Travel back was shorter but just as exhausting as it was on the way there. I left for the airport at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night and crawled into my apartment at 2 p.m. on Thursday. I can’t prove Wednesday existed.

But it’s back to reality now and things are looking up. Based on my email, it sounds like I’m in for a windfall. Discovered in my inbox, an unfortunate soul in Ukraine died, leaving $58m big ones.

“He had no next of kin based on the fact that his nominated was also killed during the Russian air strike but he has the same First name with you hence  I am contacting you today because you can inherit this fortune through some legal  means that I will advise because you share the same last name and with the help of the deceased personal lawyer he will prepare all necessary legal binding documents that will enable this finance firm release the mentioned amount to you if you accept this offer.”

Honestly, it is unbelievable that someone would buy that. Seriously? I share the same first name, so somehow I’m an heir? Bizarre.

Bad weather, amazing adventure

There’s no such thing as a cyclone party. They’re not a lot of fun, especially on a ship. But once you make it through, boy, making it to your destination is a lot of fun.

My second try to Antarctica got me to land. My first try, back in 2020, was on a big cruise ship that was more of a drive through than anything else. From there, I’d planned a disembarkation, but it got “weathered” out. This time, despite the weather, I set foot on the continent. You’re told to take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints so I don’t have a rock, but I did leave my voice there.

But the weather … oh my. First of all, I was sick as a dog the entire first day. “The Drake Shake” – when you go through the Drake Passage with bad waves – didn’t help, but looking back, a lot of it was just fatigue. Going out, I changed one flight to cut down my Amman layover from about 15 hours to about 7, but it was still a 7-hour layover. The next flight was 2.5 hours, followed by a 4-hour layover. In Istanbul, I got on the long flight, which was to Buenos Aires, but it first stopped in Sao Paulo for almost 2 hours, and then, following a brutal 6-hour layover in the Buenos Aires check-in area (because I was leaving international and going domestic; I couldn’t hang out in the lounge and had to sit in a chair), I got on my final flight to Ushuaia. That’s when I realized my flight to Ushuaia wasn’t direct; we had a 1.5-hour stop in some other city. Seriously, I spent three mornings in airports. I left Baghdad on Thursday morning and I arrived on … gosh, I don’t even know. I think it was Saturday around lunch. I checked into the hotel, met my roommate and tried to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

So although I had a rough first morning on The Drake, I honestly think I was more tired than anything. The ship was rocking and rolling but I mostly just crashed in bed. The first night, I didn’t eat anything until the 4:30 p.m. tea; I just had zero appetite. That pretty much went for the whole cruise. The food was amazing, but I didn’t indulge, with the exception of ice cream at lunch. The scoops were tiny, though!

The weather for the first 5-6 days was awful. Horizontal rain, snow, sleet, massive (but not rogue) waves. My point-and-shoot as the photos and the cord I brought on the trip doesn’t work, so I can’t get the photos uploaded yet, but it was brutal. We had been expecting to do an excursion out on the Zodiacs on the evening of the third day and that was out of the question. The next morning, the captain tried in vain to find some reasonably sheltered place to let us off the boat, but it didn’t work. Same for the next afternoon, and the following day.

The expedition team was amazing. We had lectures – incredibly scientific – several times a day, but before the weather cleared, they were having to invent things to keep us from mutinying. Think airplane races and games with marshmallows. Everyone was still good natured about it – I mean, what can you do? – but everyone wanted us off the boat.

One night, the poor captain had a brutal time trying to find shelter. The winds were absolutely awful and, TBH, I wondered if there was a chance we might capsize. The boat, the World Explorer, was fairly new and had safety features so I really wasn’t worried but I did wonder. My roommate, however, worried. The morning after what we later learned were Cat 4-level winds rocked us, I discovered she’d slept right next to her life jacket.

With that, though, the weather kind of broke. We got out the next morning on super choppy waves. I landed in a less-crowded Zodiac and was sitting at the front, meaning I got super crushed by waves. The scenery was fantastic and I was soaked through to my underwear, despite my Minsk “waterproof” snow pants. Icebergs closer up are even more beautiful than they are from a distance, like wandering through a floating sculpture gallery. It’s never boring, but it can be cold and wet.

Seriously, it snowed. That just doesn’t happen. People built a little snowman! It was just strange weather. We had a deck covered in snow – big, fat flakes.

After the first excursion, though, the weather got better. My three layers of pants never got soaked through again, and I met penguins, whales and all kinds of seals. We visited Port Lockroy and, although I didn’t mail any postcards, I did get my passport stamped and bought a magnet. Coincidentally, I have a new tourist passport and the Port Lockroy stamp – which includes a penguin – is the first stamp in the new passport.

This was the trip I wanted to Antarctica. Although I was happy with my previous trip, the whole point had been to set foot on the continent and see critters up close, and I finally got to do that.

More later. At the moment, I am on my second trip and I am headed to see Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world. 

I am getting around

The boat leaves from Ushuaia tomorrow on the first R&R of my second tour. I’m on my third day of travel and am finally at the hotel where the cruise passengers say the day before embarkation. I didn’t think I needed an R&R before, but after getting here I am ready for break.

Although I got lucky and took the second flight out to Amman on the first day – there isn’t always a second one – this is still the third morning I’ve been traveling. I am utterly exhausted. The first day, I blissfully didn’t sleep late but woke up at the regular time and hit the gym and breakfast before catching a 9 a.m. shuttle to the help pad. The flight left at 2 p.m. and was right on time because the ambassador was also departing on the same flight. It’s still a slow plane, though, and I finally transited to Amman around 5 p.m.

Since my original plan had been to arrive there around 9 a.m. and face a day layover, I was giddy with the thought of a shorter one and canceled the hotel reservation before realizing that seven hours isn’t exactly a short layover. Then, in the first real disappointment, learned you cannot check into the airport lounge until four hours before a flight so I had basically six hours before I could get into the lounge. Fortunately, I just hunt out with some guy who works at the embassy. It made me feel bad because we’d been in the transfer line and I’d invited him to the lounge (I can always take guests but never do so I offered) and then I failed him. But we chatted until his flight left, which was around 8 p.m., after which I finished a book and then snacked on some Froot Loops before finally getting into the lounge, where I set a timer and dozed in and out for two hours before grabbing some food and getting on the flight to Istanbul.

That flight was only two and a half hours and the layover there was four, but that lounge is huge and super nice. They had showers, which was an unexpected surprise, and then I locked myself in what looked like one of those little rooms they have at the library with a reading table and a lamp. After whipping out an eye mask and yanking off my shoes, I curled up in the chair and dozed as I caught up with my morning podcasts and then had a decent breakfast before getting on the long leg, the flight over the Atlantic.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the 18 hours-plus it was billed as. Well, in all it was, but we did the first 12 hours to Sao Paulo before holding there for close to two as the plane was cleaned and 80 percent of the people deplaned. Holy cow, it had been a super full flight. The person in the window seat in my row complained because her seat wouldn’t recline, but they wound up having no empty spots to move her to, so tough luck for her.  Her husband tried to get them to re-seat her, but I never figured out why if it mattered so much to him that he just didn’t swap with her.

When we finally arrived in Buenos Aires, I utterly had no idea what day and time it was in any time zone. My body was so confused, but I knew I had six hours there. It initially didn’t sound bad because they also had an airport lounge, but I hadn’t realized I’d have to reclaim my bag and get booted out of the international terminal since the next flight was domestic. I was crushed, because that had been my dinner plan. Instead, I had three Whoppers and a mini-pack of M&Ms and regretted eating the Froot Loops in Amman. At least the airport had WiFi, though, and I downloaded some more books to read on the cruise.  I tried to doze off, but that just didn’t work.

My flight left this morning at 4:40, so around 2 a.m. I ran to Starbucks for a muffin and then went to the Buenos Aires domestic terminal, which is tiny and crowded. That’s why I stayed over in the international side for the evening – there was literally no place to sit. Even past security the next morning, it was just a bunch of people and few chairs.

Relieved, I started on the last leg when I realized that this flight, too, had a stop on the way. This travel has just been incredible. Most of the flights were absolutely fine, but I’m just so tired and I can feel my body still thinking it’s in motion.

Finally the flight arrived and I met the Quark ground people, who took the passengers to the hotels. And of course, I was the last to be dropped off at my hotel, the only one off that flight who is staying at this one.

My roommate got here yesterday and it seems positive. She is also from Florida and has lived extensively abroad. She was initially super talkative – understandable – and I hope I was coherent in my responses. At that point, I just needed a shower and a nap to feel human again.

She went to a museum, I think she said, and we may meet for dinner but I also may crash early. I tried to sleep and managed a 40-minute nap. Now I am just trying to get all photos and such off my phone so I can fill it up again.

The hotel is near the Hard Rock and I don’t know if it’s that or not, but I can hear music out the window. They just wrapped up “Eye of the Tiger” and now it’s “I Get Around.”

Tomorrow we have to be at the boat-leaves-from place around 3 p.m. and then we’ll set off! Second time doing this, but this time I’m doing the one I had hoped to do before, so I hope all goes well.

Bon voyage.