The "Love" Boat

* this entry from 2/11 *

Hotel Albatros, Ushuaia

Past a glass and stone lobby, fellow traveller's of the Lyubov Orlova are seated in the lounge. Our luggage has already been tagged and collected. A meeting is adjourned and a Quark representative instructs the time the bus will arrive to bring passengers through customs and to the ship.

Seated in the lounge amidst laptops, books, glasses of wine and snores, I experiment with Facebook. In a rectangular field I fill in the blank - Jasmine is waiting for a boat. I type in empty blocks and say hello to Miriam.

The next time I look up and survey the room, something has changed. There are no sounds of snoring, no typing on keyboards, no murmer of soft chatter. Rather, the boat is waiting...

Chastising myself while frantically stuffing laptop cords into a bag, I run out the double doors of the hotel, across the street to the dock. There I met a young Isreali girl (who turns out to be my cabin roomate). Together we cross customs and board the Lybov Orlova, an ice-strengthened ship named after the beloved Russian Actress who was known to always be smiling. Her first name translates as "love".



***

In the forward lounge, the Quark Team introduces themselves -- a Biologist, Glaciologist, Ornthologist, Historian, Naturalists, Zodiac Drivers, and a Team Leader, who ends her speech with a quote by Doris Lessing, author of the Golden Notebook and winner of the '07 Nobel Prize, "..millions of people are fighting and struggling; but behind them, somewhere, enormous empty places; a place for the spirit to find rest in".

After champagne toasts with the Russian Captain and cheers to a safe journey, we set sail. Destination -- Antarctica, the world's driest, windiest, coldest, and most pristine continent.