Counting Penguins Before They’ve Hatched

The airport is a zoo. I stand in the wrong line for five, maybe ten minutes until I figure out what’s happening. Then I see it – the web check-in counter. I checked in online last night, I’m good to go. That line, it’s got two people in it, rather than the crowd of humans at the non-web check-in.

A guy leaps in front of me and interrogates the gate clerk. I don’t care; I’m so relieved to be out of the scary sprawling long line. She graciously handles his questions and thanks me. “Just one?” she asks, as I heave my bag onto the belt. “Si, solomente uno.” She hands me back my passport, my boarding pass with the gate number, and wishes me “Buen viaje.” I clear security – no 3-3-3 liquids rule, no unpacking my laptop, no taking off my shoes – and plunge back into air world.

“Café con leche, por favor, y una media luna.” I am trying. The gent next to me at the counter has a stack of dollars rubber banded to his documents. “Time for a quick cup of coffee?” We chat – he’s off to Ushuaia too, boarding a ship not mine to Antarctica. “How many penguins do you think we’ll see?” he asks, and I laugh. “Thousands. Really, thousands.” He’s on a 200 passenger cruise, a new French ship, the Boreal. He’s spent the last few days eating steak in Buenos Aires. He holds his hands out to show me how big, exactly, the steak was. I believe him.

You can spot the Antarctica passengers, they look… well, ridiculous. One woman is wearing up to the knee overshoes, another wearing rubber boots and rain pants, she looks as though she stepped off the ice into the Buenos Aires airport, a four hour flight and two day sail from the Antarctic peninsula. It is 75 degrees here, muggy and overcast, yet the airport is dotted with expedition wear clad travelers.

I feel enormous sympathy towards them – they could not figure out how to pack their boots. They are, like I am, in a cloud of transit based disorientation. They wander around, in their convertible pants and their turtle neck shirts. There’s a woman in a maroon velour track suit, pants tucked into knee high rubber boots, her makeup and hair so neat. Save the boots, she looks straight from Boca Raton.

I’m weighed down by my luggage. I haven’t traveled this heavy since I was living as a part time expat, hauling books and unlikely objects across the globe. Because I knew I would stopover in the heat of Buenos Aires, I packed a small carry on with warm weather clothes. I’m also carrying a backpack full of electronics, my video camera, this little laptop, power cables and batteries and more. I’m pretending it’s light but it’s not and I’m a stiff from carrying it across the vast slick airport concourses. So I laugh – in solidarity – with my fellow travelers, in their totally inappropriate shoes, their sweltering waterproof pants, their silly hats and excited smiles.

“How many penguins do you think we’ll see?”

“The first one, that’s the one that matters most,”  that’s what I don’t say.

Twenty minutes later, I am standing in the boarding line. “Oh My God,” I think,”I’m actually going to Antarctica.”