“So what happened” I hear you ask!? Why on earth did you go back!? How on earth were you able to go back!? In fact what happened that you ended up turning round and going back south to Antarctica!?
Well now, first things first, we simply loved Antarctica; It is truly an amazing place, a frozen continent that is the last great wilderness. It offers an experience like no other, sailing to the end of the world, on an expedition exploring this unique environment, with imagery of a romantic age of heroic explorers and adventurers of days gone by to prepare you for the journey.
So due to our amazing experience, the appetite to revisit Antarctica was there. It had also become an extra special place in our hearts, as it is the place of my proposal to Steph. So now it will forever be part of our lives and no doubt someday we would return, who knew that the return would be so soon!!!!
So the story starts as we approach Ushuaia, sailing up the Beagle Channel on the eve of our disembarkation. Steph and I are in the cabin packing, a bit sad to leave it all behind but happy to know our travels would be continuing. We are not sure how or which one of us started the conversation, but it was one of those “wouldn’t it be funny” conversations, “wouldn’t it be funny if we just turned round and went back on the next cruise”…..
So after about 30/40mins since the start of that conversation we had convinced ourselves that we could in fact do it, we had the flexibility, timing and willingness to do it, but “you know what?”, “there’s probably no room anyway”. At this point I step into the shower, I can see something in Steph’s eye’s, she opens the shower door as says “I’m going to speak with Jannnie, I’m going to see if they have the space” and off she popped.
After about 10mins she comes back, I find out she had bumped into Captain Patrick, who asked what she was doing, she explained, he then said lets find out, so next they went to the hotel manager Philippe, who said there were 4 places, Captain Patrick and Philippe said next thing is to speak to Jannie. She found Jannnie and explained and he said let me ask the question of the A&K Office and that was that.
An hour later whilst we were at dinner docked in Ushuaia, Jannie came over with the message, we could go and the offer was on the table. I can quiet honestly say I have never felt so sick in my life to make a decision, I have no idea why. We talked, not sure why, we both knew we were going to do it, but we were talking ourselves out of it and then into it again. We decided to seek counsel, we found our new friends Sharon and Guy, (we really wanted to speak to our friend Jim as we knew he would be like “don’t be stupid just do it, don’t even think twice!”) and they gave us a solid affirmation to do it! We found Jannie and said yes, we just had to rebook our flights as we would get back to Buenos Aires a day after we were due to leave for LA in our original plan.
At midnight we disembarked the ship on the hunt for wifi to call Continental to rebook our flights. We found wifi, picture this, a side street in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, stood in a bricked up doorway of an old shop, just off the main drag on our i-touch on skype, on hold with the first helpdesk only to be put through to another helpdesk, to then be cut off four times in and hour and a half…..this is a whole other story (Continental, you have a whole earful coming your way very soon!!), we gave up and decided to leave it to the morning.
We were up early the next morning, we had to make contingency plans for getting to the airport for our charter back to BA as the other passengers had disembarked at 8.30am and we still had to rebook our flights with the most useless helpdesk in the world that did not open for calls for another 2 hours! I could not believe our return trip depended on Continental! Needless to say we were back in the same side street again, on hold. After two cut offs we ended up migrating to an internet café where eventually Steph, bless her soul and patience, got through and after about an hour had our flights rebooked, it was a massive change…..for a day later.
We could put the “yes lets do it” down to a number of things, maybe we were Love drunk, maybe we were really drunk, maybe it was the great company from the first trip or maybe it was the magnificence of the place. What I suspect is there was a little bit of everything behind what happened but most importantly was that it made us happy, as the saying goes “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” and we were…..
