Written in 2011, during a student expedition to Antarctica organised by Students on Ice.
The young receptionist at the Canal Beagle Hotel greeted us with a warm smile and spoke gently in accented English. “The dinner is about to be served, everyone else is seated at the restaurant. It’s straight ahead.” “Thank you,” all three of us replied in a cheerful, courteous tone.
Tom, Athena and I had arrived just in time. It was 7:30 PM Argentinian time. We would have made it much earlier had it not been for the little adventure that happened when we lost our way in some remote part of the Tierra del Fuego national park. We decided to keep quiet about this. It wouldn’t make a very nice first impression — three young students trying to explore new pathways and getting lost in the woods. The prime journey had yet to begin, and such careless individuals could always jeopardise the months of planning needed to pull off such an expedition.
As we walked closer to the restaurant, I could hear the upwelling of enthusiastic conversations and see beautiful, sparkling faces with broad smiles. The atmosphere was so vibrant and joyous that it lightened your heart and made you keen to join. We found vacant seats at the last table and joined the group. The conversation had begun.
While waiting for my vegetarian meal to be served, I turned around and through the window saw the last rays of the sun dissolving into the waters of the Beagle Channel. The hues of orange and red still lingered in the sky. It looked like a painting. It seemed surreal.
With the meal coming to an end and pie, tarts and chocolate cake stuffed into our stomachs, we all headed for the presentation room. On the stage, Geoff Green — our expedition leader — was standing with a broad smile, a cap on his head and a plethora of things on his mind. As he uttered his first words, the chattering died down instantly. There was unprecedented excitement in the air, one could feel it. Behind those half-tensed, half-smiling faces were dreams, thoughts and aspirations — but more than that, one could feel the energy bubbling through them, stored for now like a pressure cooker. Time to time it leaked in the form of roars of laughter and spontaneous clapping.
While all this unravelled before my eyes, I remembered the days at home when I was glued to a 15-inch screen watching videos of past expeditions over and over, wishing I could share the adventure, wishing it would come true. Fortunately it had. For here I was, among this fabulous group of people, on another hemisphere, another continent, at the southernmost city in the world, 19,000 km from home. The only further I could go was to Antarctica — and in fact that was exactly where we were all going.