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The flight from Santiago to Ushuaia was short, but during the leg from Santiago to Puenta Arenas, a woman rested her feet on my arm rest from the seat behind mine. She was a rather tall woman, so I understand her discomfort, but she never asked and I found it rather rude that she felt entitled to comfort herself at the expense of another's. Her final destination was also Ushuaia, but since there were fewer people on the second leg, she was able to find her own row. I'm glad she wasn't on the same expedition.

I arrived in Ushuaia with time to spare. I even had time to buy some post cards in town and send one to Mike since I won't have access to the Internet. In this day and age, you would figure that we would have some kind of inexpensive technology that will even keep those who are out at sea connected.

It turned out that a fellow named Kevin whom I sat beside on my flight from LA to Santiago was also on the same expedition. If I had known that Kevin and I had the same destination and stuck with him, I would have arrived in Ushuaia on the first try with much less drama, but then I wouldn't have had the opportunity to tour Santiago. I think it worked out okay.

Kevin's room mate Tony (from Yokohama) is a fellow Nikon D90 owner. There's also an Italian girl named Paola from Tuscany who is in our little D90 club.

We're passing the Drake Passage right now. Mike pointed out that this is the most perilous body of water on Earth. So far the sea has been kind to us. It was surprisingly calm this morning. The wind and waves are picking up but it's still not too bad. I haven't hurled yet! Non-drowsy Dramamine FTW! I've been taking Dramamine about once every 16 hours. Even though it's supposed to be effective for 24 hours, I don't want to wake up one morning and find that it has worn off.

I haven't met any unpleasant people on the expedition so far, but I guess it's to be expected, since it takes a certain mindset to want to go to Antarctica in the first place.

My room mate is a woman named Judy. She is from Virginia. She's pretty cool and is also going camping. I also met a Canadian girl from Ottawa named Melodie. She's in the navy and doesn't get sea sick at all.

I tried to take some photos of seabirds today, but none have turned out. Wildlife photography is extremely challenging. I found the 400mm lens that I brought to be far too slow and cumbersome for on board wildlife photography. The sea birds simply fly too fast. At maximum zoom, the field of view is quite small, and I don't pan fast enough to keep up. If I were to do this trip again, I wouldn't bring it.

Yesterday was the winter solstice. If we were south of the Antarctic Circle, the sun wouldn't have set at all, but we weren't, so dusk was around midnight.

The food on the ship is pretty good. It doesn't taste unhealthy either. I found soup to be especially comforting when trying to fight off mild nausea.

Oh yeah, I stupidly brought a power strip with a surge protector on the trip. It exploded and blew a fuse when I plugged it into the 220V European outlets. Luckily, there's an electrician on board, he flipped the power back on and removed the broken surge protector on the power strip. Now it works just fine as a regular power strip. Moral of the story: just bring a simple power strip unless you want to test if the surge protector really works.

We should be seeing glaciers and land tomorrow. W00t.

Hello from SCL. I have to wait 3 hours until I can check in. 8 hours until my flight to Ushuaia. I'm hanging out with Matt from Arizona at the Gatsby Buffet and Cafe where it's open all night and has free wifi and electricity. There is a Holiday Inn next to the airport (like literally a crosswalk away from the passenger pick-up and drop off zone) but they have no vacant rooms tonight. If any one is planning to stay up until 11:00 PM PST or better yet, 4:00 AM PST, message me and keep me awake.

Santiago was fun but I can't say that it ranks among my favorite cities in the world. I have to say that it has about the same revisitable rating as Singapore: been there, done everything, never need to go back again. Plus, any city with residents that greet a stranger by pulling their eyelids sideways and saying "ching ching chong" gets a big check minus.

I rode the Turistik tour bus again today. I visited Parque Arauco, the most famous shopping mall in Chile. There, I met a nice older Chilean woman while ordering lunch and we had a nice chat over some type of Chilean style rice pilaf. I also ordered a butterflied grilled chicken breast but my 2 experiences with chicken here have made me realize that they don't do chicken well here at all. I'm not sure how or how long they cook the chicken, but there was no texture to it at all, which made it feel disgusting to chew and swallow now that I've experienced it again. I'm sure it's normal to the locals because almost everyone in line with me ordered the same chicken.

After lunch, I went to the Funicular, where they have a giant statue of Mary on top of a hill that overlooks the city of Santiago. I took the cable car across the Metropolitan Park because I didn't have time to walk through it. Then I went to the The National Museum of Fine Arts where they had a Chilean comic illustration exhibit and some South American photography exhibits. The comic illustration styles have a heavy European influence (like Andy Capp, Asterix, etc.) but with a stereotypical South American twist in the figures and facial features of the characters.

I stumbled upon a military parade to commemorate something, and then I made my way to Plaza De Armas where I scored a free ticket to see the Santiago Ballet. I couldn't make it to the show, so I let the woman beside me have it. I walked towards the Mercado Central to take one last set of photos. I saw some Colo-Colo fans celebrating their football team's victory. As the sun started setting, some nice locals warned me that I should leave the area because it gets sketchy at night. I took refuge in Bar Nacional 2 where I had a cheese empanada and some very tasty freshly squeezed honey dew melon juice. Then I set out for the Centropuerto (airport shuttle) terminal. I saw the decorated military folks from the parade earlier on walking home, so I walked with them for safety.

When I arrived at the airport, I scoped out all my options for staying overnight. I also received the most excellent news: Marcelo from Quark Expeditions had already picked up my luggage from Ushuaia airport and it will be waiting for me in my cabin!

Now all I have to do is hope that my flight to Ushuaia goes without a hitch.

I'm stranded in Chile. For 2 days. Luckily, my ship doesn't leave until Sunday, and my tour's contact person in Argentina said they would send someone to Ushuaia airport to pick me up upon my arrival so they could shuttle me straight to the ship. Hopefully nothing else will go wrong from here on in.

So how did this interesting turn of events occur?

Well, when I arrived in Santiago, I went to customs and immigration. They asked me where I was going, and I told them I was going to Argentina. They said it was an international connection, so they sent me to the international terminal. The monitors said my flight (Santiago to Ushuaia via Punta Arenas) was at gate 20A, so I went there. I was the only one there. It was weird, but I figured not a lot of people go to the southernmost tip of Argentina, so it's not that weird. On the other side of a glass wall was gate 20B. Same flight number, but the destination was domestic (Santiago to Punta Arenas), so it was on the domestic side of the terminal.

I waited around and saw several groups of flight staff fiddle around at the counter next to my gate and then promptly left. When I realized that no one was going to be attending the gate on my side, I knocked on the glass wall to ask what was going on. A flight attendant told me I was supposed to be on the other side. Why on earth did they give my flight a spurious gate number if they weren't going to board from the international terminal? In order to get to the other side, I had to leave the international terminal and enter the domestic terminal. That required a trip through customs. And a trip to the baggage claim. And to the ticket counter to check in my bags again, followed by security, etc.

There was no way I was going to make it in time for my flight. When I got to the baggage claim, there were conflicting stories of the status of my bag. One airline employee said it should have arrived and that it might have been set aside because it took me so long to claim my bag. Another said it was already on the flight I missed because while I had to go to the domestic terminal, my bag was considered an international transfer, so it was put on my connecting flight right away.

I proceeded to the ticket counter to see what they could do for me. On the way, a guy in a blue shirt and black tie with white dots said he would escort me to the counter. He spoke enough English to make some small talk and reassured me that I would get on the next possible flight without any problems. He was very aggressive about pushing my luggage cart (full of carry-on luggage only) into the first possible elevator, even telling off the grannies and moms with children in tow who tried to cut in front. When we got to the ticket counter, he asked for a $10 tip. Okay, that was a total rip off, but he saved me a bit of time and you wouldn't believe how nice it was to talk to someone in English amidst a potentially heart breaking ordeal. Therapy costs more than that, so whatever.

The next flight to Ushuaia is on Sunday morning because they don't fly to the southernmost tip of Argentina every day. In addition, the LAN ticket agent told me that LAN is the only airline that flies in to Ushuaia. I doubted that claim, but how was I supposed to confirm that right there and then? And what would it cost to get a flight on another airline today? On the bright side, the ticket counter was able to confirm that my bag was already on its way to my final destination. I don't have a change of clothes, but at least I know my stuff is not lost. I accepted the earliest flight they could give me and set out to contact my tour group.

I tried calling collect to Argentina on the pay phone, but it didn't work. I was given the option to pay by credit card (I didn't have any Chilean cash yet) but they said the rate was $50/minute. I asked them if it was 50 US Dollars or Chilean Pesos and they said, "US Dollars." Screw that.

I went to the info booth to ask how I can get a phone card. It turned out that there were Entel phone company reps roaming around the ticket counter area. They told me I could buy a 30-minute phone card for $3000 CLP (about $5 USD) which sounded much safer than using my credit card for an unlimited amount of money. I got some Chilean cash at the forex booth and made my first purchase.

I called Marcelo, the Quark Expeditions representative in Ushuaia and he said he would pick up my luggage early and arrange for me to get a ride from the airport to my ship.

Then I called Mike to QQ about my ordeal, not realizing that it was 7 AM PST.

Since life handed me a huge lemon, I decided to make lemonade. Not having planned to spend any time in Santiago, I didn't know anything about the city. I attempted to buy a Lonely Planet book on Chile, but the only edition the airport book store carried was in Spanish. I picked up a free tourist map and saw a double decker bus tour that looked good for getting a whirlwind tour of the city. I put one of my carry-on bags into storage at the airport (I don't need my winter jacket and accessories since it's summer in Santiago), bought a bottle of water and a bus ticket to downtown Santiago.

The ride from the airport to downtown was interesting to say the least. Cars tailgate mere inches from the vehicle in front of them. Car alarms go off randomly in moving vehicles full of occupants. There are vendors who run out on to the street to sell their wares when cars are stopped at street lights (squeegee kid style) but they sell things like drinks, popsicles, fruit or fake Rolexes.

When I got to the last stop at Terminal De Buses Los Heros, I was hungry and I needed to pee. I looked around for a restaurant while inching closer to the sightseeing bus stop. I finally settled for a shawarma place (or shawerma as they call it here) called Al-Jazeera. The chicken shawarma was alright overall, but the sauce was too rich and the chicken was oddly textureless. The pita was quite fragrant so I ate half of the fillings and all of the shell. The coke here tastes refreshing, just like Mexican coke. Thanks to my knowledge of French and the time I've spent eating at taquerias in California, I've actually picked up trace amounts useful Spanish for dining out.

It was just my luck that there was an Internet Cafe right next to Al-Jazeera. I popped in to print out an important document (that I forgot to pack) for $200 CLP (about $0.33 USD) and then set off to buy a ticket for the Turistik double decker tour bus. Every vending kiosk pointed me to the next one, saying that they didn't carry the tickets, but the next guy down the street did. I ended up asking all the kiosks around Plaza de la Constitucion until I found the correct kiosk all by myself.

I rode the bus around the full circuit and identified some places to visit tomorrow. Then I ventured into el Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda where they had a Frida Kahlo exhibit. I needed to pee again, so I decided to stay the night at Diego de Almagro Centro where they have free wifi, an included hot breakfast, and a kidney-shaped swimming pool. I nixed the cheapest alternative of pulling a Tom Hanks and staying at the airport because I needed a shower really badly and I didn't want to keep one eye on my belongings all night. I wanted to make myself as comfortable as I could, given that things have already gone pretty badly.

Now I'm going to forage for dinner. There is a Burger King downstairs so I'm probably going to compare how Burger King in Santiago differs from Burger King at LAX.

Hello from Santiago, Chile. I have another 3-hour layover and there's free WIFI around the LAN VIP lounge.

The longest leg (11 hours!) of my series of flights is over. I sat in front of a cranky kid (he kicked the back of my seat a lot, and smelled like he crapped in his pants.) but I managed to doze off. This portion of my journey is significant because it marks the first time I've crossed over into the southern hemisphere. I saw the Andes mountains as we were landing. The airport itself is also surrounded by mountains. It reminds me of layovers in Denver.

I managed to learn some rudimentary Spanish phrases. I find that I can understand some Spanish when I see it writing because it has the same Latin roots as French. Speaking and listening is a whole other issue.

I also read a little bit of my Antarctic Primer. I think I'm 25% through it. There was also a 5-book must-read list but I didn't have time to order those books, much less read them.

It's pretty warm in Santiago because it's summer here right now. What's surprising is that it's supposed to be warmer in Ushuaia than it is in the Bay Area. I'm going to wander around and take some pictures before I leave. Ciao.

Hello from LAX. I just flew in from San Jose and now I'm hanging out in an airport lounge because I have a 3-hour layover. Holiday travel season has barely started and the American Airlines employees are already ornery.

I've already realized that I forgot to pack some items. I couldn't sleep at all last night because I was anxious. I stayed up past 4:00 AM and when I couldn't stay upright any longer, I laid in bed wide awake until it was time to go to the airport.

It was so cold last night that all the car windows were covered with frost, so Mike and I scrambled to scrape the ice off with credit cards this morning. We hadn't budgeted time for that. I had to get my tickets from an agent at the counter because I was denied web check-in and the kiosks wouldn't check me in either. I arrived at the airport 25 minutes before the cut-off for luggage check-in but my flight was delayed by 15 minutes. Even though I was flagged for a super secret security screening, I still made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare.

I napped on the flight to LA, waking up briefly to drink a glass of water. My left ear had trouble popping on the way down but it fixed itself shortly after landing.

I'm having some Burger King for lunch. It's marked up significantly at LAX. I paid $7.35 for a Jr. Whopper with fries and a drink. That was the cheapest meal on the menu.

I'm in terminal 4 right now, but I'm supposed to be at TBIT. I need to finish my drink before I can go to the correct terminal or else the TSA will make me chuck/chug it.