Plancius, off the Argentine coast.
We live in unusual and interesting times, reflected in profound changes to the daily, and usually ordinary, rhythms of our lives. We have loved the snippets from you, about life in Australia, which seems to have changed almost beyond recognition since our departure just over two weeks ago. So, to reciprocate ( and keep myself amused) i will try to capture our unusual circumstance, which has a very different shape, with some shared themes, to yours.
Yesterday, in a preCOVID world was the day we would have disembarked in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina, a happy bunch of satisfied international voyagers, still revelling in all that we saw and experienced in Antartica. By today Jode and I would have been in Buenos Aires, preparing for our flight home early tomorrow. Instead some 115 passengers along with ship crew, ‘hotel’ staff and expedition staff, from 28 nationalities are motoring up the coast of Argentina. Disembarking from Ushuaia became impractical once Argentina grounded domestic travel, so the plan to disembark us a week later in Buenos Aires was met with more enthusiasm than the Expedition crew leader, Ian, anticipated.
That plan has since disintegrated, with Argentina deciding we are not welcome. Next stop, fingers crossed, and we now know not to count on it, is Montevideo, Uruguay. A place in the world that I had never anticipated visiting. A ‘not bucket list’ kind of place for us.
Now onto our 13th day aboard, we are a healthy community. There were no COVID cases as far as we knew in Argentina when we all arrived. And everyone is more than 14 days past their travel to board the boat. We feel safe.
An excess of community
We have just returned from the dining room where we sit in close proximity for lunch. Far from observing social distance or engaging in elbow bumping we are experiencing a rather close proximity kind of existence. With three shared meals a day and many ongoing activities there is no chance to be lonely here. We marvelled over lunch at the idea of sitting 4 metres from each other.
Community here is important too. We support each other in small groups of passengers, who mainly try to look on the bright side together. For us introverts the occasional strategic retreat to cabins is required to maintain some equanimity. And the delight of a more open boat now we have outrun the typhoon that was bearing down on us. 7 metre waves and 45 knot winds was sufficient. Thankfully, most of us now have our sea legs
When you’re counting MB’s
We were enjoying our digital detox. With 250 mb costing €80, no access to email or phone, we were content to exist in our little bubble. That all changed as we digested the first round of news. The ship gave us some free vouchers and we all doubled down trying to contact home, re-book flights, check the news etc. while all profoundly limited by the satellite wifi on board. No access to our usual email addresses, no social media, little capacity to browse, no sharing of photos or videos, we worked hard to maximise webmail and What’s App. Two days ago wifi was made freely available, and since then it has ground to a halt. Perhaps some are not following rules and etiquette but for most of us our technology is greedy and has a mind of its own. Updates, backing up to the cloud, pinging our location, downloading updates. Our hyper connectivity is our undoing. This morning we found ourselves in tutorials progressively turning things off. How we will ever get our devices to work normally once we are ashore I’m not sure. Off, off, off with iCloud, background app refresh, find my iPhone, location services, notifications, one app at a time, swipe swipe swipe...
I suspect that some amongst us are more responsive to sharing a scarce resource than others. (echoes of toilet paper). It may be that our access is removed entirely as it is interfering with the ships communication. So our desire for connectivity makes us vulnerable.
It is this lack of connectivity that is the hardest part of ship life for me, and creates an unusual degree of dependency on those back home. Some of you may be longing for some time away from the news, the constant and demanding nature of it. Too much, too little, there is a modern day paradox in there somewhere.
Today we decided to switch off a bit from the technology. Nothing is too urgent, because nothing is stable or fixed. We are still days away from Montevideo, and many things can change in the interim. And to be honest we could switch off a bit because we had connected with Keayn, Jeremy and Emma via some What’s App voice audio. Frustrating as it was, hearing each other’s voices was satisfying and connecting in precious ways.
Daily life
Our morning briefing contained several items of importance, confirmation of the abandonment of the BA plan and over sharing by our leader Ian, that he had pee’d standing up this morning. We shared his enthusiasm because of what it represented. A balmy 11 degree morning, calm seas and open doors onto all decks was embraced by us all. People doing laps on a rather short Deck 4 circuit, exercising on the stairs, yoga on the deck, instruction on bird identification, and general wind blown exuberance.
More was in store. Oceanwide has 3 ships in similar circumstances, and we were rendezvousing with Ortelius. A stocktake of passengers’ medications undertaken by the ships doctor yesterday revealed some shortfall for the extra week (at this stage). While we slowed down in the calm seas they caught up and a delivery of medications and fresh food was accomplished by zodiac transfer. Unlike us they had docked at Ushuaia and taken on fresh provisions and like us been denied disembarkation in Argentina. So while you scour the supermarket shelves our fresh food arrives in rather Bondesque dramatic fashion by zodiac, skippered by Pippa on the high seas.
This afternoon the second officer has taken the opportunity to do a full on evacuation and fire drill. Last night she sought volunteers to take on particular roles, so we will see how that plays out. I imagine the roles will be played out with some relish by passengers. So they do go to some lengths to keep us entertained! I believe the murder mystery game starts tonight. Hopefully there is no link between the two activities!!