Chronic Negress

After feeding and scavenging for food and souvenirs in Ushuaia (I forgot to buy a vowel up until now), we boarded the Ocean Nova. After figuring that it was an hour earlier in Ushuaia than Buenos Aires, the Negress spent the morning touring the National Park near Ushuaia. There is no place on earth like Tierra del Fuego in spite of hare-brained schemes to introduce rabbits and beavers into the landscape, it remains breathtaking. The Andes and various glacial channels and lakes are amazing and here’s a pic to prove it:

Beagle Channel, Ushuaia National Park

There’s a little train that wanders through a bit of the park, and there are even locals dressed as prisoners to commemorate the labor that built the thing, which is a little icky but one guesses a job is a job. While some people on our tour rode the train, the rest of us went to the shore of the Beagle Channel, an absolutely stunning convergence of water and land. There’s a tiny post office there where you can mail things from el Fin del Mundo. The little shack was mobbed by people wanting postcards and passport stamps. Better yet, some people had family taking pictures of their Mom Dad or child getting the stamp from a guy with a bushy handlebar mustache and crazy sideburns.

I did a little shopping near a lakefront. There’s so much to take in and I slept much of the way back to town. I ate lunch with some of my future companions on the ship.

Upon boarding the Ocean Nova, the crew took our passports and got us sorted into our cabins. It was New Year’s Eve and champagne was offered at an early reception. This was the beginning of a series of choices that the Negress made that led to a poor outcome. We were gliding through the Beagle Channel, with relatively peaceful waters while the crew and the doctor on-board briefed us on what was to come.

What was to come was the Drake Passage, where all of the Atlantic and Pacific weather fronts swirl together in open water.  Think of it as the womb for world weather. The Nova holds  about 100 passengers and a crew of 31, so it feels every move of the ocean. We sat down to dinner and things were pretty calm so I had a glass of Frascati. I popped upstairs to the Panorama Lounge, figuring on a beer to ring in the New Year. I had the Beagle blond. The sea started to rock ‘n’ roll and I decided to head below to make sure the computer wasn’t getting tossed about.

Upon arriving in lovely Cabin 316, the computer was secured and I vomited very efficiently into the toilet, rinsed my mouth out and lay down. I slept fine and realized that even a sommelier in training has to call it quits every now and then.