El Fin Del Mundo

We´re at the starting line, Ushuia Argentina. The official trip starts tomorrow morning with a 36 hour bus ride. We would rather ¨hacer dedos¨ (hitch hike - translates literally as ¨doing fingers¨), but this part of the world is a bit cold and desolate so we´re going to ride buses a little closer to the equator before trying our ¨dedos¨.

The people here, in the world´s southern most city, are proponants of the upside down world maps that put Antarcitica at the top of the page rather than the bottom. This, ofcourse, is just as fair a representation as the maps that are oriented so that north is at the top of the page. Unfortunately for the Argentinians, history´s more influential cartographers lived in the northern hemisphere and fancied themselves at the top of the page as well. Sorry guys. Anyway, the big upside down map hanging in our hostel claims that Ushuia is the ¨End of the World, Beginning of Everything.¨ This statement may have never been truer than it is in the case of our trip.

The Strait of Magellan, which we will cross tomorrow, was discovered in 1520 by -you´d have never guessed- Ferdinand Magellan in his attempt to do ¨The Whole World Round¨ by sea. He is credited with the first circumnavigation of the globe, although his crew had to finish the trip without him for reasons I feel it is inappropriate to mention in light of my mother´s concern for my own life. Anyway, I find stories of explorers very inspiring, however they also remind me that frontiers can be hard to come by.

The great race to the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen happened not so far from here. Imagine how Scott feld when he arrived at the South Pole only to find Amundsen´s flag which had been placed there a few short days before. The explorers heart yearns for the significance of being the first. It´s a big deal. Even though I don´t yet know of anyone who has done the exact trip we´re doing, the world has been explored and there´s a slew of ¨Lonely Planet¨books to prove it. I may be forced into a career as an astronaut in order to find an satisfactory frontier.

In the mean time, while NASA waits, I´ve developed a method of making everything seem like a frontier. It´s called deliberate ignorance. If I don´t carry a map, a phone, or a ¨Lonely Planet¨ book, my experience will be much like that of the early explorers. Jeremy is an explorer of the highest caliber, but he doesn´t have the same qualms about maps and phones that I do. So we´re practicing a system that I know will work well for both of us. It´s like this: We both assume very somber facial expressions. I –like Lewis and Clark must certainly have done- wave my hands in wild gestures, attempting to ask Jeremy –via sign language- which way I should go. He gives a gruff snort and stares stoicly out over the horizon for several seconds while adjusting his feather, he then squats in the dirt and scratches me a map. We proceed. It´s gonna be good trip.