On a recent trip to both the Dominican Republic and Minnesota, I once again found myself in Newark Airport, where I’d picked up that copy of The DaVinci Code on the way to Oslo this summer. This time, again totally unplanned, I found and bought a copy of Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, who wrote Angela’s Ashes.

I wrote about the oral tradition of storytelling (Reflections 2005 Series 18). The oral traditon appears as fiction, such as with campfire storytelling, or as non-fiction, say when someone gives a self-help lecture. The written tradition does the same, such as with novels or with biographies. Both Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man are biographical in nature (I never read the middle book of his trilogy, ‘Tis).

I never felt I could write anything of substance beyond term papers and reports, yet, starting in 2001, I found it easy to put e-mails from Europe to family and friends together, eventually collecting them all onto this website. I also find that the essays write themselves. I go, say, to dine at The Algonquin and text starts writing itself in my head. I walk along the borders of Central Park and the same thing happens. Texts appear in my head when driving, riding the subway, falling asleep, waking up—it’s never-ending. When I sit down to put these texts into the laptop, they’re all set to go and they write themselves.

Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn to Irish parents, and as a young child was brought back to Ireland to live a terrible existence in the slums of Limerick. At 19 he returned and eventually went into education. He taught English to underachievers in a series of high schools, before he finally was asked to teach at prestigious Stuyvesant High School (Reflections 2005 Series 17). Besides English, he taught Creative Writing, and these elective classes were very popular and always full. “I tried to show my students the significance of their own lives which they sometimes thought insignificant. I hoped they’d realize the value of their own lives, that they were good enough to write about.” Who knows? maybe one of the students would win the Pulitzer Prize one day. But then he had this concern: “Who was I to talk about writing when I had never written a book never mind published one? All my talk, all my scribbling in notebooks amounted to nothing. And didn’t they wonder about that? Didn’t they say, How come he talks so much about writing when he never did it?”

Then upon retirement he wrote his first book, and Angela’s Ashes did win the Pulitzer Prize—and the National Book Critics Circle Award. And now he’s made it part of a trilogy.

But the most valuable statement to the class he makes is this: “Every moment of your life, you’re writing. Even in your dreams you’re writing. When you walk the halls in this school you meet various people and you write furiously in your head.... A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.”

Every moment....dreams....write furiously in your head. I fully agree with what he says. ‘Tis true. And the man likes trilogies, too.

River Islands   We’ve talked about borders, especially straight ones like the long one between the US and Canada. But natural borders are usually mountains or rivers. Let’s talk in a moment about river borders.

Also, we’ve talked about enclaves and exclaves, especially in reference to Baarle (Reflections 2004 Series 13). Let’s tie together river borders with enclaves and exclaves.

Look at a map of the Mississippi River. State lines were originally drawn down the center of the river, but the Mississippi is a notoriously shifting river and dug new courses over time. Look at the area north of Memphis, and see how many pieces of Tennessee are on what you would otherwise call the Arkansas side of the river. These are exclaves of Tennessee in Arkansas, or, looking at it from the other side, enclaves of Tennessee in Arkansas.

The surprise for some people is that river borders don’t always go down the middle of the river. In the Series previous to this one, I discussed how, once the Virginia part of the District of Columbia retroceded back to Virginia, the Potomac at that point remained entirely in DC, so that today if you stand on the Virginia shore and dip a foot in the river, you’re standing in two different jurisdictions.

The state of New Jersey has always had unusual borders along its rivers. Its western side is formed by the Delaware River, but, once the river leaves New York State and begins to form a border between states, the entire river is on the Pennsylvania side, and, further down, on the Delaware side. The Delaware River borders New Jersey, but is not IN New Jersey.

There used to be a similar situation on New Jersey’s eastern border, and therein lies my tale. From colonial times, the entire Hudson River was in New York. Andrew Hamilton famously complained that when he stood on a dock in Weehawken (NJ was more rural then), he was fishing in NY waters.

All the islands in New York Bay had for two centuries been considered part of NY, but in 1834 a compact was made between NY and NJ. NY ceded to NJ the half of the Hudson bordering NJ in exchange for confirmation that all the islands in the Bay were in NY. This was primarily to reassure that huge Staten Island remained part of NY. Today, once the Hudson leaves upstate NY, and as soon as Jersey starts bordering the Hudson, the line goes down the middle. Out my window I see NY waters close by and NJ waters on the other side. You can verify this when crossing the George Washington Bridge, or the Lincoln or Holland Tunnels, where the state line is marked down the center of the river.

Included among those islands were two flyspecks of islands at the southernmost end of the Hudson as it enters the Bay, just southwest of the lower tip of Manhattan. The larger was under 15 acres, the smaller a mere five. They are about ½ mile apart, and only about 1/3 mile from the Jersey side. In contrast, they are over 1 ½ miles from Lower Manhattan, where I see them daily.

In time, though, these flyspecks became two of the most famous islands on earth.

The southernmost of the two, the 15-acre one, was called Bedloe’s Island. Its location facing southeast across Upper New York Bay looking out the Narrows to sea made it perfect to set up a gift from the French meant to memorialize the Centenary of the American Revolution. The Statue of Liberty was installed on Bedloe’s Island and dedicated in 1886, a decade after the Centenary. In 1956 the name of the island was changed to Liberty Island.

When you take the ferry from lower Manhattan you start out in NY waters. Midway you enter NJ waters. When you get off at the Statue, you’re in NY again, an exclave of NY surrounded by NJ. It’s just NJ waters, but nevertheless NJ.

You may have guessed that the island ½-mile north is Ellis Island, but its story is more interesting. Ellis Island started out as an oval of about 5 acres. In time, it was extended by landfill, as I understand it, from subway construction. Ellis Island ended up as a squared-off letter C, with its harbor in the center of that C. The west and south flanks had medical facilities and dormatories during the immigration period (not yet restored), and the north flank just enlarged and squared off that 5-acre oval. It was here that the Great Hall was constructed, with its signature four towers. The landfill increased the size of Ellis Island considerably, from 5 to 32 acres. Ellis had been 1/3 the size of Liberty, but through landfill became more than twice the size of it.

New Jersey remained at peace with all this until Ellis Island was restored in the 1990’s. It then realized what sales tax it was losing on sales on the island, and sued, a case that went to the Supreme Court.

New York’s argument was that the island was New York land, even when extended. New Jersey argued that, if you pour fill into New Jersey waters to the point that it breaks the surface, what you then have is a piece of New Jersey.

New Jersey won, in 1998. A compromise was proposed so that the original oval would be squared off to make jurisdiction easier, but it was rejected. So now 83% of Ellis Island, the extended part, is in NJ, in Jersey City to be exact, the rest remaining in NY, as part of New York City. Since the new situation would be so difficult to administer, the two states now share jurisdiction of Ellis Island.

An irony is that, although New York City and Jersey City face each other across the wide Hudson, when you go to Ellis Island you can cross at will between the two on foot.

So here’s the whole story. You leave the Battery in NY waters, cross into NJ waters, and get off at the Statue in NY. You later get on the ferry again in NJ waters, pull into the dock area of Ellis Island, surrounded by NJ. Even as you step off into the north flank you’re in NJ, or when you walk around the perimiter of the Great Hall. Only on actually entering the Great Hall will you be in NY again, but if you go to the four corners of the building, you’re probably in NJ. Leaving, it’s NJ at the dock and in the river, until crossing into NY waters again. Clear?

It is worth making some special points about the Statue, about what she’s holding, about what you cannot see on the outside of the statue, and what the whole purpose the statue has.

She may look like a student holding a textbook, and really, that’s not so very far off, but just think in terms of a lawschool student. What she’s holding is a book of law, and on it is the date July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals.

There is something very symbolic and of great importance, but it unfortunately cannot be seen from below. The Statue is not standing still. She’s taking a step forward, with the heel of one foot exposed in the back. Below the foot are chains and a shackle, symbolizing that she’s broken away from oppression. What better symbol of liberty? But you can’t see it easily.

What’s the purpose of the statue? Why does she hold up a torch, and perhaps not some sort of a peace symbol? The answer is in the complete name of the statue: la Statue de la Liberté Éclairant le Monde. The full name in English is longer, too: the Statue of Liberty Illuminating the World.

But beyond that, picture this: if someone is visiting you at night and you live on a dark road, you turn on the porch light. In earlier times, you put a candle in the window. The Statue of Liberty is our candle in the window, saying here it is, you’ve arrived.

It worked well for all the years when immigrants (and others) arrived by ship, but now that literal symbolism is lost, in favor of a more figurative symbolism. Nevertheless, everyone sailing through the Narrows enjoys looking at the Statue facing them directly across the harbor, and now that most cruise ships arrive at dawn, one gets just that much more of feeling of a “light in the window”.

You might be aware that there is a version of the Statue of Liberty in Paris. It’s on the tip of an island in the Seine right at the Pont de Grenelle/Grenelle Bridge. It’s about ¼ size of the original, but I wasn’t aware when we saw it years ago that it was offered to the City of Paris by the American colony in the 1880’s to memorialize, in turn, the Centenary of the French Revolution in 1889. I also hadn’t known that, in 1937, it was turned around to face west, in the direction of “sa grande soeur de New York (her big sister in New York)”.

We can add a language point as well, one that says some things are untranslatable. Put another way, you can say that something’s lost in translation.

Two languages never line up exactly. There are words in one, say French or English, that don’t correspond to anything the other has, and vice versa. Here’s an example.

The French could have, but did not, called it La Statue de la Liberté Illuminant le Monde. If they had, the English version would have corresponded exactly: The Statue of Liberty Illuminating the World. Illuminant/Illuminating match perfectly, both describing a rather passive action, similar to what a street light does. It’s a satisfying image, although not a particularly powerful one.

But the French name uses Éclairant instead of Illuminant, and this word is untranslatable. At best, you need a whole phrase in English to explain it.

Éclair is the French word for lightning. Guerre éclair, lightning war, is Blitzkrieg. (The pastry known as an éclair, Wikipidia tells me, gets its name because of the way the glaze glistens [???].) So what do we do with “Éclairant le Monde”? We can’t say “Lightning-ing the World”. But the image as French describes it is more vibrant, more powerful, more active. Liberty isn’t supposed to be just illuminating the world. Liberty is appearing and spreading itself as a sudden flash of lightning, a sudden éclair. It would be closest to call it “The Statue of Liberty Illuminating the World in a Sudden Flash”, but the name is already too long, and is already shortened to just the first four words, with no one worrying to much about the details of what she’s doing. But the symbolism is dulled by the necessarily weak translation.

Wordplay 9   In Italian, a “nonno” is a grandfather. “Ho nonno” is (I) have (a) grandfather (don’t pronounce the H). Answer such a question negatively, and you get:

which sounds like you’re saying “no” five times.

In European Spanish, S and Z are pronounced differently, but in American Spanish, both sound like S. Read this:

As often happens, the second line just reverses the first. The point here is that you have similar words with only the vowel being the essential difference. But you have U, E, I, and O; A is lacking. How about “paso”? I’ve extended this to read as follows, all in one single line (hizo: no H; I as in skI).

Spanish and Italian are both Italic languages. Let’s try a Russic (Slavic) one, Russian. I’ve mentioned in the past that unstressed O in Russian sounds like an A (and also unstressed E like I). I thought I’ve discussed that, but I can’t find it, so maybe I haven’t. The problem with writing text in your mind is not always knowing if you have in fact ever written it up.

Standard Russian exhibits what is called аканье/akan’ye. The first letter of that word, A, tells it all. It’s a “changing into A”. What is meant by that is this: an unstressed O always turns into an A sound. As an example we have the river named Ока (I really don’t have to transliterate that to Oka, since the letters are all the same). But that river is stressed on the last syllable, and it’s pronounced aKA. The unstressed O goes to an A. (Some dialects of Russian do not do this, nor does Ukranian, and they are described as exhibiting оканье/okan’e “keeping the O”).

In a similar way, unstressed E (and others) goes to I. The second word in Санкт Петербург/Sankt Peterburg is pronounced pitirBURG, and the Neva River flowing through it Река Нева/Reka Neva is pronounced riKA niVA. Now, try this:

All but the first word is end-stressed, and the phrase means “Our river (is as) wide as (the) Oka”. It’s pronounced: NAsha riKA shiraKA kak aKA. The O’s and E change, and it ends up sounding like machine-gun fire.

Let’s end moving into the Germanic languages for a quick Norwegian tonguetwister.

South to Antarctica   We broke out of our Euramerica-only travel pattern when we took the Caronia around South America in the winter of 2004 (Reflections 2004 Series 4-5-6-7). An most memorable part of that trip was when we took the side trip from the southern tip of South America over the Antarctic peninsula (Series 5). The Caronia docked in Punta Arenas, Chile, and we flew a charter flight of LAN, the Chilean airline over the Antarctic peninsula. Later, the Caronia sailed past Ushuaia, Argentina, and we saw the Explorer II docked there, ready to sail to Antarctica (it was mid-February, summer in the southern hemisphere). At that point, I made a statement in that essay that will now prove to be inaccurate. I said only “adventurers” do the more vigorous type of travel like sail to Antarctica or go on safaris. As I reflect back on my saying that, I now see that what I must have had in the back of my mind at the time was that a couple with one of them in a wheelchair doesn’t do that sort of thing. Now, unfortunately, that is no longer the case. It also seems to me more that doing either of those two activities really is doable when there are people who are showing you how.

Therefore, it struck me early this year that I should try to set foot on Antarctica, and I planned it for November, the beginning of the southern summer. I checked out more than one trip, and ended up booking the Explorer II, not realizing until reviewing my notes after it was already booked that that was the very ship we had seen in Ushuaia, Argentina, as we sailed down the Beagle Channel from Chile. But who knows, maybe subconsciously I really did remember it when I made the plans.

So I have to alter a three-year pattern to two. I had said 2004 was my year going South to South America (Antarctica not fully counting, since I only overflew it), 2005 was my West-East year going around the world via Siberia, and 2006 was my year going North to Spitsbergen.

The new two-year pattern is that 2005 was West-East via Siberia, and 2006 is North-South, going both to Spitsbergen and Antarctica in the same year (about five months apart, June to November).

To belie the balance of my statement above, I’ll be going on safari in July of 2008, but more on that in a moment.

Advance Introduction: I find it more and more helpful now in those articles that are more about travel than language to write in advance about an area (Pennsylvania, Boston) as an introduction of background before actually going there and seeing how the experience, new or repeated, works out.

Overlap & Planning: We used to do just one major trip per year, not counting visits to friends and relatives or “commuting” to our place in Florida or on business to the Dominican Republic. Starting with that Caronia trip in 2004 the number of “pure travel” trips has increased per year. In addition, I also have been loath in the past to talk too much publicly about future travel. This now makes less and less sense. There is now enough overlap in planning and execution of these trips that I want to be more open about what’s being planned. (As an example of overlap, I was planning Antarctica, then the US Northeast, earlier this year before going to Scandinavia, which was essentially completely planned by then.)

Let’s start by doing some of this advance introduction about Antarctica. I don’t know that much about it, just what I observe from the map plus some other things that I’ve researched. Let me re-mention some of the points I made at the time of the earlier trip.

Antarctica is larger than Europe, and about the same size as North America. But just looking at the map, there are several geographic features that are incredible.

Look at the other continents. They’re all odd-shaped. Look at Antarctica. It is more or less round. Isn’t merely having a round continent amazing? Actually, to be a bit more honest, it has two variations from that statement of it being round. One is the indentations, but they are covered by ice, such as the Ross ice shelf. The continent is less than round here, but the ice does fill it out to simulate roundness. More important, look at the one projection out from this roundness. Pointing out north toward South America is the Antarctic peninsula. This peninsula ends up giving Antarctica more of a comma shape rather than pure roundness. The upper tip of this peninsula is the location that travelers visit.

I will now make a statement that theoretically belies what I just said. There are those that suspect that there is no such thing as a continent of Antarctica, but that there is instead a number of large islands, covered over and connected by a huge ice sheet, giving the appearance of a continent. This is an interesting theory, but remains just that. Until proven differently, the previous paragraph will stand, for our purposes.

Then note the great wall that almost goes from pole to pole. Starting with the mountains of Alaska, running down through the Rockies of Canada and the US, the Sierra Madre of Mexico, the continuation of the mountains through Central America, becoming the Andes of South America, this “wall” seems to stop at Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of South America. It doesn’t, really, it just runs underwater under the Drake Passage, which is just as well, since that is the only natural passage (discounting the Panama Canal) between the Atlantic and Pacific. However, the map shows that the Antarctic peninsula is where these mountains re-emerge, perhaps just as hills, I’ll see when I’m there. Note that the Drake Passage is the only interruption to this wall of mountains.

[Note: I was in Alaska in September 2005, will be in the US Southwest in September 2007, the Sierra Madre in January 2007, and both Santiago, Chile in the Andes, and the Antarctic peninsula in November 2006. It seems that it’s working out that I’m making several visits along this “wall”.]

Another geographic oddity is the placement of Antarctica. It is believed that all the continents were originally clustered together, then over the millenia, shifted along plates (“Continental Drift”). It’s hard to tell that North America once touched Europe, but very easy to see on the map how South America pulled away from Africa. Antarctica moved away from the tropical area into the frigid zone. It could have moved just barely over the South Pole, with the balance of its area reaching further north toward other continents. That isn’t what happened. Antarctica centered itself pretty much over the South Pole, which is roughly in the center of the continent. Antarctica sits on the south end of the globe like a beanie on a head. Isn’t that odd?

This last point is really an extension of previous ones. Antarctica is nearly round, and nearly centered on the South Pole. As it turns out, its size is then such that it pretty much just fits into the Antarctic Circle, which roughly runs along its round coast. The notable exception is again, the Antarctic peninsula, which reaches up toward South America.

So what do we get out of all this observation? First, I’m sure that most people are misled by idea of travelers visiting Antarctica. The round bulk of the continent is the area you visualize with all the snowstorms. Only scientific and governmental expeditions visit this area (also cinematic ones), so I will not be doing a penguin bellyflop as in “March of the Penguins”. I read once that there is a ship that circumnavigates Antarctica completely, the part opposite Australia, opposite Africa, opposite South America. A trip like that is unusual, and probably less than fully interesting, since it might tend to be repetitious.

When you hear of travelers visiting Antarctica, yes, it’s exotic, but not as exotic as if you were waddling around with the penguins. Antarctic visits visit the tip of the Antarctic peninsula and adjacent islands, rarely more. What you visit is much closer to South America than to the bulk of the Antarctic continent.

I find it really helpful to compare this with the Spitsbergen trip. That went to 80° N. The equivalent of 80° S is deep in the internal continent. Spitsbergen, and Northern Norway, was way above the Arctic Circle. We will be going nowhere near the Antarctic Circle. As in the overflight, we will reach the low 60’s S. The equivalent of the low 60’s N would be just in central Norway. Granted that Norway enjoys the warm benefits of the Gulf Stream and the Antarctic peninsula can be hit by storms from the south, still I don’t expect to see that huge a difference on the Antarctic peninsula from places from central Norway north to Spitsbergen. We shall see how it all turns out.

Which do you suppose do cultures and languages more traditionally identify with, the Arctic or the Antarctic? It would have to be the Arctic, for logical reasons and for the information given by the names.

We’d first have to eliminate tropical cultures, which traditionally were unaware of the cold regions and which historically have few words for cold phenomena. But northern North America and northern Eurasia extend into the Arctic, so to all those northern peoples the Arctic was a concept. Neither Africa, South America, nor Australia-New Zealand extend into the Antarctic, so it’s reasonable to assume that no native cultures there anticipated such a thing as the Antarctic. It is also logical to assume that for millenia, northern peoples just assumed that there was only one cold place, the Arctic, which was named after the Greek word for “bear”, arktos, since it’s under that constellation. It was navigators on scientific expeditions that “discovered” the Antarctic.

So the Antarctic is the “other cold place”, a much later discovery in our cultures. The very name betrays that fact. Instead of having a name totally its own, it has always been the opposite to the Arctic or anti-Arctic, shortened to Antarctic; the “other cold place” is then secondary to our thinking of cold places. Well, I suppose that’s one thing that makes it more exotic.

We describe the REGIONS as the Arctic and the Antarctic. Add an –a to get Antarctica and you’re describing the continent located in that region. Since there is no continent in the Arctic, just the frozen Arctic Ocean, we do not have a place called “Arctica”.

I booked the Explorer II trip through a well-known purveyor, who shall remain nameless and through which we also booked the trip on the Orient Express from London to Venice (Reflections 2002 Series 2). It didn’t seem I could book the Explorer II directly, which is much more my style, at least not for Antarctica (I believe it goes to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador in the alternate season). The trip came as a package out of Santiago, Chile, including charter flights starting in Santiago to and from Ushuaia, Argentina, which is down the Beagle Channel from Punta Arenas, Chile, in the area of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. In Ushuaia you board the Explorer II. The trip includes the Falkland Islands (where we stopped on the Caronia), the South Georgia Islands and the Antarctic peninsula, primarily, perhaps exclusively, the western side.

Although they fill the ship when it goes to other destinations, they only half-fill it to 199 passengers to Antarctica to allow for ease in shore excursions. Therefore, I booked the cheapest cabin type on the lowest deck, where you only had a porthole (remember, singles always pay more for a cabin, only 150% if you’re lucky), and was later on upgraded to the next-better cabin type one deck higher. You have to use your head here. If they’re only going to fill half the ship, isn’t it logical that they would be offering upgrades to all those empty cabins?

They offered to book the flight from New York, but said they’d do that later on. I do things early to assure I get what I want and I also believe in do-it-yourself, so I priced online the flight on LAN Chile between New York and Santiago; it makes a stop both ways in Lima, Peru, relatively close to Santiago.

So it would seem that all was well last winter when I was preparing this: I had a deposit on the ship package, and was about to book the flight I’d found.

I rarely write about negatives, but they do come up, and it’s worthwhile to examine some basic rules of life.

Rule 1:Don’t always take people at face value, since they may not know what they’re talking about.

Rule 2: The bigger, the more powerful, the fancier, the wealthier, the more exotic they may be (or seem), the more careful youshould be. They are all façades. It doesn’t necessarily mean they know any more than you do, or your next-door-neighbor does. Under these circumstances, re-read Rule 1. Twice.

Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware. Allow me to illustrate.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the local Polynesian; Isla de Pascua in Spanish) is possibly the remotest spot on the earth. It’s only 15 miles across, is famous for the huge stone heads found there, and lies thousands of miles west of South America in the Pacific. It belongs to Chile, hence my giving the Spanish name. The next location further west is Pitcairn Island, famous as being the location where the “Mutiny on the Bounty” people settled, which by itself bespeaks isolation. In the past decade, Chile has increased connections with Easter Island, and now there are four flights a week from Santiago, although at varying times, depending on the day. You will find out in a moment why I know so much about these flights.

On the website of the (nameless) purveyor who was selling the Explorer II package it suggested that for an additional tidy little sum, you could add on a trip to Easter Island to the Antarctica trip. I liked the idea and looked into it. The tidy little sum included three items: a figure for the hotel stay at a location in town with island tour, a figure for the round-trip flights, and a mysterious sum of US$1500 as a “single supplement”.

When I spoke to the agent about just how many days were included, she asked me how many I wanted. She also asked if I wanted this side trip before or after Antarctica. I suddenly realized that what was subtly hinted at as being a package was not. They would just make hotel and air arrangements for me, but at breathtakingly inflated prices.

This all seemed too much off-the-wall, so I did some of my own research. Easter Island is a simple place, and the hotels are three-star at best. A Chilean website made some suggestions, and I phoned their agent in Miami who recommended another hotel, but on the beach. Both this and the hotel the purveyors were talking about included an island tour, airport pickups, and very obviously offered single rates. The value of either hotel for a couple of nights was just a few hundred dollars, nothing like the sum that had been suggested. And I saw absolutely no reason for their trying to get from me a “single supplement” (for what?) of US$1500.

That only left the airfare from Santiago to Easter Island, another tidy sum. I hadn’t yet booked my flight out of New York. Anyone who’s flown knows that if you attach a secondary flight to a primary flight with the same airline, the cost averages out and the price of the secondary flight decreases considerably. Not only that, but since almost everyone going to Antarctica would be coming from the North, ALL THEIR CLIENTS would benefit from such a plan.

I booked online a roundtrip flight from New York to Easter Island via Santiago. I made my hotel arrangement for Easter Island, and I decided to go BEFORE Antarctica. Since the purveyor in question is located in Illinois, I then contacted the Better Business Bureau in Chicago online and made a complaint. The BBB responded and asked if I wanted action beyond that, to which I said no. I wrote to the purveyor and explained the situation, to which they said they’d talk to their own agents in Chile. Nonsense. $1500 “single supplement” on top of nothing at all, and failure to recommend combining flights. It falls somewhere between gouging and incompetence. Caveat emptor, and never be impressed by fancy names and “good reputations”.

So I will take the longest north-south flight I’ve ever done from New York to Chile, then go out to Easter Island, then down to Antarctica. Their package kicks in from Santiago south. Everything before that I’ve done on my own.

They have boots on the ship for you to use. Every cabin has a pair of binoculars for your use during the trip. The “give” you a parka to keep, but we all know you really pay for it in the trip price. They suggest you purchase waterproof pants to wear over your regular pants inside the boots, which I’ve done, and suggest you bring gloves, a hat, and sunscreen for the southern sun shining off the water and whatever ice we may see.

I’m going to state now that I don’t think that this trip will be too very different from the Spitsbergen trip, except for just a bit more “roughing it”. In Spitsbergen we had overcast and some sleety rain only when we were up at the northernmost point at Moffen Island with the walruses. Otherwise it was quite normal sweater weather, and usually sunny or partly sunny. Barring a storm, I don’t expect Antarctica to be much different.

The Deutschland was a good-sized ship that had two tenders carrying I think some 60 people. Except for Longyearbyen where we docked at a normal pier, in all the fjord stops the tenders ferried passengers to where a little floating walkway (Steg) had been set up by the ship’s crew in advance. In a couple of places, serving tables were set up for snacks. That will not happen in Antarctica.

I think landings on shore will be very similar, except for the roughing it experience. The Explorer II is a small ship (it IS an icebreaker), and has no tenders. As far as I can tell, no little docks will be set up at landings either. Passengers will be taken in small groups to make landings from the Explorer II by Zodiacs, which are orange-colored rubber boats. This is the reason for the boots and other gear. Beyond this “roughing it” aspect, I don’t expect a huge difference in what we do or see here from what we did and saw in Spitsbergen. Let’s see how right or wrong I am.

Rail Contacts   I also wanted to explain why, with my increase in travel, there is so much overlapping planning involved. Part of that involves the contacts I’ve made in the field of rail travel, and here I mean special rail travel, not the regularly scheduled kind, such as the Acela or Eurostar.

Beverly and I were never ones to do much networking or have many professional contacts when involved in language teaching or education. We attended language conferences, but as spectators; we didn’t do presentations. Over all those years, we kept business separate from pleasure, which was—surprise—travel and language.

It is also noticeable that in the last two years, in addition to quite a number of sea voyages, rail travel has come more and more to the fore. This has included regularly scheduled rail travel, such as the X2000 in Sweden, the Acela in the US Northeast, and the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver, but also special, private rail travel, such as on the Orient Express.

It is no secret that I consider rail and ship travel to be the ultimate transportation experiences. To this I will add the freedom of local automobile touring, such as I did recently in the White Mountains and neighboring regions.

The dregs of transportation to my mind is long-haul cross-country driving (“we gotta do another hundred miles before dinner!”), intercity bus travel, and flying. Few people fly nowadays for the nice aerial views you get. We fly because it’s fast. No one in his right mind would ask someone if the best part of his trip to Florida was the flight (although you might ask if the best part of their voyage to Bermuda was the ship). I’ve heard two new expressions recently that I like for regular air travel: flying cattle class and flying steerage. First class is better, but is so unreasonably priced that it can spoil the experience. Business class is not too bad. But even with first or business class, it’s unlikely you’d ask if that was the best part of their trip to Europe. Others will have varying opinions, but I’ve tried every one of the modes mentioned in the last two paragraphs and feel I know whereof I speak.

Anyway, with the increase in trips I’ve done in the last two years, and with many of them including extensive rail experiences, I’ve been making some contacts. We can start with going around the world by rail in 2005: New York (and Halifax) to Vancouver, then Vladivostok to Southampton (Reflections 2005 Series 5 to 10).

The centerpiece of this trip was the private train on the Transsiberian route run by GW Travel of England. I had been in touch by e-mail in advance with Tim Littler who runs that and many other trains to see if we could manage it with Beverly’s wheelchair. He grudgingly agreed, but then the wheelchair no longer became a factor. Tim didn’t show up at the time of the trip as usual because of other commitments, so I met his associate instead. That didn’t stop me from writing him to tell him my opinion on the Stanford group and that I had given three lectures gratis. We have written otherwise where he has told me about his Silk Road rail trips from China to Moscow, and others. Yet Tim Littler was my first connection, in 2005.

In the early 1990’s I had joined for a year or two SIRT, the Society of International Railway Travelers, located in Louisville, Kentucky, but then, as Beverly and I gradually backed off international travel in general during that entire decade for various reasons (retirement, moving, Beverly’s illness), I dropped the membership. (In retrospect it amazes me that that stopping of international travel after decades of doing it was not a conscious decision we made; it just happened. Here we had just spent eight weeks in 1990 living in Spain studying advanced Spanish in Málaga, and then—poof—only domestic travel until sailing to Germany in 2000. But at least it’s then been once again both international and domestic travel on a regular basis. Maybe now I’m subconsciously playing catch-up for that “lost” decade.)

At any rate, in early 2006 it occurred to me to look up SIRT and join again, if for no other reason than to get its excellent glossy quarterly magazine, the International Railway Traveler (IRT). Owen Hardy publishes the IRT and Eleanor Flagler Hardy takes care of the travel side of the SIRT enterprise, both selling rail trip packages and organizing SIRT members to travel on dedicated SIRT trips. I was particularly interested in SIRT’s list of the best rail trips in the world, researched them all, and put a number on my to-do list. I also learned that newspapers and magazines often consult with SIRT about formulating their own lists of rail trips to recommend. I had occasion before my Scandinavia trip to call Eleanor, and we had enough to talk about that we spoke for over an hour. I mentioned the Siberia trip and my contact with Tim Littler, and not surprisingly, Eleanor knew him quite well. (The contact network broadens.)

Early on, I had mentioned to Eleanor why an upscale enterprise like SIRT should accept American Express cards. She seemed to like my reasoning, and on my return from Scandinavia, she e-mailed me that she wanted me to be the first to know that they now have started doing so. I’ve made a number of other suggestions as to how SIRT can improve its services to members. She mentioned recently that a rail provider who also offers canalboat cruises in France had been speaking to her. I commented that canalboat trips would appeal to the same demographic that rail journeys appeal to, and suggested she read about the Göta Canal on my website, which she did, and found of interest.

But there were also some specifics we could do business with. There was a new railtrip to Mexico City which I signed up for with Eleanor (all independent—no groups), to do in January on my way to Tampa for February. As it turns out, Tim Littler wanted to check it out as well in the new year, and asked when I was taking it, on the chance he could take the same one. But alas, the new trip fell through. I’m still going to Mexico City in the exact same time frame, and I’ll explain in December or early January about the original Mexico trip, its collapse, and the rather clever (even if I say so myself) replacement I worked out. All should go well.

I also had Eleanor book me on the Transcántabrico, a narrow-guage train trip in northern Spain, for next May. I’ve built it into a personal Portugal-Spain-Southeast England trip, returning on the QM2. More on that at the time.

But the Rovos trip is probably the most interesting, and how it came about is even better. On the SIRT list of best rail trips was a description of Rovos Rail of South Africa. It’s a relatively new company that does special private luxury rail trips around South Africa, to Namibia, and around southern Africa in general.

I had known of the famous Blue Train, which does one-night trips between Pretoria and Capetown—and I will be doing that trip as well—but the Rovos trips were particularly exciting. Yet better than the local trips Rovos did, what appealed to me was the trip to Dar.

Once a year, in July, a Rovos train leaves Capetown and crosses the lower part of Africa ending up two weeks later in Dar es Salaam, the major city of Tanzania. On the way it stops in Pretoria, a wild game park, and visits Victoria Falls. It goes from South Africa through Zimbabwe and Zambia to Tanzania. Afterward, it returns, doing a separate southbound trip back to Capetown.

At the Dar end, there is an optional add-on: a week-long safari trip in Tanzania to the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti, then going on to the Zanzibar island part of Tanzania. I will say at the outset that I’m not hugely interested in a safari, and would not travel to East Africa just to do one, but this being “attached” to a rail trip I’ll already be there for, I’d be a fool to pass up the chance. So, after saying in 2004 I wouldn’t go to Antarctica or on a safari, the wheelchair no longer being a factor, I will now be doing both. But this story gets better.

I always plan a year in advance, or at least block in what will be going on, with details to come later, although not too much later. Some people smile at that, but you can’t guarantee you’ll get what you want—or at the price you want—if you wait for the last minute. But when I told Eleanor in the summer of 2006 about Rovos to Dar, she said the more reasonably priced accommodations were already sold out for 2007. (Remember that “reasonably priced” is a relative term!!) Therefore, she got me on a waiting list for July of 2008. Now you see more of all these plans for various trips overlapping. But this story gets better.

I know I will always remember how the following came about. Picture lunchtime on the Juno on the Göta Canal. Calm, peace, and quiet as the Juno ambled slowly past the Swedish landscape of fields and cows. Peaceful and idyllic. What century was it again?

At lunch that day the subject of rail travel in general comes up, and luxury rail travel in particular. I mention Rovos. A Danish gentleman named Finn perks up. He knows South Africa. He knows Rovos—nice train trips. He knows Sandy, who does the Rovos bookings in South Africa. As a matter of fact, she’s a friend of his and he speaks to her at least once a week. Maybe she can get me a discount. Should he call her right now? Let’s step out onto the breezeway, so his cell phone will work better. Bing-bang and Sandy has my particulars and will e-mail me when I’m back in New York.

What was jolting to me was the juxtaposition of the bucolic Swedish countryside as opposed to the cell phone calling South Africa, of all places. Weren’t we mixing centuries? At very least, we were combining 2006 in Sweden with 2008 in Africa. The experience was dizzying.

Back in New York after Scandinavia I found that Sandy handles domestic trips; Nicole handles the Dar trip. No problem. I mention in passing in an e-mail the name Tim Littler. Oh, Nicole knows Tim. As a matter of fact, Tim is working with Rovos to do a one-time Cape-to-Cairo excursion in 2008. In a separate communication, Tim corroberates this. But it doesn’t interest me. The railroad from Capetown to Cairo has still not been completed after a century; there’s a big piece missing north of Dar. Tim’s trip will be in the winter and involve a lot of flying. Also, Egypt and North Africa is not my favorite region; once was enough, so thanks, but no thanks.

Nicole is sure I can get a discount, but she has to check with Rohan Vos, the owner of Rovos. (Oh, for pity’s sake. Only as I write this does it strike me that the name ROVOS comes from ROhan VOS. I’m slow on the uptake sometimes, even with these language things.) As things would have it, both Nicole and Rohan are busy traveling up to Dar on the 2006 trip during this e-mail interchange.

Finally, they agree to extend to me the 10% discount offered repeat passengers on the basis that I do so much rail travel already. I thank her and wonder if I’ll meet Rohan on the trip, since I didn’t meet Tim on his Siberia trip. I was also concerned if this could be coordinated with Eleanor’s booking (Nicole knew Eleanor’s name—of course!). Nicole wrote, verbatim:

“Yes, you will certainly meet Rohan. He travels on the train to ensure we get through with little problems. He has called himself the 'waterboy' as he also ensures we get water onboard and of course keep to our running schedule.

“I have heard from Eleanor--your discount will still be extended to you. No problem at all. As they would say here in Swahili, Akuna Matata--no worries. We would be honoured to have such a train enthusiast onboard.”

Well, I am honoured/honored by that last sentence. I should point out that the train is a steam train, since I don’t believe diesel, and certainly not electricity, serves that route. Therefore, the water that the “waterboy” scares up is crucial, as is fuel. I heard it’s harder and harder to maintain fuel depots along the way.

And how appropriate to the region of this trip that Nicole uses the phrase—just like in the musical and film of “The Lion King”—Akuna Matata.