Ushuaia. Last city on Earth. Normal looking town actually, I think I saw a KFC around somewhere. Otherwise all normal… except for the water, as fresh and clean as a pack of Wriggley’s Spearmint Gum. I didn’t know water could be like this. Everything is calm; everything is still. I’ve been looking out my window for the last few days: no waves, no currents, no tides. I don’t even think a single ship’s moved in the harbor. Its like those mountains, this bay and those clouds are all trying to hide the fact that this is pretty much the end of the world… you go any farther and you might just fall off.

The weather’s actually pretty mild. “Global warming,” says Robert Swan, “Global Warming.” The team’s pretty much all gathered here and we’re been running around climbing up to see glaciers and eating amazing Argentinean steaks (One thing to be said about the end of the world, there’s no shortage of cows).  It's an interesting bunch: lots of very different backgrounds, lots of very different reasons to come here. There are a surprising number of college students. There are apparently quite a few competitions that the prize for winning is a spot on 2041. A group of 4 students from the UK ran a campaign to save energy in their University. What they did is they recognized the fact that students have to walk roughly 40 minutes to get from their housing to their classes. So they organized a bus to pick up students from their rooms and take them to classes.  They worked really hard on organizing the bus, on decorating it and on making sure to deliver their message to the kids to use energy more responsibly. I know a lot of you were really interested in coming to the Antarctic, well guess what, this is something you can all work towards. Amazingly even the students that didn’t win the contests managed to find sponsorships from their own communities. They tried their best to win of course, but they didn’t give up when they didn’t. They approached their schools, local companies and local groups and raised money from them.

So why are they so determined to come here? Well they all have different reasons, some don't even care much about the environment. For some people its about the challenge of making it here, for others its about what they want to gain from here, the ability to change how people think and how they see the world. Why would you want to come to Antarctica? What is it about this place that intrigues you? The cold, the distance? How would you like Antarctica to influence you? How do you think you would change after coming to Antarctica? Let me know your thoughts on this and I’ll try to share with you as much of what other people here are thinking as I can.

It’s starting to rain. I guess I’m stuck in the hotel for the night… I was hoping to buy some sunscreen before we head out tomorrow. Yes sunscreen. So apparently (for those of us that slept through physics) light bounces off of white surfaces. All the sunlight that hits the snow and ice bounces back up and hits our faces. So sunscreen is important.

Tomorrow we sail.