The passengers on “Expedition to Antarctica”—about 200 of us altogether—are beginning to arrive in Buenos Aires, the starting point for our adventure. The official arrival date isn’t until tomorrow, but some passengers (including me) opted to get here a day early, and I suspect a few moved up their departure in order to avoid the winter storm that’s hammering the East Coast.

(The weather here in Buenos Aires is a decided contrast to what much of the U.S. is experiencing right now, as evidenced by the AccuWeather forecast for today. Don’t hate us.)

Getting to Buenos Aires typically involves an overnight flight from the U.S. For me, the trip started in State College on Wednesday with flights to Philadelphia and then Miami, and then a flight that left Miami at 10:45 pm and arrived in Buenos Aires about nine hours later.

Here’s an iPhone photo I took out the plane window as we climbed out of Philadelphia yesterday afternoon; it was the ice in the water that caught my eye. The guy in the seat next to me (who happened to be a flight attendant who was commuting home) thinks it’s the Delaware Bay meeting the Atlantic Ocean, and I’m certainly in no position to argue….

(Maybe you recognize the area?)

Anyway, we arrived in Buenos Aires at about 10 am local time, which, interestingly, is two hours ahead of Eastern time. If you look at a map of the Western Hemisphere, you might be surprised to see how far east the east coast of South America really is.

Buenos Aires is a jumping-off point for a lot of Antarctic trips, and I met quite a few people who were on their way here for just that reason. At the gate in Miami I chatted with two women from the Chicago area who are doing a cruise with Zegrahm Expeditions, and two women from Iowa who were about to embark on a Holland America Cruise. The latter trip intrigued me—it’s a month long, and includes Buenos Aires, Montevideo (in Uruguay, just across the river from here), the Falkland Islands, Antarctica, and Santiago, Chile. But what really struck me was that they will never actually get off the ship in Antarctica. That’s because there are way too many people on the ship. I’m told that the Antarctic Treaty limits the number of people who can go on shore at any given location, at any given time, to 100. Our ship holds 200, so we’ll go onshore in alternating shifts. But the Royal Caribbean ship holds something like 1,500 people! So they’ll look at the penguins and seals from a distance. I think our group is getting the better deal.

As we waited in line to go through Argentinian immigrations and customs this morning, a woman behind me noticed my business card on my luggage tag and saw that I was from Penn State. It turns out she and her husband are from Michigan State,  and are on the same Gohagan trip that we are. (Besides Penn State, there are alumni from a number of different schools on this trip.) We ended up sharing a cab to the hotel, and later setting off for an ATM together to withdraw some pesos—always an adventure in a city where you barely speak the language. I enjoyed their company a lot.

Later in the day I met a woman from the University of Michigan who’s also on this trip, and who I think is rooming with one of the Penn State passengers. And in the evening I bumped into a couple from the Canadian province of Alberta who are part of the Arizona State contingent. When they heard I was from Penn State, they asked if I knew Guy Gadowsky, the men’s hockey coach. Turns out the husband in the couple—John Belmont is his name—coached Gadowsky in youth hockey and taught and coached him at Strathcona High School in Edmonton. Belmont has known our coach since he was, well, about the size of a chinstrap penguin, and thinks very highly of him. Small world.

Speaking of adventures in foreign cities, if I’m to have any hope of charging my iPhone and my iPad, I have got to find an adaptor that fits the electrical outlets in my room:

That intimidating-looking scene is a collection of Type I outlets, which are found mostly in China, Australia, and New Zealand, but also—for whatever reason—in Argentina. And I brought a Type I adaptor. It’s in my luggage. Somewhere.

By the way, our hotel (the Intercontinental) is lovely. Feast your eyes on just one section of the dessert offerings at the lunch buffet:

Which one did I choose? Actually, I skipped dessert. I figure I’m going to gain enough weight eating cruise food for a week that I probably should behave a bit while I can.