Suddenly, the scenario I look at gives me peace and serenity: snowy mountains overlook the lake which reflects the azure of the sky.
I am very tired; I spent the night in the airport, and the night before I woke up at 3 o’ clock to take the plane from San Paolo to Buenos Aires. I have to look for an accommodation, at the cheapest price, but I soon understand that here is not easy: one of the most beautiful locations of the world, and also of the most expensive. On the other end, if you want to reach the end of the world you must pay! I try to move to pity the Salesians with my letter of the curia, but nothing; so, I choose a cheap hostel. And it was a good choice because Paola, who works there gives me all the indications to visit the Tierra de fuego.
Here, in Ushuaia, they live thanks to the tourism and everything is to buy, but I don’t go away without having sailed the Beagle canal, having a discount on the trip.
They offer me a place in the VIP cabin because for a technical problem I was about to miss the trip.
It is in this way that I met a family of South American dandies, bringing any kind of clocks and jewels and I ask to myself how they must feel in such a place. They are not my types of people, so I go down amongst the “plebs” and I meet Juan Pablo, curious about my hair now green. He is an Argentine agronomist, in Ushuaia with his colleagues, and who does not speak English. However, we talk for a long time, speaking slowly, me in Italian, he in Spanish, and we understand each other.
The navigation of the Beagle canal is for me moving as few other things: looking so close sea lions fighting or the penguins walking in single file are priceless things.
I travel to find myself, but there is a part of me that I know very well also staying at home: the love for nature and the desire to study animal behaviour. It could have been my job, but it is left only the regret and the books by Lorentz on my library.
Juan Pablo reminds me one further time how people met travelling are more important than monuments or other things; he does not take photos, but take them for me and for my blog; for himself, he prefer to look and to bring in his heart the remembrance of what he sees.
Juan Pablo is widowed from ten years, his beloved wife died at only 48 years old, leaving four children.
However, he accepted life as it came because life is one and we need to make of it a masterpiece, however brief it can be.
That is one reason which encourages me to continue this journey around the world: “is this what you want? Do it. Life is too short to not doing what you like”.
Getting a coffee to say goodbye to Juan Pablo tells me that he would have preferred to go on a ship and go down to the island to spend some time with the penguins, but he took this other ship and it was a good choice because he met me.
Coloured hair don’t attract only perverted men looking for extra-conjugal sex, but also men from everywhere who want to know and to talk.
