Villa de las Estrellas story sounded, a fantasía. His name was as unreal as the place in which it was installed and we were going there. We were about to get on a plane to travel to Antarctica.
I remember my brother told me about this place. It was one of those destinations you have to name softly as if the world keep secret, because they are impossible people, whims of men, companies have turned to the world and the sanity.
Fly over giant ice floes Cape Horn helped us to understand the location of Villa de las Estrellas, whose name must be described as its clear nights there. South of the South, much more to south of Ushuaia and Puerto Williams, south of the southern cone of Latin, south of the rest of the men. With this desire to civilize a world of ice, Chileans invented this village, in that lack an international air le, because until the country is a concept that is ways away in Antarctica.
If you stop to look at the vertices of a map, you can understand Villa of Stars, to glimpse some humanity in its distance
Here remains a scientific basis, but has mutated into town. The difference with other Antarctic scientific bases is, eg, the presence of children. There is a school and a fitness center and a plaza with three cobblestone square meters and there is a Russian Orthodox church, the distances do not know for faith-, and there is a hospital and a couple of cars and a post office and a bank and suddenly, if you stop looking at the vertices of a map, you can understand Villa of Stars, to glimpse some humanity in its distance.
Scientists families settled here, in bunkers they painted colors, with flowery curtains inside, Entries with decorating dolls. On the beaches of singing and snow, the penguins come every morning from the rafts loaded with studying those weird corners of the world. Everything is strange. The landscape and glaciers gave us a kind of moss that had only seen in documentaries of crazy people to be remote to record birds that had not seen more than in those crazy people documentaries, Antarctic mosses and birds. And so in that loop through the village was impossible, doubting this kind of fiction: "Not, it is not possible to live here ", I repeated.
We had landed in the corner of King George Island, on a continent so inhospitable that it is not worth not paint in the world maps. We walked for a while along with other tourists, yes, tourists as rare as everything else. It was cold but the silence was bearable coldest, as if each were to assimilate what the hell he was doing there.
I felt embarrassed that a traveler is the most consistent of a traveler.
We walked up to a group of elephant seals that reeked. That stench was what distinguished the reality of the documentary, the smell of elephants and moisture, the cold seeping into socks, the silence broken by a new squawk.
And then I felt happy. I felt embarrassed that a traveler is the most consistent of a traveler. I had uncovered the idea of ??getting there and there was no apparent reason, nothing to justify the disproportionate and effort away. But there was, watching penguins, oliendo the elephant marino, stepping puddles Antarctic. And I also brought in a video tape a piece of documentary, fiction, oblivious sleep.
Months later I told my brother Luis how was Villa of Stars, which Olia. I did not quietly, it was no longer a secret, was not a fable invented, Or maybe yes it was? Even today I think that this trip had some dream, unlikely. But, in, I remember I sent Luis a postcard from the only post office in Antarctica, but told me never came…
…one moment… Did not come!… waiting, waiting, yes, I was there…. ¿no?
