good talk

Yesterday I had my teeth cleaned, a Scrapejob. Jan is my dental hygienist and she is really good, before I went in my teeth felt fine as always but afterwards they felt wonderful. Jan is the only one who has ever made me feel that way. About 4 years ago my appointment with Jan was cancelled as she had gone off to this island in the South Pacific on a 2-year contract with some company, the second time that she had done this. Jan had told me about this place before she left, she said that after she got off work Monday through Friday she'd either scuba dive or snorkel and of course do this on weekend. I don't know why Jan's contracts are in 2-year increments or what they do for a dental hygienist when she's not there. I wouldn't want to do this to such a large extent but I think that a lot of people would at least to get out of the ratrace. The dentists have the same opinion of Jan as I do and maybe her good reputation helps her to get this, probably so. While she's still here I'm fortunate to have Jan before she goes yet again to her South Sea Island Paradise. Whether it's Jan or somebody else I get my teeth cleaned every 6 months, I haven't had a cavity in over 9 years, it wasn't always this way. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I flew to Ushuaia from Buenos Aires at the beginning of April 2 years ago. I said that I don't make hotel reservations but I bought the 3 nights at the 4 Star Hotel to make sure that I didn't have to sleep on the sidewalk, Ushuaia is very popular. Ushuaia is 1470 miles from Buenos Aires and is the southernmost town in the world. It's on Tierra del Fuego (named by Magellan the Land of Fire, he had seen Indians' bonfires) and is bordered by the Beagle Channel and is only 600 miles from Antartica. Patagonia is the southernmost part of South America and is shared by both Argentina and Chile. To get to Ushuaia I flew on Aerolineas Argentinas which is about the worse airline I've been on and I've been on a few. Aerolineas Argentinas has a terrible reputation within Argentina as oftentimes tourists coming to Ushuaia to leave on Antartic Cruises arrive 8 hours late and miss their Cruise Ship (bet they were happy). My flight was only an hour late probably because it was the offseason. I was met at the airport and taken to my hotel, Tierra del Fuego, it was new and nice. And they threw in a real good buffet breakfast, you get fooded up for the day and then you don't have to think about it until the evening. My first day I just catted about to see what was going on in this town of 64,000, it was kind of cold and windy but not too much and I enjoyed walking around. The next day I hiked up to their little glacier, the Glacier Martial, took the ski lift back, I had never been to a glacier before. The day after that I went on a 5 hour Penguin Tour out 50 miles to Hammer Island to see the last of the penguins before they migrated, this cost $50. And yes, there were about fifty people on the boat. You don't get off the boat to see the 54 penguins you just ogle these guys who are standing there on the shore as though they had been waiting for you. The Penguins were both Magellanic and Gentoo Penguins and of course everybody was excited and taking their pictures, to be in the presence of Penguins in the Wild was very exciting, cute little fellows and that's putting it mildly. Everybody loves Penguins. On the way back they showed us a movie, "the March of the Penguins." There's no nightlife in Ushuaia, you just watch TV and then go to sleep, save your strength for the following day. The next day I took a tour of the National Park which was part of the Package Deal, everything in the Ushuaia region is the southermost in the World, the southernmost road which I have a picture of me standing at the end of, the southernmost lake, the southernmost forest, the southernmost anything you can think of. My last night, Cecilia, who worked for the company who handled my package deal called me at 10:15 P.M. to tell me to be ready to be picked up at the hotel at 7 P.M. the next evening to fly back to Buenos Aires. She woke me up and I already knew this, I said thanks dear. I couldn't get back to sleep until 12:30 A.M. My last day I toured their old prison from which there had been no way to escape, they had made it into a museum showing all these things about Ushuaia, it was very interesting and there were a lot of people there. Being in Ushuaia had been a wonderful experience.