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‘You are the only passenger’: How I returned to an empty world - National Geographic
Follow a photographer’s journey from a remote island in the South Atlantic to a world paused by pandemic.
When the world screeched to a halt, I didn’t notice. I was off the grid near Antarctica, lost in the cacophony of some 200,000 penguins. Elsewhere, highways were emptying, planes parking, and businesses shuttering as COVID-19 gained ground. But the order for social distancing hadn’t yet stretched to this corner of the planet.
At the start of my two-week stint as a guest speaker aboard the National Geographic Explorer en route to South Georgia Island, there were only a handful of coronavirus cases reported in Argentina or Chile. As the pandemic loomed, it seemed as if our isolated tour was a well-timed escape. Passengers were checked for fever before boarding in Ushuaia, Argentina, and we quickly set course for the Falkland Islands. I wanted to believe, optimistically, that the virus would spike during our journey and we’d return after the worst of it.
Follow a photographer’s journey from a remote island in the South Atlantic to a world paused by pandemic.
When the world screeched to a halt, I didn’t notice. I was off the grid near Antarctica, lost in the cacophony of some 200,000 penguins. Elsewhere, highways were emptying, planes parking, and businesses shuttering as COVID-19 gained ground. But the order for social distancing hadn’t yet stretched to this corner of the planet.
At the start of my two-week stint as a guest speaker aboard the National Geographic Explorer en route to South Georgia Island, there were only a handful of coronavirus cases reported in Argentina or Chile. As the pandemic loomed, it seemed as if our isolated tour was a well-timed escape. Passengers were checked for fever before boarding in Ushuaia, Argentina, and we quickly set course for the Falkland Islands. I wanted to believe, optimistically, that the virus would spike during our journey and we’d return after the worst of it.