Content Disclosure: Mental Health Issues
All people have had ill luck, but Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus had the worst. ~ Mark Twain
Laz pulled the parka closer to his body, ineffectually trying to ward off the gelid wind that blew from the mountains. Argentina was supposed to be warm in late December, but in Ushuaia, at the end of the world, the temperature rarely rose above fifty degrees. “Today, not even fifty,” Laz mumbled. Talking to himself was just one of the habits that over the years had attached to him like fleas in a dog’s fur.
He had not come to this remote outpost to see the sights—Ushuaia held little of interest to entice a seasoned traveler like himself; it was described in the tourist guides as merely “a sliver of steep streets and jumbled buildings below the snowcapped Martial Range” of the Andes. He was also not interested in a trip to Antarctica or in hiking the steep trails of Andorra Valley or trekking to the Martial Glacier, a couple of hours from town. “I’m not athletic,” he told himself; not that his arthritic knees would have allowed him to go ambling about as he used to in his youth.
He had signed up for a four-hour boat cruise on the Beagle Channel that would take him to his goal, the area around the Les Eclaireurs lighthouse. Sailing along the channel off Ushuaia, the boat had passed by sea lions basking on the rocks, cormorants sitting on nests, fur seals, and other wildlife he did not recognize. On Martillo Island, the boat had come close to what the guide described as one of the largest penguin colonies outside of