By: Staff Writer
June 3, 2022
A Jamaican on ice is not just for the infamous Jamaican bobsled team, but for a female author and explorer who dared to see the world and goes against the rules about the female drive and passion.
Judith Falloon-Reid, author and explorer extraordinaire, will be at the Caribbean Literary Conference (CARICON) in Los Angeles this weekend on June 3-5 and will be hosting an exhibition that she prefers to call an “experience.” She said: “There’s a photo exhibit, which includes about 40 photos of different sizes from my collection, all of which I took. It Turns out there actually was a good photographer and I didn’t even know.”
She has over 40 enhanced photos for “informational purposes” because it’s not just about the portraits, but it’s about the “environment” that lends to the subject.
She will also be showcasing her film, “Jamaican On Ice” and will be available to talk about her experience in Antarctica as well as Question and Answer period on her latest book, “Aaah-Inspiring Antarctica.” She added: “It’s a coffee table book and it is taken from a blog that I wrote while I was there.”
This year’s CARICON is going to be a hybrid series where there is virtual features for those who cannot make it in person and in person features for those who can.
Along with being an author, Judith is an explorer and enjoys going to faraway places. “I think of this as living a life a little different from what you were told you should be doing, but I never believed in that. Who made up these rules about how an explorer is supposed to look like and why is that supposed to be applicable for everybody? They were never applicable to me!” she bristled.
We can imagine the participants cannot wait to hear about Judith’s experience in Antarctica and how she got there.
There are only two ports of disembarkation in the world that someone can enter into Antarctica and one is from New Zealand at the McMurdo station and the other is from the South of Argentina on the opposite side of the globe, where Judith made her journey into the frozen desert.
The south of Argentina, she says, was a trip within trip as they made their way down to the town of Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost town and made their way by boat to Antarctica.
“Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. I spent five days in Buenos Aires before flying in to Ushuaia, which was quite an interesting flight. Landing in Ushuaia was extremely interesting and we had been told it was treacherous because the two oceans meet there, the Atlantic and the Pacific and they’re coming from different sides,” she said. All of this added to the danger to the trip even before she landed on the frozen tundra as the winds were blowing from each direction. “If they hadn’t warned us before I would have been praying the whole day.”
Judith is making her way from Panama, where she now lives, to make it down to Los Angeles for the start of the CARICON.