Travel Expeditions
Tourists get from ship to landing and back aboard a small rubber vessel.
Voyage to Antartica Unlike any other place on earth
By Fred J. Eckert
T
58 I N S I G H T April 1–7, 2022
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT FRED J. ECKERT
here i was at last—I had made it to all seven continents—and finally I had arrived at the continent that everyone who fancies himself a world traveler yearns to someday set foot upon—Antarctica. And what was I thinking? “What in the world am I doing here?”—that’s what I was thinking! The weather was miserable—overcast, dreary, and drizzly. From the moment we disembarked our comfortable ship to get into the group of thick rubber-tube-like Zodiac motorboats that dropped us onto the Antarctic continent, I hadn’t been able to see more than a few feet ahead through the thick cold mist. It had been four days since the ship that I was traveling on, the MS Explorer, set sail from the
tip of Argentina. The thought of spending four Crossing the more days like this one in Antarctica and then Drake Passage two days sailing back across the Drake Passage to Antarctica generally takes to Argentina wasn’t a fun one. And then, as in all stories that have a happy two days, depending on ending, slowly the weather began to turn and sea and ice the sun started coming out. I began to see that I conditions. was in a place that was breathtakingly beautiful, unlike any other place I had ever experienced. ARGENTINA It was to be that way for most of the rest of my time in Antarctica. USHUAIA After two days at sea, we were in Antarctica proper and set ashore on King George, the largest of the Drake South Shetland Islands. On our next shore excurPassage sion, we saw penguins—by the thousands! Our rules may have prohibited us from approaching a PARADISE BAY penguin too closely, but penguins apparently have no rules restricting them from approaching humans. All you have to do is sit down, ANTARCTICA and soon penguins will be checking you out up close or walking right by
