Ice-Covered Magnificence

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

There 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 more days like this one in Antarctica and then two days sailing back across the Drake Passage to Argentina wasn’t a fun one.

And then, as in all stories that have a happy ending, slowly the weather began to turn and the sun started coming out. I began to see that I was in a place that was breathtakingly beautiful, unlike any other place I had ever experienced.

It was to be that way for most of the rest of my time in Antarctica.

After two days at sea, we were in Antarctica proper and set ashore on King George, the largest of the South Shetland Islands. On our next shore excursion, we saw penguins—by the thousands! Our rules may have prohibited us from approaching a penguin too closely, but penguins apparently have no rules restricting them from approaching humans. All you have to do is sit down, and soon penguins will be checking you out up close or walking right by

Crossing the Drake Passage

to Antarctica generally takes two days, depending on sea and ice conditions.

ARGENTINA

USHUAIA

Drake

Passage PARADISE BAY

you, totally indifferent to your presence.

I saw three different kinds of “brush-tailed” penguins—the Adelie, the Gentoo, and the Chinstrap.

All these millions of penguins roaming around a cold desert climate in a barren landscape require tons of food to eat each day. But there’s no vegetation, there are no farmlands to raid, and no supermarkets. How do they manage to find food? Very well, actually. Penguins love to dine on krill—highly nutritious shrimp-like marine animals that happen to be very difficult to process for human consumption—and the waters of Antarctica are teeming with krill.

One sight that looks quite peculiar the first few times you see it is a penguin suddenly leaping out of water surprisingly high into the air and then landing on the edge of a rock or an iceberg. It looks like a circus act, and you feel like applauding the little guys.

A lot of the things penguins do are fun to watch. They wave their heads and flippers around. They bow. They steal stones from their neighbors’ nests to add them to their own. And if a couple of them are in a dispute, they’ll stare and point at one another and occasionally charge each other. To attract a female, a male will pump its chest, angle its flippers, stretch its head skyward, and let out a loud braying sound. Sometimes this touches off a chorus of similar performances from other nearby males.

One of the funniest sights is watching a penguin having difficulty walking through the snow. If it gets to be too much of a bother, he’ll use his body as a sort of sled and push himself along the snow on his stomach.

I would go back to Antarctica just to watch penguins. But while they’re my fondest memory of the place, there are so many other outstanding memories.

I saw seals up close as well as all sorts of different birds. I saw a lot of whales—minke whales, killer whales, and humpback whales—and I saw some of them up remarkably close from a small Zodiac boat and even had the experience of having a whale swim underneath our boat.

I saw icebergs the size of skyscrapers, which dwarfed any I had ever seen in Alaska.

I saw scenery of stunning beauty amid an absolute silence that amplified the experience into something I had never before imagined.

And from time to time, I had the strangest sensation come over me when I paused to realize that I might well have been standing at a spot where no other human being has ever stood.

The majesty of Antarctica came powerfully home to me one day as I sat on a snowbank and gazed off into the distance. There was no one else in sight.

Up ahead, a lone penguin was waddling along away from me. There was nothing but the snow on the ground and the crisp air between us. Beyond the lone little penguin was the vast Antarctic wilderness, a panoramic vista of snow, mountains, clouds, and clear blue sky.

There was no sound—just this unforgettable scene. It felt for a moment as if all there was in the world were this penguin and me.

I thought about what the great explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton had said of Antarctica: “It’s the last great journey left to man.”

I was thrilled that I had made the journey. 

Fred J. Eckert is a retired U.S. ambassador and former member of Congress.

Antarctica covers an area of

5.5 MILLION

square miles.

If You Go

Best Time to Go:

Departures only occur from late November through early February. It’s the only time of year tourists can visit Antarctica—what passes for summertime there. Remember, seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere.

Packing:

Your tour operator should provide you with a thorough briefing book including a checklist of what you need to bring. Some also provide you with a comfortable Antarctic parka and a travel bag.

Tour Operators:

A number of leading tour operators serve Antarctica. I used Abercrombie & Kent.