Southern Exposure

SOUTHERN

Natarsha Brown discovers what has been drawing adventurers to the Antarctic region since the time of Shackleton.

EXPOSURE

As a black-spotted leopard seal surfaces just 10 metres from our idling kayaks – gracefully scaling onto an iceberg and lazily flopping itself down – our group falls eerily silent. Fierce and feline-looking, it stares at us with a curious and predatory gaze as we drift quietly by. Only once we are out of view does anyone dare make a sound.

“Well, that was a complete shock!” exclaims our expedition leader. “I have never been that close to one of those before.”

With steaming hot chocolates in hand, we continue gliding through the mirrored reflections of dwarfing snow-capped mountains and bobbing brash ice, which chinks against our boats like cubes in a cocktail glass. At sea level, the frozen landscapes somehow appear even more grand: luminescent glaciers loom ahead and our cruise ship becomes an increasingly smaller speck on the retreating horizon.

As in most surreal situations, things keep getting dreamier. While making our way over to the wreck of the Norwegian vessel Guvernøren – a haunting reminder of the whaling heyday at Wilhelmina Bay – an Adelie penguin starts porpoising alongside, it’s furlike feathers glistening in the sunlight. I am so enthralled, it takes me a moment to notice the whiskered Weddell seal lolling on the snowbank above. It yawns nonchalantly and rolls over, utterly unperturbed by our presence.

A land of extremes Ours is a 16-night voyage encompassing South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula on Quark Expeditions’ World Explorer. Every suite has either a private walk-out or French balcony, expert-led lectures are held twice daily in the theatre and the open-seating restaurant serves up three-course dinners each night, with menu items ranging from beef bourguignon to seared Alaskan salmon. The most important space on board, however, is ‘The Mudroom’ – where we are called, group by group, to don our boots and canary-yellow life jackets before alighting one of the Zodiacs to be ferried ashore.

01 A group of gentoos resting on an ice cap 02 & 03 Elephant seals at Gold Harbour 04 Zodiac views of South Georgia’s glaciers 02

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Want to know what Antarctica sounds like? Click here to find out.

We spend three days in the wildlife-rich South Georgia wandering among cawing colonies of king penguins and their clumsy, fluffy-brown chicks at St. Andrews Bay; hiking to a hidden lake among the lofty peaks of Godthul bay; and paying tribute to Shackleton with a shot of whisky after ducking between whaling station relics and the gregarious fur seals that have taken residence at Grytviken, before making a pit stop on the South Orkney Islands so we can learn about the everyday workings of a remote research station. When we start to to move again, craggy floes begin to make way for sculpted icebergs, some the size of six-storey buildings.

"Perhaps the most rewarding experience of all is taking a quiet moment to absorb the desolate and chilling beauty"

Most magnificent Antarctica lays claim to a lot of the world’s ‘mosts’: it experiences the most acute cold, the most powerful winds and is home to the most accumulations of ice. The knowledge that you are visiting the most immense wilderness on Earth – 4,649 kilometres from civilisation, with the notorious Drake Passage separating you from Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city – is also a major draw, the continent’s sheer enormity and raw and tenacious conditions proving an allure for all types of adventurers.

Despite its unrelenting extremes, the sub-Antarctic region is home to all manner of animals – and we see them

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05 An endless spread of king penguins 06 A proud-looking fur seal at St. Andrew’s Bay 07 Incredible views at Godthul 08 World’s Explorer’s cabin balconies

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Click here to see what life on board a Quark Expeditions ship in Antarctica is really like.

all. Even a pod of orcas, which materialise beside the ship as we are gathered in the glass-domed Observation Lounge for a guided bird-watching session. And the elusive blue whale, whose small dorsal fin glanced above the Scotia Sea to the delighted gasps of staff and passengers alike.

We make our first landing at Portal Point on the Antarctic Peninsula, trudging through kneedeep powder to take the obligatory photo with the ‘seventh continent’ flag, before cruising to Cuverville Island to watch the charming tetea-tete courtship display of gentoo penguins.

While every species has its charms – the chinstrap’s soldier-like imprint, the macaroni’s stiff orange monobrows giving them the look of a James Bond villain, the Adelie’s tuxedo-like coat and the king’s humanlike mannerisms – it’s the gentoo’s romantic pebble exchanges I love most of all. I laugh as one particularly tenacious male darts around, stealing from other nests, eventually producing the perfect rock for his beloved.

While passengers are instructed to stand a minimum of five metres away from the wildlife at all times and I try to keep a respectful distance, the natural inquisitiveness of the

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09 A lone gentoo at Neko Harbour 10 A blue sky day at South Orkney Islands 11 Stepping foot on the seventh continent 12 A lazy pair of crabeater seals

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13 Up-close with a chinstrap penguin 14 A lone Wedell seal. All images © Natarsha Brown

penguins often negates any efforts – one waddles up to my boots, gawkily squawks at the sky, and moves on.

Each landscape is more dramatic than the next. Yet nothing prepares me for the otherworldliness of Neko Harbour: the clouds are low, the air is still, the polar silence punctuated only by an ancient glacier cracking its colossal knuckles, calving into the calm, inky black waters below. In this magical moment, a pod of humpback whales fluke in tandem on either side of the ship. Goosebumps are an understatement.

In 1911 Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, wrote in his expedition diary that: “by the sun, the land looks like a fairytale”. Today, it is just as bewitching. Perhaps the most rewarding experience of all is simply taking a quiet moment to absorb the desolate and chilling beauty of this boundless continent, lying at the end of the world; uncompromising, unconquerable and unknowable.

Click here for more advice on visiting Antarctica.