Circling South

Two nautical charts overlap on the ship’s navigation table. Never surveyed waters surround the ship, according to both charts. The captain relies on a heading of depth soundings. He’s been to the Antarctic many times before, yet has never sailed this particular channel.

Oncoming dusk makes it harder to see, then the heavy snow starts. The icebergs that impeded the channel are harder to see as the huge snowflakes stick to the bridge windows. Thankfully, the floating barriers appear clearly on the radar. Strangely, the icebergs are shown in orange on the monitor. A giant orange clump waits imposingly ahead. We are three kilometers from it. You need to visit this site to learn about antarctica travel guide.

At the one kilometer mark, the captain whisper a quiet order. The helmsman deftly moves the wheel and the ship alters its course. Through the falling snow and deep fog, we glimpse a tabular iceberg. This kind of berg can only be seen in the southern ocean. The top is extremely flat and wide, and the sides rise straight up. This one is over one hundred feet tall.

Not for the first time, has the sheer magnitude of Antarctica stopped me in my tracks. We were headed to the dashed line found on the bottom of your globe – the Antarctic Circle – in our polar class cruise vessel. We will pass the planet’s harshest, least lived-upon areas as we go. Even after being found in 1820, it took another 79 years before a human would live on it during winter. Explorers wanted to find the southern pole, and soon perished. They paved the way for scientists. Now you don’t have to be an independently-wealthy individual to travel to Antarctica. Now, for about the same cost as going to the Caribbean, you can visit the seventh continent.

Some compare Antarctica to the shape of a manta ray with a curved tail. The very tip of South America is 500 miles away from Antarctica. Rough seas fill this space, which is known as the Drake Passage. This area, also known as ‘the Slobbering Jaws of Hell’ makes you pay to get to Antarctica.One motherly passenger told us all to stow everything before going to bed, and to make sure that our cabin portholes were securely locked. Learn about adventure antarctica tours.

We finally find open seas after we leave the Beagle Channel. We originally sailed from Ushuaia, the Argentine city on Tierra del Fuego. The ship was tossed for two days on very rough water with no land in sight. The wind approached gale force for the entire time. Waves that crashed across the bow of the ship caused spray to rocket past may fourth deck window. Though it usually depended on how seasick you felt, you could see swells that were between fifteen and forty feet.

Two days out from South America brought us into the Southern Ocean. The next morning, I could see a coastal archipelago. The water was less rough because of the land. The tops of the high mountains were sheathed in wispy clouds. Dark, spiky ridges cut through the glacier’s smooth surface. Unusually rough, the bumpy slabs of ice fall right into the sea. The giant mountains looked as though they had been plopped into the ocean’s deep blue waters.

One traveler found the travel to Antarctica to be akin to childbirth?s labor. Compared to all the other seven continents, Antarctica is the windiest, coldest, driest and highest. Death Valley and Antarctica get the same amount of precipitation per year. But, Antarctica stores seventy percent of the fresh water reserves for the planet. This land is owned by no person, and has no human population, nor do animals live year round here.

Depending on how the weather is on a single day, shore landings and sailing routes are altered. We are able to make our originally-planned shore landing, though the guides have warned us this is usually not the case. We’ve been assigned groups and told to meet on deck. With the nine others in my group, I board an inflatable boat. We quickly ride across the quarter mile of water. And with that last step, I join a small number of people who have actually stood on the Antarctic Continent.