“You must be completely mad” and “Fantastic!” were the two polarised reactions I received when I told my friends and family that I intended going on holiday to the Antarctic.  Indeed, when I saw how much travelling was involved to get there I thought that I might be mad, but remembering some of the images from David Attenborough’s “Life in the Freezer” television series, I thought fantastic.

The Antarctic is one place on Earth I have always been fascinated by - the extreme environment, the lack of mankind’s influence on the ecology and the awesome beauty have always been a draw to my imagination.

After flying from the U.K. via Miami we arrived in the most southerly town in the world, Ushuaia, (which is actually on a similar southerly latitude to Newcastle, U.K. in the north) where we boarded our ship for the trip, the Marco Polo.  Not a large rowing boat as many of my friends imagined, but a proper cruise liner suitable for iceberg-laden waters.

We had been warned about the crossing of the Drake Passage - the roughest sea in the world.  Luckily, we caught it on a flat calm day (still a 10 foot swell but flat compared to a ‘normal’ day).  We were accompanied by a group of Wandering Albatrosses for most of the journey, and they must have flapped their wings no more than a dozen times an hour - they just glided and soared in and out of the waves. Our first iceberg was a big one - a huge tabular berg a hundred metres long.  There were many more to follow of a variety of shapes and sizes, all unique and all quite beautiful.

Our first sight of land was also spectacular - dark rock, white snow, low grey cloud - a striking set of contrasts.
Our ship sailed through a small entrance into a volcanic caldera where we made our first landfall at Pendulum Cove.  A very strange place with ice on the mountainsides and steam emerging from the black volcanic sands beneath our feet.  There were remains of whaling stations all around inside the caldera.

We travelled south through the spectacular Neumayer and Lemaire channels - narrow waterways with towering ice and rock cliffs either side.  The ice changed colours as the sky changed and when the sun burst through, the glassy reflections from the ice crystals added to the blues and whites of the icefields.

Our only landing on the actual Antarctic mainland was at Paradise Bay - a very quiet, calm and tranquil inlet with little icebergs (known as growlers) bobbing gently up and down and Gentoo penguins swimming between them.  Our landfall was at a Chilean scientific station, which was sited in the middle of a Gentoo penguin breeding colony (I never worked out which was there first).  The Chilean scientists were obviously expecting a seasons worth of tourists as they had piles of sweatshirts, certificates and maps for sale!  The Gentoo penguins were smelly and noisy on their stoney nests and were all looking after their recent additions, born a few weeks earlier.

Our next landing was at an old British whaling station at Port Lockroy where we encountered another Gentoo penguin colony.  There were  many signs of the past whaling activities, including a whale skeleton, possibly the stations last catch.

My birthday was the best day of the trip.  We had landed at Port Lockroy in the morning and in the afternoon moved near to a small island named Couverville.  Here we boarded our Zodiacs (which are the small inflatable landing craft we used to go ashore) and went gliding out amongst the bobbing icebergs.  There were some penguins on the island screeching and we saw some Crabeater seals, many with gashes taken out of them by Orca whales.  In fact one of the early Zodiacs had 2 Humpback whales swim underneath it!  The whales were as curious about us as we were about them.  This was a fantastic sight and later that evening, as we were sailing to our next destination, we saw another 20 Humpbacks within a mile of the ship.  There were fins and tails appearing and disappearing everywhere, along with the sights and sounds of the whales surfacing and blowing water out of their blowholes.  Then suddenly, a large iceberg appeared on the other side of the ship with some penguins sitting on it.  They were obviously shocked by apparition of our fast blue ship and all abandoned the berg in a confused muddle, slipping and sliding into the water.  What an unforgettable birthday!

The next day we made our final landing at Halfmoon Island.  This had a colony of Chinstrap penguins which were completely unperturbed by our visit and quite happily walked just a few feet in front of us - great for photography!  The backcloth to this island was a massive ice flow, towering over the pebbles and penguins on the island.  When the sun shone the ice was a multitude of blues, greys and whites, all changing as the clouds moved above.

We said goodbye to the Antarctic and crossed the Drake Passage, which was fortunately calm again.  We passed Cape Horn, which is actually just a tiny unmanned lighthouse, and on through the Beagle Channel back to Ushuaia.  Next day we flew to Buenos Aires in Argentina and a few days later arrived back in the colder and wetter U.K.

It was undoubtedly the trip of a lifetime......