My voyage to the end of the earth

Or, how I ended up in Antarctica

I grew up in a home where travel was not just encouraged, it was expected. It wasn’t because we had money; trips were assembled according to what our budget would allow. Our dad wanted his kids to be well-rounded, open-minded and curious, so experiencing other cultures was a part of our life education. In addition to our own travels we would spend hours at the dinner table hearing him talk about his trips to lands I’d never heard of in school. Cameroon. Libya. Romania. Uruguay. A spark for adventure was lit.

In 1995, after getting my MBA, I decided to forgo a corporate job in favour of taking a year off to have a working holiday in London. I found work as an admin assistant, earning enough during the week to pay for travels on the weekend and extended holidays. One day I got a call out of the blue from Papa. He’d planned a trip to Antarctica with a friend who was now unable to join him because of visa issues. He was calling his kids to see if anyone could take his friend’s place. I was the only one who could drop everything at a moment’s notice and take off. So off I went.

There are a few ways to get to Antarctica. We chose to travel to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, where we boarded a Russian research vessel that had been chartered for the trip. We were joined by wildlife photographers, National Geographic writers and other intrepid travelers like us, who had been everywhere on earth except for this continent.

The Drake Passage is the large body of water between the southernmost tip of South America and the outer boundaries of Antarctica. It is also known to have the most treacherous waters in the world thanks to a deadly combination of winds and ocean currents. For two days we sailed, encountering the biggest waves I’d ever seen, with no sign of land. Half the passengers were sick as dogs, the other half were jacked up on Gravol.

We finally saw land and began an incredible week of exploration. With strict instructions to minimize the impact of our visit, we remained on our boat at night and took a little zodiac to explore different parts of the continent by day. We had to be careful of every step we took, so as not to damage any of the limited plant life that existed.

Out of all the stories I could share, I thought I’d write about 5 things that surprised me:

It was not freezing cold

I grew up in Canada so my idea of cold may be different from yours, but when you think of Antarctica, you think cold with a capital C. But I was there in January, which is summer in the southern hemisphere so on most days the weather was chilly, about -5 to -10 degrees Celsius, but not C-O-L-D. With the right winter clothing, it was comfortable to walk around outside for hours.

It looked like Switzerland, but with more water

Antarctica was not a place I thought about much until I went there, but if you had asked me before what to expect, I thought it was be a huge flat sheet of ice. What surprised me the most about my visit was how mountainous the continent is, essentially hundreds of miles of mountains, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

It was disorienting having daylight all day long

Being in Antarctica in the summertime meant we had daylight just about 24 hours a day. While we could close the curtains in our cabins while we slept, it was weird to look out the window and have it be light outside at 3 am.

A variety of wildlife exists

While most of Antarctica is covered by snow and ice, it is still able to support hundreds of species of plant life, mostly in the moss family. In addition to plant life, I was surprised to see birds (other than penguins) as well as whales and even dolphins.

It would leave me with a loss for words

There are certain moments in life where you truly experience the meaning of the word awesome; being in Antarctica was one of those for me. More than any place I’ve traveled to, Antarctica made me aware of what a small speck of sand I was in the grand scheme of the planet Earth. I felt humbled by what Nature has created and withstood over millions of years.