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Celebrate The Dawn Of 2010 In An A380 Over Antarctica

Want to be the first to see the sunrise on New Year's Day 2010? Then get yourself booked onto a flight on the Qantas A380, which will spend New Year's Eve 2009 flying over Antarctica.

A gang called Antarctic Sightseeing Flights are running the trip, which starts in Sydney and will pick up more passengers in Melbourne before heading down in the direction of the South Pole. You'll spend almost 12 hours on board but it's no ordinary flight—they'll have a jazz band playing, a bit of a party atmosphere, and a strict seat rotation policy so that everybody gets their share of the best views.

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Tags: Summer-Vacations-With-An-Edge / Antarctica Travel / Extreme Travel / Penguins / → All Tags

Summer Vacations With An Edge: A 2-Month Trek To The South Pole

If you're not quite ready for your summer vacation to end and you've got $60,000 burning a hole in your pocket, the professional travel planners at ekoVenture are ready to take you on a two-month adventure across Antarctica. The trip has a difficulty level of "strenuous" and the comfort level is rated as "bare bones," or, in other words: awesome.

If that last part doesn't give you an adequate sense of what you're in for, the trip overview begins with the following: "this unique expedition has the goal of arriving to the south pole unsupported, which means without any help or food caches from its beginning to its completion." On one hand, arriving at the south pole sounds mind-blowingly incredible. On the other hand, aren't "food caches" traditionally helpful things? Why would anyone want to give up on something with a name like "food caches"?

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Become The Official Blogger For A Polar Cruise

Potential alternative titles: "Become Antarctica's Ben Southall," "A colder chance to be Ben Southall," or - more simply - "We hate Ben Southall." Southall, you'll recall, was the winner of Tourism Queensland's Best Job In The World Contest. Contestants had to submit videos explaining why they should be allowed to house-sit the Great Barrier Reef and blog about it for six months. People voted on their favorite applications, the tourism board chose one, and that was that.

Having won, Southall has recently taken to posting pictures of himself cavorting with dolphins and hanging out in his luxury villa. See? Hate.

In addition to unending enmity, the competition also generated about $200 million in global publicity value for Tourism Queensland. So naturally similar promotions are springing up. The most recent is Quark Expeditions' Blog Your Way To Antarctica contest.

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Embedded Travel Guides / Antarctica Travel / Cruises / Luxury Travel / Jaunted Travel Videos / → All Tags

Luxury Ice Capades: Deception Island

Matt Chesterton has returned to Jaunted with tales of his latest trip cruising around Antarctica. Every day this week, he'll be enlightening us on this luxury ice capades adventure. Enjoy.

"My God, this is an awful place!"

That was Robert Falcon Scott's final verdict on Antarctica, as recorded in his diary. You can hardly blame Scott for allowing his quintessentially stiff Edwardian upper lip to quiver for a moment. He was about to freeze to death, a state of affairs which in his view -- to paraphrase another of his journal entries -- threatened to put a bummer on the entire trip.

We on the Antarctic Dream had fewer complaints. At no point did we have to choose between starving to death or spit-roasting one of our huskies. We ate well, drank well and could watch up to four movies a day. True, we ran out of beer. That shook us. But only the Germans considered it a fate worse than death by hypothermia.

Nothing awful, then. But one place we visited was eerie, if not downright sinister -- such stuff, to adapt Shakespeare, as nightmares are made on. This was Deception Island in the South Shetlands.

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Embedded Travel Guides / Antarctica Travel / Cruises / Luxury Travel / Jaunted Travel Videos / → All Tags

Luxury Ice Capades: Life in the Freezer

Matt Chesterton has returned to Jaunted with tales of his latest trip cruising around Antarctica. Every day this week, he'll be enlightening us on this luxury ice capades adventure. Enjoy.

It was the biggest piece of ice I'd ever seen in my life. A monstrous, sparkling slab of frozen bling. And to think I could only see one fifth of it! It filled me with awe -- and I'm not easily filled with anything.

I wanted to reach out and touch it. But of course I couldn’t. The bar was too wide, and Hugo the barman was keeping an eagle eye on his prize.

That's right: It was half-price whisky night on the Antarctic Dream. And each large--and I mean large, Hugo had the kind of quivery right hand you really appreciate in a barman--Scotch would be poured over a carved chunk of glacial ice, recently hauled aboard by several burly crew members.

Bacchanalian? Hardly. Poor old Bacchus never got out of the Med as far as we know. He had to settle for warm liquor.

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Embedded Travel Guides / Antarctica Travel / Cruises / Penguins / Luxury Travel / Jaunted Travel Videos / → All Tags

Luxury Ice Capades: You Asked For Penguins...

Matt Chesterton has returned to Jaunted with tales of his latest trip cruising around Antarctica. Every day this week, he'll be enlightening us on this luxury ice capades adventure. Enjoy.

Some people will travel thousands of miles in search of ‘fresh air’, by which they mean air that is entirely odorless. This makes no sense to me. I like the way the world smells; it keeps me grounded.

I particularly like the stench of the city. My neighborhood of Buenos Aires discharges a pungent mélange of diesel fumes, deep-fried churros, grilled sausages, burning tobacco, cheap perfume, tilo, stray dogs, and whatever it is that comes out of a 1970s automobile.

Antarctica, I was led to believe, was pristine, sterile and untainted. It would be like swimming in Evian. Happily, this is not the case. On our first excursion on the ice continent, my olfactory nerves were given the shock and awe treatment. The sea smells. The ice smells. Elephant seals – who seem to all intents and purposes to be coprophiles – really smell. And the whiff of penguin guano, which is to cow shit what cow shit is to Chanel, will stay with me forever. (As one of my shipmates, Frank, from Arizona, wisely observed, quoting Frank Zappa: "Don't eat the yellow snow.")

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Embedded Travel Guides / Antarctica Travel / Cruises / Luxury Travel / → All Tags

Luxury Ice Capades :: Surviving Seasickness

Matt Chesterton has returned to Jaunted with tales of his latest trip cruising around Antarctica. Every day this week, he'll be enlightening us on this luxury ice capades adventure. Enjoy.

Rough seas are a bit like Ben Stiller movies; with the right drugs they become endurable, and even enjoyable. And just as you need the right strategy to get through the first 45 minutes of a Stiller (after that, you’re in the home straight), voyagers to Antarctica need to plan for the Drake Passage, the aquatic roller coaster on which you’ll spend your first two days -- and perhaps more if the wind blows -- en route to the ice continent.

The wind sure blew for us. Ignacio, our unflappable expedition leader, assured us – with what seemed like unwarranted glee – that we got the ‘Drake shake’.

Let me try to illustrate this. Imagine you’re in Mexico City. Now imagine you’ve downed 15 shots of mezcal in quick succession, each one accompanied by a taco – with all the sauces. Then, somehow, you’re off to the Six Flags theme park, where someone puts you on the Huracán, but, for some reason, neglects to strap you in. Five minutes into the ride, a voice comes over the tannoy: ‘Damas y caballeros, owing to a mechanical glitch, this ride will be continuing for another 48 hours. Pulque will be served at 7.’

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Embedded Travel Guides / Antarctica Travel / Cruises / Luxury Travel / → All Tags

Luxury Ice Capades: Cruising in Antarctica, Day One

Matt Chesterton has returned to Jaunted with tales of his latest trip cruising around Antarctica. Every day this week, he'll be enlightening us on this luxury ice capades adventure. Enjoy.

Men wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.
-- Recruitment poster for Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition.

For Antarctic Shipping S.A., it is a great satisfaction and pride to share with you the M/V Antarctic Dream, an Antarctic passenger ship reconditioned with the best available technology and comfort.
-- Advertising blurb for Antarctic Dream cruise ship.

There's a tendency among people who have had the good fortune (in all senses) to go on an Antarctic cruise, to ceaselessly brag and bluster about their 'unique' trip to friends, family, pets, impressionable children, and complete strangers in remote realms of the blogosphere.

On and on they bang about cornflower-blue bergy bits, giant seabirds, playful penguins, and perpetual daylight. They will be picking at a lemon sorbet at a dinner party when they will suddenly lapse into a reverie and exclaim: "You know, this reminds me of the snow I ate while climbing the bluff overlooking Paradise Bay while the perpetual daylight lit a blue flame beneath the entire icescape and…"

I say this by way of a warning, dear reader, because you shouldn't expect anything better from me. Since my voyage to the ice continent in December, I've become a world-class, authoritative bore on anything related to the world's southernmost latitudes. Feeling tolerant? Then read on.

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Antarctica Travel: Horny Scientists Get Massive Condom Shipment

The scientists who will brave the brutal polar winter at McMurdo Station in Antarctica have one thing to brighten their days: 16,500 condoms. The massive shipment of prohylactics was one of the last things delivered to the research base before the four-month-long season when the entire continent gets no sunlight.

During winter, McMurdo is home to a skeleton crew of only 125 researchers and, naturally, there's loads of sexual tension between the staff during the endless evening. The manager of the station, Bill Henriksen, told reporters:

Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable.

The staff will have to use the condoms sparingly. The shipment amounts to just more than one condom per day for each scientist. The ones who aren't getting laid should be able to make a tidy profit selling their unused rations.

Related Stories:
· Antarctica Base Gets 16,500 Condoms before Darkness [Reuters]
· Antarctica Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Sex coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: celebdu]

Tags: Virtual Travel / Lonely Planet / Antarctica Travel / Guidebooks / Video / → All Tags

Virtual Travel: Lonely Planet on the YouTube Train

Maybe Lonely Planet has been feeling a little isolated lately. The travel guide publisher just launched its own video site, Lonelyplanet.tv, and is looking for your videos of excursions far and near.

Of course, to be featured on the Lonely Planet YouTube channel you'll have to compete with a bikini'd man swimming in Antarctica, a "Hills"-worthy tour of Paris and (above) a belly-dancing, ghost-riding cabdriver who confidently declares, "I am not normal."

One bit of advice: Videos of you guzzling cachaça and popping pills in a Brazilian hostel while on assignment, we'd imagine, won't earn you a five-star YouTube rating from LP.

Related Stories:
· Travel Videos coverage [Jaunted]

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Jaunted in Antarctica: Getting Schooled on The Ice

Two of the Lost Girls are sharing their trips with us this week. Amanda just returned from Ecuador while Holly ventured to Antarctica.

A trip to Antarctica is like the real-life version of Animal Planet: Where else in the world can you sail past seals sleeping on icebergs or plop down on a snowy beach where curious penguins climb right onto your lap? For most of our trip, wildlife spottings were of the warm and cuddly kind--until our zodiacs landed on Cuverville Island.

The rocky island is home to a rookery of gentoo penguins, so we settled on a hill overlooking the ocean to watch nature's show. Fluffy baby penguins frolicked in the icy waves and put on live performances akin to Happy Feet.

The movie moment quickly ended when an enormous leopard seal tore into an unsuspecting gentoo--throwing it up in the air and catching it with its teeth. It was an instant reminder that, despite the Hollywood-worthy scenery, we'd definitely landed in one of the wildest places on earth.

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Tags: Jaunted Field Trips / Jaunted in Antarctica / Antarctica Travel / Active Travel / Holly Corbett / Animals / → All Tags

Jaunted in Antarctica: Co-Ed Skinny Dipping

Two of the Lost Girls are sharing their trips with us this week. Amanda just returned from Ecuador while Holly ventured to Antarctica.

Maybe we were on a natural high after surviving the Drake Passage or maybe all that cold air went straight to our heads, but almost every passenger on our voyage took a (polar) plunge and joined the Antarctic Swim Team.

As our ship headed to Whaler's Bay near Deception Island, we scored our first big wildlife as humpback whales flaunted their acrobatic skills by breaching more than twenty times. Penguins shot out of the water all around the ship like shiny black-and-white bullets.

We watched from the bridge as our captain skillfully navigated the narrow crossing into Neptune's Bellows, which was formed when the walls of a volcano collapsed. As we boarded Zodiacs to go ashore, our expedition leader announced that the volcano was still active--but that he didn't think it would erupt the day we were there.

We weren't exactly convinced: Mother Nature and Antarctica were proving to be anything but predictable.

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