Tag: Antarctica Travel

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The 'Sports Illustrated' 2013 Swimsuit Edition Strips Down on All Seven Continents

February 14, 2013 at 3:22 PM | by | Comments (0)

The Maldives. Australia. The Grenadines. The US Virgin Islands.

Sensing a trend?

These have all been recent locations to score the cover shot of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Now brace yourself, because 2013's destination star definitely doesn't belong in the bunch other than the fact that it too is an island—a very large island. Antarctica.

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Got $30,000? Retrace the 'Epic' Antarctic Survival Voyage of Sir Ernest Shackleton

Where: Antarctica
September 26, 2012 at 2:47 PM | by | Comments (0)


Shackleton's original voyage

Imagine taking nearly two months off to sail some of the most exotic seas on the earth. If you're picturing a cruise, with its midnight buffets and tinkling atrium piano and sunning on the Lido deck, then STOP. What we're talking about is a serious voyage, one that requires a bit more preparation than having the post office hold your mail and a bit more clothing than tank tops and flip flops.

We're talking about sailing the route of Sir Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica, on the T.S. Pelican tall ship that's nearly the twin of his original ship, the Endurance, while shadowing a team of 6 who'll complete the second portion of Shackleton's journey in a replica 22.5' whaler boat.

It's been four years of planning for the journey—from Punta Arenas, Chile to Elephant Island, then 800 nautical miles on to South Georgia Island and Shackleton’s grave at Grytviken, before ending in Rio de Janeiro. In alliance with Intrepid Travel, the Pelican has made 10 berths available for regular travelers to join the trip, provided you're willing and able to embark on a 56-day epic and shell out $30,000 for the opportunity.

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This Totally Exists: Sightseeing Flights Over Antarctica in a 747

Where: Antarctica
September 17, 2012 at 11:02 AM | by | Comments (0)

For those jet-setters who've ticked off a healthy slew of bucket list destinations, we applaud you. It is quite the accomplishment to have been almost everywhere. Still, we just added a new destination to our own list and we think you may want in. You see, for the first time in 33 years, commercial trips from New Zealand to Antarctica have, once again, become a possibility.

There's a reason they ended in the first place, however; a tourist flight crashed in 1979 and proved fatal for all aboard. It's been long enough for airplanes and navigation and all sorts of other technology to improve and so, this upcoming February, sightseeing flights to the polar cap will once again become a normal departure from NZ. The day trip will see a chartered Qantas Boeing 747 take off from Auckland and travel due south to fly over the ice mass.

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Adorable Albino Penguin Alert.

January 12, 2012 at 12:50 PM | by | Comments (0)

Consider this your necessary daily dose of adorableness.

Voyagers with Lindblad Expeditions, onboard the ship National Geographic Explorer, were just chilling on Aitcho Island in Antarctica when they spotted a rare white penguin a few days ago. The cutie pie is a Leucistic chinstrap penguin (okay, so he's not totally albino), as the video explains, and he's just going about his penguin-y business.

Now is the middle of the prime summer season in Antarctica, when the cruise ships and expedition tours make landfall on the southernmost continent. Hopefully we can expect more sightings of similarly cute wild fauna before the season ends in a couple months.

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Where Was The Collision Between The Japanese Whaling Ship and The Sea Shepherd Boat?

January 7, 2010 at 9:55 AM | by | Comments (0)

It's the video gone viral yesterday—the Japanese whaling vessel purposefully turning to hit the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's Batman-looking boat, the Ady Gil, in the seas off Antarctica. Check out the collision above if you haven't seen it already; it's a pretty great video for such a terrible event.

Luckily, no crew on board the Ady Gil were killed and only one suffered cracked ribs, but the collision did sheer 10 feet off the bow of the high-speed stealth boat, which was sitting dead in the water when the Shonan Maru altered course to aim directly for it. The incident occurred in the most frigid of waters, in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay, which is part of Australia's Antarctica territory. Luckily for the Ady Gil, the crew of the Sea Shepherd's newest ship—the Bob Barker— was only a little ways away and was able to rescue the crew and salvage the boat.

See exactly where it all went down, after the jump

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Celebrate The Dawn Of 2010 In An A380 Over Antarctica

September 11, 2009 at 8:58 AM | by | Comments (0)

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

August 28, 2009 at 4:04 PM | by | Comments (0)

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

July 7, 2009 at 5:07 PM | by | Comments (0)

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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Luxury Ice Capades: Deception Island

January 30, 2009 at 11:55 AM | by | Comments (3)

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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Luxury Ice Capades: Life in the Freezer

January 29, 2009 at 1:55 PM | by | Comments (0)

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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Luxury Ice Capades: You Asked For Penguins...

January 28, 2009 at 11:29 AM | by | Comments (3)

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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Luxury Ice Capades :: Surviving Seasickness

January 27, 2009 at 12:33 PM | by | Comments (4)

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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