“Become an ambassador of Antarctica,” one of them urged us towards the end of the voyage. “Tell your friends, your family. Tell them how important this place is. What happens here directly affects the rest of the world.”
And so, there may be, in the end, many reasons for visiting Antarctica. The sight of a scrum of penguins porpoising through the water as we kayaked between icebergs through the mirror flat waters of the Rallier Channel is one. Or clambering into a state-of-the-art seven-person U-Boat Worx submersible and plunging 110m to the bottom of a live volcanic caldera at Deception Island. (Yes, really.) Watching a pod of dolphins race ahead of the Venture’s bow as we sailed through the Beagle Channel is another.
But chief among these reasons is the unexpected emotional tug all of us felt as we sailed back into Ushuaia, the main port from which most Antarctic expeditions set off - a sense of responsibility that sat gently below the surface of our collective memory of fluffy baby penguins, minke whales feasting on krill, the awesome radial glacier spilling off Mount Bridgman, tiny sea stars and corals at the bottom of the Antarctic sea, Snow Petrels floating high above our ship, and below us - without a care in the world - crabeater seals daydreaming on bobbing icebergs.
Cue David Attenborough.
www.seabourn.com Each Antarctic summer, Seabourn offers 10 voyages ranging between 11 and 22 days on two expedition ships, the Venture and the Pursuit, the latter due to come online in mid-2023. Prices start from around US$12,500 per person, twin-share, for an 11-day cruise.
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