First, a bit about Antarctica. Antarctica is the southernmost continent with no permanent residents. Antarctica is BIG. No country controls Antarctica - there is a cooperation treaty signed in 1959 and went into effect in 1961 which establishes Antarctica as a zone for peaceful scientific research, prohibits military activity, and holds territorial claims in abeyance. It has been signed by 58 parties, promoting international cooperation and environmental protection in the region. See: Antarctic Treaty.
95% of tourism in Antartica are cruises that leave from Tierra del Fuego (southernmost point in South America), go through the Drake Passage to arrive at the Antarctic peninsula, spend several days on excursions on or near the peninsula, then back through Drake passage and return to Tierra del Fuego. There are a small number of cruises that go to different parts of Antarctica. Reputable cruise lines are part of IAATO and are expected to follow their guidelines.
To get to McMurdo Station or the South Pole, that requires getting a work contract to go there, either with a science expedition, or a job with whatever company has the contract to do polar support services. See: Antarctic Support Contract
There are also people who do private expeditions of various types; this is allowed by the Antarctic Treaty. At the end of the blog, I have a reference to someone who has done numerous polar expeditions.
I initially became interested in going to Antarctica back in 1991. A colleague's wife was spending a year wintering over at the South Pole, and I thought this was awesome. I didn't know if I wanted McMurdo (bigger station, on coast, wildlife) or South Pole (extreme cold, small community, no wildlife), or if I wanted to summer over or do an entire year. I applied for a job at Antarctic Support Associates. It didn't happen. I got to live vicariously through other people's experiences.
About five years ago, I found out that someone I knew in elementary school, Dyan deNapoli, is now a world renowned penguin expert! I hadn't seen this person in over 40 years. She periodically gets tapped to be the subject matter expert on these cruises, and when Dyan announced her next cruise, I signed up. This cruise was with Smithsonian Journeys / Ponant and was the typical format described above. Dyan warned me about rough seas in the Drake Passage, and since I get motion sickness on a hammock, I decided to get the scopolamine patch. I saw lots of people with a little patch behind an ear. I can say, it was very effective. I didn't get sick at all. But it is very tiring just walking and staying erect when the ship is being tossed about.
I also chose to do the 4-day pre-cruise extension, hiking in the Patagonia. That was well worth my time, as the trip was wonderful (when would I have another chance to hike in the Patagonia?), and it gave me time to bond with the 13 other people participating.
The trip was pure joy. How can one not be amused when seeing penguins waddling about, particularly juvenile penguins trying to get the attention of their parents? And when a seal jumped up on our zodiac, we tourists were in our ignorant bliss reacting to just how close the leopard seal came to us thinking it was so cute. The naturalists said, "Definately not cute," and made sure we were all kneeling on the floor of the zodiac with our hands inside.
We had three subject matter experts on our cruise: The Penguin Lady Dyan deNapoli, Polar Explorer Ben Saunders, and Professional Photographer Jim Preston. Each gave 3 lectures in their area of expertise, hosted a table at dinner every night, and were generally available to the guests to answer questions. These folks were all very approachable and a pleasure to spend time with.
Temperatures on the peninsula were pretty mild, generally a bit above freezing. Unfortunately, this is the area of the world with the most rapid temperature rise. This is a significant problem for the penguins, as the babies hatch with fuzz, and don't go in the water until they have a full set of watertight feathers. But now it sometimes rains on the peninsula, the babies get waterlogged, and if the temperatures drop, they freeze.
There are four types of penguins on Antarctica - emperor, adele, gentoo and chinstrap. I saw a LOT of gentoo penguins, and one colony of chinstraps. Emperor penguins are in a different part of Antartica, and it was late in the season for the adeles, so they had already departed from the peninsula. I guess their chicks get their waterproof feathers sooner than the others.
My cruise was late in the season, so we saw larger juveniles rather than little chicks. This time of year also gives us molting elephant seals and lots of whales traversing the water.
To see lots of my trip pictures, go to my travel blog at https://bev2antarctica.blogspot.com. It is better to view on a computer than a phone - some of the pictures will have the wrong aspect ratio on a phone. The blog is a little klunky to navigate. On both a computer and a phone, you will see the most recent post first. Although I set my preferences to put all of my posts on one page, it didn't do that. So on the computer, when you scroll down, you will see a link for "Older Posts". It's not at the bottom of the page; it's before a summary of weirdly selected posts at the bottom. Keeping clicking on "Older Posts" to work your way back. On a phone, it's a little easier to see where the navigation buttons are. Click on the right ">" to the right of the "Home" button. It's got a burnt orange background.
Jim Preston's pictures are spectacular and worth a look at https://www.prespix.com/antartica-the-white-continent.
Dyan's done a number of talks and has written books. Check it out here: https://thepenguinlady.com.
Find out more about Ben's polar expeditions here: https://bensaunders.com/polar-expeditions.
Antarctica: A Year on Ice is a documentary that shows what it's like to be at McMurdo Station for a year. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361700/
Since this is a Judaic blog, I should at least mention a couple of Judaic things. When I was looking into wintering over at the South Pole, I posted a question about how one celebrated Shabbat in a place with one long sunrise in the spring and one long sunset in the fall. There were six basic answers:
1. Use Jerusalem time.
2. Use the time of the closest Jewish community with regular sunrise/sunset.
3. Pick a time on the clock, use it consistently, end Shabbat 25 hours later.
4. Use candle lighting time of the city most closely associated to.
5. Use the time you would use at home.
6. Religious Jews should not go to the South Pole because of the difficult halachic issues.
And when I was in Bariloche, there weren't many English speakers, but we did run into Israelis. And the local laundromat even markets to Hebrew speakers.
And I've got to end with a cute penguin picture. May we all feel confident to strut in front of wildlife significantly larger than ourselves.