“I went on cruise through the” most feared “ocean in the world – it is a different world | Cruise | Travel

“A cock was observed,” explains our guide after hearing something through a radio crackling.

We are moving through a maze of bus size, penguins jumping in the waking of the boat like oily dolphins. The sky above the head is bright blue, the snow tower with snow on top, and the day is crisp of emotion.

From a time, those of us on board can release the breathing we held. A head breaks through the surface of the water, followed by a cock, a column of water burst and then a large fluke, turned to heaven in a lazy wave, while our whale returns into the depths. A short meeting, but a perfect one. The smiles stretch on our faces.

I am in Antarctica on a 10-day trip with the Norwegian cruise company HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. The seriousness of the 400 adult guests aboard Fridtjof Nansen is constantly changed for enthusiasm, wonder and a childhood hunger to find out more about this alien place. However, the question marks would begin to enclose this simple joy to come at the end of the journey.

HX is one of the 51 cruise ship operators who browse a total of 122,000 tourists in Antarctica each year. The American Sealer and Explorer John Davis was the first to step on the frozen continent 204 years ago, and since then, about one million people have reached a land table 110 times larger than the United Kingdom. This figure is rapidly increasing, with the annual numbers of visitors in quadruing in a decade. Everyone who did it there had to work for it, until larger and smaller, depending on how much Victorian is.

I did not have to spend months, but instead I took a flight overnight from Heathrow to Buenos Aires, an arrangement, a 4 -morning flight to Ushuaia at the bottom of Argentina, then to Fridtjof Nansen. However, we had to deal with the Notorious Drake passage.

Known differently as Drakes’ Shake, “the most feared ocean in the globe” and at home at the most serious storms in the world, the extent has claimed the lives of countless sailors and cruise passengers since 2022.

Our journey on the passage was calm enough to complete with a reading of The Wager by David Grann-a sensational account of a condemned expedition Royal Navy, who was revealed more than it was suffered by great waves, which caused our ship to rise, then collapsed for two days.

With the first vision of an iceberg from the port, the swelling calmed, allowing the spring to return to the steps of those suffering from pale skin and a forced gate for two days. Emotion levels on board have increased.

“I waited for this almost all my life,” said a happy crusader while we sat in the tub on the bridge, heated with the ship’s engine, following hundreds of icebergs to join the first, to guard the ocean with glittering white whirlwinds. Our ship has reached the shelter of the Antarctic peninsula. Now, the judicial waves were behind us, and the third night on board was peaceful. We woke up to find a different world. One of the mountains, ice shelves that extend unpleasant on the horizon and penguins.

The first observation on our ship caused breakfast guests to throw their brownish brown and hurry out the window in an excited gaggle.

This was rapidly followed by our inaugural journey on the ship, where it had to be the hatred for those who walk on the seventh continent for the first time, in order not to disturb a colony of Gentoo.

Like the penguins and adélies of the Chinstrap I encountered, the tall aquatic birds at the knees are as abundant on the peninsula as the pigeons in the Trafalgar Square.

The lack of any predators makes the curious fellows whom people have to give the right of road, as they slip the belly along the penguin highways, where their left-handed falls are changed for a supreme elegance.

The only competition to see them almost in their natural habitat came from the sauna with glass walls of the ship, where the cold of the day expeditions could be sweated while watching the penguins dancing and violating the cock in the waves below. The sauna would come from handy after two experiences once in life. The first was the campsite.

One evening, a team of 30 jumper-raised guests were mottled from Fridtjof Nansen on a bit of land, where we beat on the waist until it was compact enough to keep our tents with two people.

While the bucket and pavilion toilet for the night was a little comical, watching a coconut pod surrounds the island on a tent porch, like a fake summer west, pretended to be on a dark night was sublime in the extreme.

I glanced from my tent at 4 in the morning to find peace, crystalline glaciers and false mountains that surround our camp. He gave a small sense of the brutality of a continent who killed 1000 people from all the people who ever ventured there.

We left our sleeping bags in four seasons and wrapped at 5 in the morning, heading back to the ship for an early breakfast and steam.

The second was the sinking of ice. Most tourists in Antarctica are going to the Island of Deception today, a volcanic rock once at the worst whale trade. Two meters of ash now cover the preserved coconut housings abandoned on the beach. The magma below causes the dramatic steam to spin.

Unfortunately, it does not heat the seawater, which was walking around 0C as I stripped and plunged into the frozen drink. The cold hit me like a train. Seconds later I ran to the waiting towel and then in the sauna, a group of penguins near apparently immeasurable by my pathetic attempt to join them in the depths.

HX does not put on the mega-nava cruises with casinos and cabarets, but that does not mean that the fun is short. Guests can participate in science projects of citizens and witnesses at work, including a whale researcher collecting Humpback Blubber using a crossbow.

Afterwards, the readers told us about the explorer Antarctic Ernest Shackleton for a place that made him feel “like a drop in nothing frozen.” Inclining cocktails while Drake made Coca shake, I found out how he died because of a hole in his heart, in a fourth mission to reach Pol -11 years after Roald Amundsen’s success. The intensity of their adventures stressed how hot, comfortable and privileged. During this time, an unpleasant thought proved to be difficult to shake. Should any of us be here?

Just take photos, leave only fingerprints is the unofficial motto of Antarctica tour operators. More officially, visitors must have at most “a minor or transient impact”, according to the Protocol on Environmental Protection in 1991.

The conservatives at that time fought to keep the purest and most earthly stear as it is. They enjoyed successes, such as a population with a coconut now up to 135,000 at the world from a low level of 10,000 and the implementation of the strict rules by the International Association of Antarctic tour operators.

But, as global temperatures increase in agreement with the desire to travel somewhere Roman, the ice is withdrawing and the danger to the inhabitants of Antarctica increases. At the moment, scientists are trying to see if it is the hole or avian flu that twists through a penguin colony in the peninsula. People need to remain fivameters from all animals in Antarctica and not touch anything to avoid acting as vectors, but unfortunately, accidents happen.

HX works as hard as possible to ensure that not the fact that the impact of tourists is at an absolute minimum. Each rule is followed by the letter. If someone is qualified to take you to this fragile place, they are.

For all the dangers that overturism can present anywhere, it can make strong allies. Antarctica is the last place uncontaminated by the heavy traces of the people, but still ironically, it is by stepping on it, feeling the brutality of its winds, realizing that it is not actually empty, but full of whale and birds, it creates new defenders.

I came out of Fridtjof Nansen, hanging on Antarctic amazement, and I hope that this beautiful desert at the end of the world can be kept as it is.

Book your holiday

• HX Hurtigruten expeditions UK offers the most important 12-day cruises in Antarctica from 7,238 £ PP. It includes a stay at the Pre-Cronometer hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, flights between Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, transfers, all inclusive drinks, Wi-Fi, Expeditional jacket, FREE, FREE professional. Reserve until March 31 to save up to 15% on travel by March 31, 2027. Flights to Buenos Aires Extra. Travelhx.com/en-Gb
• More information at Argentina.Travel Bass.ac.uk/tourism