Antarctica Travel Guide

Preserved by the Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica is home to some of the worlds most extraordinary species. Some, such as the enormous whales, migrate from afar, while others, including the Weddell seal and emperor penguin, remain close to the continent. Millions of seabirds skim the Southern Ocean, the worlds most abundant, and species such as albatrosses and petrels circle the waters. Wildlife is generally unafraid of humans: visitors usually elicit no more than an uninterested yawn from seals and penguins focused on their young.

Inspiration

Antarctica possesses an unnameable quality. Call it inspiration, call it grandeurit is simply the indescribable feeling of being a small speck in a vast, harshly beautiful land. A land where striated ice towers float among geometric pancake ice, literally untouched mountains rear from marine mist, and wildlife lives, year in and year out, to its own rhythms, quite apart from human concerns. To let our minds soar in a place nearly free of humankinds imprint: this is magic.

Tabular iceberg | DAVID MERRON PHOTOGRAPHY / GETTY IMAGES

By Alexis Averbuck, Writer

Preserved for peace and science, this ice-crowned continent rewards the traveler with inspiration, adventure and perspective. There's nothing quite like seeing ice shimmering in all directions, reflecting sunlight through each season, or the blazing twinkle of a velvet blanket of stars in winter. Wildlife roams freely, with penguins, seals and seabirds unafraid of human visitors. Sea ice groans and crackles, and icebergs crash off vast blue glaciers into the ocean, while whales breach beside your ship. This is the end of the Earth (as we know it). It's the trip of a lifetime.