Globalista

If you hate those holidays where sand gets everywhere or the heat make you prickle, stick a pin in Antarctica. First glimpsed in 1820 and 58 times the size of the UK, it is a vast, alien landscape of mountains, icebergs and nature not so much in the raw as stark naked and slightly deranged. Think -70C temperatures and winds shrieking at 200mph in winter. It's the highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent on Earth. During the summer tour season (November to February), February is popular as the whales are frolicking and the penguin chicks grow fluffy and cute. It is in this season that the winter population of around 1,000 scientific people is swollen by 25,000 tourists. These visitors jump in inflatable Zodiacs and go ashore, to nose around the research stations and see which boffins have gone mad. A visit takes careful planning even before choosing one of the numerous tour operators, and the commonest route is to fly to Argentina and depart on a ship from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. Bear in mind that any itinerary is entirely dependent on climatic conditions and can alter at the drop of a barometer. But a more beautiful, wild and thrilling adventure would be hard to imagine.

Globalista's Pick of the Press

20 December 2008 - The Independent -  The hungry ghosts of polar Christmas past
20 December 2008 - The Independent - South Georgia on my mind
03 December 2008 - The Daily Telegraph - Ushuaia, Patagonia: My kind of town
06 December 2008 - The Independent - The Antarctic: Where death is only five minutes away
15 September 2008 - The Daily Telegraph - Five More Luxury Cruises

Visit our Travel Journal for a related articles on Antarctica