Adventure Travel Blogs

Ship's log: 7 March 2011 - I type this as a procession of enlightened polar evangelists file past into dinner, with eyes glazed after yet another day which somehow superseded the previous one. Yet again the dusky clouds lifted and Cuverville was choked with cobalt castellations as well as gregarious Gentoos, including the Beckham and Brooklyn of the rookery who had to put up with the persistent, patient, penguin paparazzi. Leopard seals have clearly caught the imagination as crabeater...

Ship's log: 4 March 2011 - Decadent lie-ins are not de rigeur in these inhospitable waters. Rising at an indolent hour that Shackleton or Crean would have snorted at, revealed an ice-scape with a malevolent streak.

Clear skies paint a flawed canvas this far South. This is the most extreme area of the planet, where a strengthened hull is all that protects the traveller from the icy waters, waters today that had swell that would have even spilt Frank Worsley's tea. I...

Ship's log: 3 March 2011 - Long sea days are seldom rewarded so bounteously. By first light a posse of canary-clad seafarers were bristling buoyantly on the bow. An arc of cloud was slowly morphing from grey to nasturtium as an ambitious early sunbeam bisected its abdomen. Ahead lay a scene impossible to dream up by even the most ostentatious of science fiction directors. Castellated, crenelated, capacious icebergs dotted the horizon, now radiated by the fully grown sunshine....

Ship's log: 2 March 2011 - Yet again the South Atlantic showed her broody side with a sepulchral dawn canopy clogging the horizon. However there is a snap in the step of every Antarctician, the goal is no longer so distant.

This morning the various riot acts were read with both severity and sensitivity. This is a savage but precious Eden; the footprint must be light. Sadly too many pagan ships have besmirched this paradise; the Ioffe is not about to add itself to t...

Ship's log: 1 March 2011 - Yesterday's Mediterranean afternoon was soon a distant dream as dawn beckoned the ship South with a foreboding, stygian sneer.  Mother Nature serves balmy bounty sparingly and she indignantly resorted to type for most of the morning. It would be precipitate to consider the Drake tamed, as she can be fickle and cantankerous. Her sudden savage squalls are enough to keep any complacent mariner honest.

The albatrosses are constant companions...