Antartica

One of the fringe benefits of being in a place farking hell and gone from anything you've ever known is to bump in to things you just would never see.  As many of my more geographically conscious relatives have known, New Zealand is about the closest land mass to Antartica there is.  "Tourism" to the frozen continent is something genuinely possible here.  In fact, a friend and co-worker here just returned from such a trip.

I just sat through an hour's worth of his photos and perspectives on the trip.  I could easily sit through another couple of hours.  He took over 10,000 photos on the trip--mostly of ice and penguins.  Still the cross-exposure to listening to Neal talk about it is fairly priceless in itself.  Plus it saves me the $20,000 NZD price tag of actually going my self.  Neal and his wife spent 30 days on a Russian ice-breaker that sailed from the southern tip of NZ to Scott's Sound.  It took about 10 days to get there and then 10 more to get back.  The ship was not all that large and only held about 50 tourists.  It wasn't exactly luxury either.  But Neal says they did have great food--booze was extra.

The thoughts I took away from the discussion were these.  There are vast sections of that landscape that literally have no trace of human existance on them.  Not even footsteps in the sand.  While I suppose this is not so profound, it was amazing to me.  The animals had no fear of humans.  They would approach out of curiosity and then get bored and move on. 

Really the chance to go on your own National Geographic tour would be just too cool for words.  While I'll probably never have that kind of cash to go--I'm glad I can experience through Neal.  I'll have to get a few of his pictures to share.

Here are Neal's photo's online.