Antarctica's spectacular beauty

The cruise ship Marco Polo in Antarctica.

A friend's 7-year-old daughter looked suitably impressed when I told her I was travelling to a place called Antarctica. "Are there any shops over there?" she asked.

I told her that Antarctica was a huge continent of ice and no shopping malls. She was mystified. "Then why are you going there?"

Because Antarctica is one of the last wild places on Earth. Because it is a rare privilege to see wild animals in their natural environment. Because Antarctica has dazzling icebergs and huge mountains that plunge into the sea. Because it is there.

Adults also questioned my reasons for going to Antarctica, predicting that my extremities would freeze the minute I stepped ashore, that I would not see further than my nose in bad weather and that Antarctica had a notoriously unpredictable climate. As for penguins, I could see them in Auckland at Kelly Tarlton's?

I left them in their armchairs and set off for Tierra del Fuego, my suitcase stuffed with thermals, camera and a biography of the great Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton. After more than 11 hours of flying, an overnight stay in Buenos Aires and another flight to reach Argentina's southern port of Ushuaia, I arrived at the ship for the voyage to Antarctica. Which begs the question as to why one would travel halfway across the world to reach a continent that lies due south of New Zealand.

The answer is that the most accessible part of Antarctica for tourist ships is the Antarctic Peninsula, which extends towards the seahorse tail of Tierra del Fuego. It is connected by a submarine ridge to the South American Andes and dramatic, mountainous scenery accompanies the voyage down the peninsula.

Coastal areas are the breeding grounds of colonies of marine mammals and sea birds - petrels, south polar skuas and penguins, whose only defence from the cunning skuas (and voracious leopard seals) is sheer numbers. Along the way are safe anchorages for ships, so passengers can go ashore for closer encounters.

I boarded the Marco Polo, the ship that was to take me on the 11-day voyage, to promptly be told that I was sailing on a "legend". The passenger, a retired naval officer called Ken, informed me that the 20,500-tonne ship had been built by the Russians to sail the icy Arctic waters and there were few places she hadn't been able to go because of her ice-cracking hull.

Ken loved the ship like an old friend. This was his sixth voyage to Antarctica on the Marco Polo, and of the 500 passengers on board, at least 170 were "repeats" like him.

The chilly wind that ruffled the water as we sailed out from Ushuaia was a taste of things to come. South America's stepping-off place is exposed to unforgiving winds blowing off the Southern Ocean.

As the ship pushed out from stoical Ushuaia, a series of mountain peaks pierced the dying sun and cast razor shadows over the water.

Passengers retreated inside the warm haven of the Marco Polo, to the library to bone up on the adventurers who risked their lives to reach the South Pole, to try their luck on slot machines, to nibble on cakes in the salon and to the ship's theatre for the first of daily onboard lectures.

New Zealander Peter Hillary headed the list of international guest speakers, all of them expeditioners and scientists, including Christopher Wilson, grand-nephew of Edward Wilson who died with Robert Scott on their fatal South Pole expedition in 1912.

The ever-informative Ken told me over dinner that "Sir Ed" had been the star guest speaker on the Marco Polo for several years and that his son Peter was now "part of the Marco Polo legend".

I had begun reading Hillary's book, In Ghost Country, which relates his gruelling, 1450km expedition with two companions to the South Pole in summer of 1998-99.

His story of pressing on through "the leeching cold" and "great white of everywhere" is one of profound isolation and how flawed relationships and problems with food and fuel undermined the expedition, which, like Scott's, eventually failed.

I met Peter Hillary one morning on deck as the ship sailed between the towering ice-white mountains flanking Paradise Harbour.

"Look at the amazing terrain" said the man who has seen more of Antarctica's startling scenery than most of us ever will. But the chiselled glaciers and plunging cliffs were as remarkable as if he had witnessed such splendour for the first time.

"You can't miss this," he said, indifferent to the cold that was driving some passengers indoors.

I thought of the ample derrieres I had seen glued to stools in the slot machine parlour, their owners letting the extraordinary world outside go by for the chance of an extra buck. Then I asked him what he thought about the controversial issue of allowing tourists to enter the pristine Antarctic environment.

Hillary's view was clear: pirate fishing vessels killing a third of the world's albatross population and pushing fish stocks to the brink were the problem, not tourists. Give travellers the opportunity to experience the brilliance of these last frontiers and they will help safeguard them and feel inspired to take the conservation message home. Carefully managed tourism, he believes, is a powerful advocate for conservation.

Hillary and the other guest speakers accompanied passengers ashore to aid their understanding of the Antarctic. Landings, which are weather-dependent, are staggered during the day to ensure limited numbers of people ashore each time. Despite partying until late the night before, I was grateful to score an early call to muster for our first shore visit to Half Moon Island. By lunchtime the island was obscured by sleet.

Passengers scheduled for afternoon trips missed views of massive ice shelves and colonies of penguins. Perfectly still on that misty early morning, the penguins were resigned to a month of moulting before they could begin a feeding frenzy. Seals bantered with others on the beach and dived in the shallows.

We returned to the ship, having seen storm petrels, blue-eyed shags, kelp gulls, snowy sheathbills and Antarctic terns as well as the engaging penguins. And witnessed the laws of the Antarctic at work, when a giant petrel swooped on a young chinstrap penguin.

To minimise impact on these fragile environments, we followed the Antarctic Treaty code of conduct and kept the required distance from the animals, unless they surprised us by standing in our path. Such encounters were stark reminders of our guest status and how the observation line was not to be crossed.

Nenad Mojic, the ship's handsome Croatian captain, reminded passengers of their obligations to conduct shore visits in an environmentally responsible manner because we were all fortunate to visit these places. Some of the young ladies on board considered themselves fortunate to be invited to join the captain's table for dinner. Displays of decolletage at the captain's table grew more daring as the voyage progressed.

To their credit, however, these femmes fatale shared an enthusiasm for Antarctica as well as for the virile Captain Nenad. Cruise ships to the Antarctic are permitted a limited number of passengers, a principle supported by the passengers who, for the most part, had embarked on the voyage because of their desire to see the great white continent. The exceptions were a few cruising nomads, who possibly regarded Antarctica as a kind of Disneyland on ice from the comfort of the casino windows.

My cabin, with its picture windows framing passing icebergs, became a cosy retreat for curling up on the bed with books about heroic Antarctic expeditions. The onset of Antarctic immersion was accelerated each time I interrupted these reading sessions to hear speakers such as Hillary in the Marco Polo's theatre, reliving aspects of harrowing adventures.

Zoologist and botanist Sally Poncet, one of the guest speakers, had sailed as a 25-year-old with her husband to Antarctica and wintered over, taking in her stride the six months of darkness. One of her three children was born on the island of South Georgia.

Barbara, a retired nurse from England, was similarly drawn to Antarctica and now works on Antarctic voyages every summer because she loves the challenge. "It controls you, not you it."

Luckily Barbara kept control while steering us back in a dinghy to the ship after a shore visit in almost white-out conditions. Clutching her global positioning system and walkie talkie she demonstrated the unflappable stuff she is made of.

Barbara's cool won the admiration of her passengers, including Sean, a young policeman taking time out from the rigours of crime back home in Philadelphia.

Other characters included Bill Parker, the debonair dance host who confided that his role was to look after the single ladies and "no, he wasn't attached", and Marty the bridge master who walked like Charlie Chaplin, had a beanpole body and ate like a Sumo wrestler. Having figured he could eat his way to Antarctica, he grazed almost continuously from the 6am continental breakfast to the goodnight trolley at 11.30pm. Rarely was Marty in arid territory. If hunger pangs threatened he resorted to the 24-hour room service.

Then there was the ice master who was responsible for detecting dangerous ice at sea. During a sortie on deck we discussed Captain Cook who crossed the Antarctic Circle at 66.30 deg south in January 1774 before continuing as far south as 71.10 deg. No one reached as far south in that part of the Antarctic Ocean again until two American icebreakers in 1961.

Insulated against the cold on the comfortable Marco Polo, I marvelled with the ice master at the feats of Cook and the courageous expeditions that followed his discovery of the great white continent to the south.

The surrounding ocean was alive with feeding birds, which keen photographers would trace with cameras for hours. You could almost reach out and touch the petrels as they flirted with the ship and dazzled with their aerobatics. Terns bobbed on the ocean swell, paddling nonchalantly out of the way of treacherous looking ice. Princely albatross glided aloof on the wind. Passengers who never imagined they would get a thrill out of bird watching, found words like "pelagic" slipping off their tongues.

The sun may set over the peninsula for almost six months a year but during the brief Antarctic summer there are more hours of sunshine than most equatorial countries experience in a whole year.

Late one afternoon as we approached the Antarctic Circle I was lured on deck by a glorious sunset, and watched the colours intensify and glow until they were overtaken by the night.

But the sun had stiff competition on some days when sudden wind changes brought leaden cloud and plunged the temperatures to biting cold. I learned to expect the unexpected. But even grey seas and flat light could not obliterate the almost iridescent blue of sculptured icebergs.

When the ship anchored off Chile's Antarctic base in Port Lockroy, I passed over a couple of dollars for some stamps, the closest I was going to get to shopping in Antarctica.

Flakes of snow were fluttering like confetti as we sailed down the Lemaire Channel to our southernmost landing on the peninsula. The wind had died and the walls of ice and mountain peaks on either side were enveloped in mystical silence.

It was not until the homeward run that I experienced my only disappointment. Four shore landings had been scheduled but high seas prevented a landing on Elephant Island, where the exhausted Shackleton and his men landed after their ship, the Endurance, was crushed by pack ice. The crew wintered for more than four months on the desolate shore, waiting for their captain to return from his courageous trip in an open boat to South Georgia.

The voyage ended all too soon in Buenos Aires, after ports of call in the Falkland Islands and Montevideo. And the Philippine cabin steward was poised to sweep me from the cabin when I ran into Ken, resplendent in the tie he had received from Captain Mojic for his sixth Antarctic voyage on the Marco Polo.

"You will agree she's no floating skyscraper but she is a seasoned sailor, small enough to let you feel close to sea and large enough for you to always find a private corner of your own," he said.

There was no time to agree or to ask if he would take another Antarctic voyage on his old friend. Without drawing breath he moved off toward the gangplank, calling over his shoulder, "She stops in different places on each of her Antarctic cruises and I have booked again for my seventh cruise next summer. And with luck, it won't be my last."

* Susan Buckland travelled to Antarctica on the Marco Polo courtesy of Cruise Vacations.

GETTING THERE

Aerolineas Argentinas and Lan Chile (via Santiago) fly from Auckland to Buenos Aires.

Marco Polo sails on Antarctic voyages of between one and three weeks from Christmas to mid February. Routes vary and can include Paradise Harbour, Port Lockroy, Drake Passage, Deception and Cuverville Islands Lemaire Channel, Half Moon Island, Elephant Islands Cape Lookout, South Georgia, Elshuyl, Grytviken, Hope Bay, Shingle Cove, Coronation Island and Gold Harbour.

Cruises depart and finish in Ushuaia,except for the opening season cruise from Valparaiso, Chile and the final cruise of the season which finishes, via Montevideo, in Buenos Aires.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information and prices: Call Cruise Vacations toll free: 0800 278 473 or (09) 377 4466