The hotel lobby in Punta Arenas was full of people all day. Nobody knew when the plane was leaving, or whether it was leaving at all. That is the deal with Antarctica – you are on its schedule, not yours.
A forty-five minute delay became an hour and fifteen. We landed on King George Island at a quarter to eleven at night and it was still light out. Minus one, feeling like minus fourteen. Then a zodiac across to the ship, and you are somewhere between exhausted and completely wired, taking instructions the whole way – jacket over your jacket, don't put your bag down, step here – until suddenly you are aboard with no clear idea how you got there.
King George surprised me. I had expected ice and a runway. There are research stations, buildings, the flags of a dozen countries. Humanity, right at the edge of it.
The zodiacs are smaller than you expect. Twelve people in an inflatable boat, and you are not above the ice any more, you are in it, at eye level. At Mikkelsen Harbour the penguins have no interest in you whatsoever. You are not a threat, you are not food, you are not anything. You are in the way.
At Damoy Point there is a supply hut built in 1975. The last person went through it in 1993. Thirty years empty, and the door is still unlocked.
Every dinner, one of the guides sits down with you – biologists, glaciologists, historians, ornithologists. One of them had been among the first people to circumnavigate Svalbard. Another night, mid-meal, a guide spotted a dorsal fin, stood up without a word and walked to the bridge. Seconds later orcas came over the loudspeaker. The dining room emptied in ten seconds, plates on the table, wine half finished. It was near zero outside and nobody cared. Everyone stayed until the orcas were finished with us.
We kayaked behind three whales. We walked on sea ice at five degrees with our parkas off, and my sister tried to make a snow angel and found the snow wasn't deep enough. Lee, our guide that day, said the calving was the most active he had seen – you hear it long before you see it.
The polar plunge is ten or fifteen seconds. You go in because you are there.
A hundred and twenty-two people were on that ship. Kids and grandparents, couples, solo travellers, families who had been planning it for years and people who booked at the last minute. Nobody had the same reason for being there and everybody had the same look on their face.
We were five, from three cities, on our seventh continent.