After two days at sea, our first land sighting was Shag Rocks. To our amazement a pod of humpback whales... numbering over 200 circled our ship. The expedition team said they had never seen anything like this before.
"If God ever took a vacation he would go to South Georgia."
ERNEST SHACKLETON, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
The weather smiled on Scott which allowed him to retrace Ernest Shackleton's hike from Fortuna Bay to Stromness whaling station. The expedition leader said he had been doing this trek for the last seven years. 60% of the time it gets cancelled to due bad weather and poor visibility. He said this day was the best day he had ever had guiding the trek. We made a stop at Crean Lake with a view of The Tridents, which Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley had to climb over to get to Stromness Bay. It was their first contact with humans in over 18 months.
"The difficulties of the journey lay behind us. We tried to straighten ourselves up a bit, for the thought that there might be women at the station made us painfully conscious of our uncivilized appearance. Our beards were long and our hair was matted. We were unwashed and the garments that we had worn for nearly a year without a change were tattered and stained. Three more unpleasant-looking ruffians could hardly have been imagined. Down we hurried, and when quite close to the station we met two small boys ten or twelve years of age. I asked these lads where the manager's house was situated. They did not answer. They gave us one look - a comprehensive look that did not need to be repeated. Then they ran from us as fast as their legs would carry them. we reached the outskirts of the station. Emerging from the other end, we met an old man, who, startled, as if he had seen the Devil himself."
ERNEST SHACKLETON, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
"It was like visiting Disneyland, Las Vegas and Mars simultaneously."
VICTOR BOYARSKY, RUSSIAN POLAR EXPLORER
"In all my travels in more than 30 lands, I have seen nothing so simply magnificent as this stupendous work of nature. The grandest and most beautiful monuments raise by human hands had not inspired me with such a feeling of awe as I experienced on meeting with my first Antarctic iceberg."
HERBERT PONTING, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
"Glittering white, shiny blue, raven black... the land looks like a fairytale."
ROALD AMUNDSEN, NORWEGIAN POLAR EXPLORER
"The tranquility of the water heightened the superb effects of this glacial world. Majestic tabular bergs whose crevices exhaled a vaporous azure; lofty spires, radiant turrets and splendid castles; honeycombed masses illumined by pale green light within whose fairy labyrinths the water washed and gurgled. Seals and penguins on magic gondolas were the silent denizens of this dreamy Venice. In the soft glamor of the midsummer midnight sun, we were possessed by a rapturous wonder - the rare thrill of unreality."
DOUGLAS MAWSON, AUSTRALIAN POLAR EXPLORER
"If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart; art, it would be Michelangelo; literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be."
ANDREW DENTON, AUSTRALIAN POLAR ADVENTURER
"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has ever been devised."
"APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
"Below 40 degrees latitude there is no law; below 50 degrees there is no God; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever."
OLD SAILOR'S SAYING (ANTARCTICA IS AT 65 DEGREES)
"The temperature was not strikingly low as temperatures go down here, but the terrific winds penetrate the flimsy fabric of our fragile tents and create so much draft that it is impossible to keep warm within. At supper last night our drinking water froze over in the tent before we could drink it."
ERNEST SHACKLETON, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
"If you were to take a carving knife, slice beneath one of the highest mountain ridges of Switzerland, just where the huge glaciers tumble into the valley below, and then drop your slice of the mountain, dripping with sugar icing into the sea, I think you would get a fair idea of the place."
NIALL RANKIN, SCOTTISH POLAR EXPLORER
"After many frowns - fortune has treated us the kindest smile - for 24 hours we have had a calm with brilliant sunshine. Such weather in such a place comes nearer to satisfying my ideal of perfection than any condition that I have ever experienced. No words of mine can convey the impressiveness of the wonderful panorama displayed before our eyes."
ROBERT SCOTT, BRITISH POLAR EXPLORER
This very brief tale, told in only 80 pictures (Scott took over 3,500 photos), only scratches the surface of our incredible one month journey. We saw close to one million penguins, over 60 bird species, five kinds of penguins, five kinds of whales, four types of seals and two types of dolphins. Nothing prepares you for this once in a lifetime experience. The stunning vistas and volumes of wildlife are unmatched on the planet. As soon as our dream trip ended, we wanted to do it all over again. Every morning we felt like kids on Christmas Day - anxious to see what presents awaited us to open and enjoy.