Antarctica: the best journey in the world

If there is one minor pitfall of being a travel writer, it is this. Whenever you tell a bunch of people what you do, invariably someone will ask: ‘Where’s the best place you’ve ever been?’

I struggled to answer until I got on a special new boat called the Greg Mortimer, operated by a Australian tour company called Aurora – and headed for Antarctica.

We sailed south out of Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, and crossed the Drake Passage. After three days I saw my first Antarctic iceberg. I’d observed icebergs before, in Iceland and Greenland, so I knew already that they could be striking, poetic, impressive. But this was on a grander scale entirely. It looked like an aircraft carrier made out of ethereal blue crystal. As I stood on the deck gazing at it, I became aware that half the boat was doing the same – standing to attention, worshipfully regarding this thing.

As we slowly sailed past, the great berg seemed to twist on the soupy grey water, like a fractured and glassy Taj Mahal, wheeled about by petrels, skuas and shearwaters. And then, just as it arrived, it was mysteriously gone, retaken by the sea mist.

A few hours later, still pumped from the berg, I got my first glimpse of the shore of the Antarctica Peninsula itself. And Everything Was Not As I Expected. An inexplicable silvery mist shrouded the distant rocks. The ghost of a continent floated before me. I simply stared at it, perplexed, for hours. What was I seeing?

The cruise offered lots of activities. I chose Antarctic kayaking, as it sounded the strangest and newest – and strangeness and newness are the essence of adventurous travel. My choice was good. Sometimes out there on the murderously cold waters I would turn and look at the passengers who’d opted to go ashore.