Getting to Antarctica is not easy. The few who are lucky enough to visit this most mysterious continent do so by ships. To reach Antarctica, ships must pass through a notoriously violent area of ocean called the Drake Passage, considered to be the roughest stretch of sea on the planet.
Walls of water thirty, sometimes forty feet high continually crashed about our ship for two solid days. We would hold on to a rope inside the ship while being violently tipped to one extreme side, then to the other, and then back again. My daughter Claire and I were as mentally prepared as we could be.
About two and a half days after entering the Drake Passage, the waters calmed. Soon, we noticed small black spots on nearby pieces of floating ice. Emperor penguins! Then, we began the two-mile hike over the ice to the penguin colony. Within several hundred yards, little clusters of emperors, perhaps ten or so at a time, greeted us, sliding on their bellies and making their wonderful noises, sort of a nasally squeal.
One day two adult emperors with their three chicks in tow approached Claire, who was resting on the ice. They left the chicks with her, as if she were the babysitter. Twenty minutes later they returned to collect the chicks. And I will never forget the penguin that, when I jokingly asked which way back to the helicopters, pointed a wing in the correct direction. Every night aboard our safe and warm ship, we thought about what it takes to survive in Antarctica, an incredibly harsh place.
But each day on the ice, we also thought about the Drake passage, that monstrous body of water we had to endure to get where we were. Over the course of our visit, we came to respect the power of that sea. We still talk about the penguins, as I'm sure we always will. But we talk about the Drake too. Both experiences were unforgettable, and one would not have been possible without the other.
