It seems unlikely that in this monochrome world, where the grey of the sky blends into the white landscape which in turn seeps into the deep blue-grey of the sea, you would see such spectacular patterns. But there drifts an iceberg – a block of flats silently bobbing past. Its side, where it once sheared off from a huge ice shelf, is brilliantly jagged, made up of a million planes, infinite tiny angles all in a different shade.
It’s like a Kandinsky painting in grey, a stunning pattern that glides past the window and further out to sea where it will one day disappear. Antarctica is like that, transient and impossibly beautiful. Small moments grab you and then they vanish.
Orcas appear by the side of your ship and then they’re gone; penguins waddle up to the water’s edge and disappear; entire days slip through your fingers, lost in the excitement of so much to see and do. And those icebergs appear, each entirely different, a work of art, a jagged fingerprint, a thing of wonder. You get time to ponder this fleeting beauty in Antarctica.
The trip I’m on is Aurora Expeditions’ Antarctic Explorer Express which is a nine-day journey – surely the shortest itinerary you can have while cruising this remote corner of the world. But still, there is time to think, time to percolate, to sit by a huge floor-to-ceiling window or stand out on a frosty deck and watch icebergs and search the sea for whales and let the Antarctic experience wash over you. But yes, nine days.
That�.
