Page 82 - WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERING ENGLAND

“Your heart breaks then simply because it is squeezed so hard,
because the world is so spacious and pure and beautiful…”

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

T “Fantasia”. ating seas for about 36 hours, which

he Journey
and silverware spun in the air is if We sailed on through roiling, nause-
felt like 36 days, naturally. The
“The Worst Journey in the
World,” is how explorer Apsley
captain and Ice Master scanned
Cherry-Garrard entitled his As we sailed the churning sea, the Shore Expedition crew, led by a pale
and woozy Dr. Peter Carey, filled the
classic book on the 1912 Scott ex- the water for growlers (pieces of ice hours with lectures on penguins,
hidden by waves) and chose not to
pedition to the South Pole. My fel- seabirds and sea spiders the size
low passengers, all swaddled in the tempt the Titanic sirens by stopping of dinner plates. Gigantism is com-
at Deception Island or sailing into
warm red parkas provided in each Lemaire Channel, described as “ex- mon in southern waters, apparently.
cabin, might well have agreed as we hilarating” and “thrilling” in our in- Something about excessive oxygen
steamed through the fierce Drake and lack of pollution.
Passage on the mv Discovery. formation booklet. Other ships have
been trapped in “iceberg alley,” and We learned that the Southern Ocean
Captain Michael Cavaghan, who said Cavaghan didn’t like all the bergy links the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian
he gets seasick even in a yacht, an- bits floating about. oceans and swirls around the white
nounced we were battling 40 mile- “Flexibility is what this cruise is all continent at the very tip of the plan-
an-hour winds in 32-foot swells. about, apart from enjoying the scen- et. More than 90 percent of earth’s
Drawers flew from nightstands, ery,” he declared in a tone that oblit- ice covers Antarctica, rippling across
doors slammed unceasingly, plates plateaus, slithering into mountain
erated protest.

82 Wine Dine & Travel Winter 2014