If Antarctica were music, it would be Mozart.

Art, and it would be Michelangelo.

Literature, and it would be Shakespeare.

And yet it is something greater; the only place on earth that is still

as it should be.

May we never tame it.

– Andrew Denton

Many going to Antarctica are looking forward to the sea life, such as whales, orcas and penguins.  However, once there, visitors soon discover that the ice - whether sea ice in the form of bergy bits, growlers, brash, pancake, or icebergs, or other types such as glaciers -  is captivating and perhaps more notable than the sea life. The beauty and range of the ice’s shapes, sizes and colors is exceptional.

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When I saw the A57A, a tabular iceberg, it was roughly 12 miles long and about 1,500 feet thick, with only 150 feet of that above water.  It was twice the size of Manhattan and big enough to create its own ecosystem.  It took hours to pass along its side.

Icebergs take many shapes, sometimes looking like sculpture or object des art.  Kayaking through pancake ice gave a close view of its fragility and beauty.  Being in a zodiak, as it slowly struggled through thousands of closely packed growlers and bergy bits, demonstrated how unforgiving the Antarctic ice-filled environment can be.

Orcas, although sometimes called killer whales are actually dolphins, gather in pods to hunt leopard seals and other prey.  Knowing in advance what the likely result would be, it was terrifying to witness half a dozen or more orcas team up and, in unison, encircle, bump, and rock a growler on which a leopard seal had been resting. This caused the growler to tilt at such a steep angle that the seal slid off into the water three times; on the third slide the orcas caught and killed it.  Nature can be efficient, as great brown skuas scooped down to eat the seal’s remnants; orcas prefer to eat only internal organs and blubber and leave the rest. 

Seeing mature humpbacks gather from miles around to fight a pod of orcas showcased a prehistoric form of battle. While orcas are no threat to mature humpbacks, they hunt and kill the young ones. The attacking mature humpbacks, whose weapons were their eight-foot-long, one-ton pectoral fins as well as their tail flukes, were likely seeking revenge.

Observing a giant Antarctic blue whale up close for almost an hour, as it went about its daily routine of feeding on krill, was to say the least very lucky. The Antarctic blue whale, which almost became extinct in the 20th century, is larger than those in other oceans ). Scientists estimated the whale was about 90-100 feet long (two school busses long), of substantial girth (roughly four school buses in girth) and of great weight (perhaps 200,000 to 300,000 pounds or more).  The blue whale is the largest living thing to ever inhabit the earth; even larger than the largest dinosaurs. 

The scale of Antarctica is hard to grasp even when looking at the vast expanses of water, ice and mountains.  As Earth‘s second largest land mass, it is 1 ½ times the size of continental USA. 

It does not take long to realize that part of what makes Antarctica so different is that there are no towns, villages, or most other signs of man.  Rare exceptions, if seen at all, include vestiges of a stone hut that sheltered explorers from a shrunken ship (1903 Swedish expedition), a research station (only about 70 on the entire continent) and, perhaps once a week, a ship on the distant horizon.  

Being there was a special opportunity to see and experience how Earth was before man.