A warm toast to wild Antarctica

We are on a bus that is carrying us to a port where we will load up a ship. Nothing unusual about that.

Nothing strange, except for our fat wool hats, our puffy penguin-y parkas, our knee-high insulated boots. Nothing weird but where we are: Punta Arenas, at the southernmost tip of Chile. And where we are going: to the isolated, ice-walled bottom of the world.

We know that cruises are supposed to be warm. But do we care? We thumb our face-masked noses at the idea of palm trees. We are explorers booked on Lindblad's steel-prowed, spray-glazed Endeavour.

Stadium-sized icebergs, the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and the continent of Antarctica are our destinations. Antarctica. No one lives there except for a handful of scientists. It's the world's driest desert and the ultimate cold spot, thanks to winds as sharp as 199 mph and temperatures reaching as low as minus 128 Fahrenheit.

Lindblad Expeditions was the first outfitter and cruise line to bring tourists here on a regular basis — since 1966 — and the 110-passenger Endeavour is engineered for ice. There's a 40-foot-high crow's nest up at the bow to keep an eye out for dangerous floating chunks of the stuff, and the chairs in the dining room are wave proof: They are chained to the floor.

For some passengers, extreme adventures are like day-trips to a local beach. "I'm a repeat customer," says Rose Letwin of Redmond. "I've been to Antarctica, let's see, two times so far."

Audrey and Gerry Olson from Arizona are first-timers on this trip, but they've already bagged the North Pole. "We went on a Russian icebreaker," says Gerry, "though not all of the ships make it. They had a barbecue for us right on the Pole. ... " Arrival at the Falkland Islands, which seem as green and treeless as Scotland, brings warnings. Who knew that the islands were still sprinkled with land mines left over from the 1982 turf war between Britain and Argentina?

Along with others, I have a long look at the "Minefield Clearance Situation Map" posted on the veranda deck and step gingerly when, in the intrepid Lindblad way, we are ferried in a fleet of Zodiac boats ashore. Later, we climb a hill to view the wreckage of an Argentinean helicopter peppered with bullet holes. It was shot down early in the conflict.

Next stop: South Georgia Island, a powderkeg of breeding, molting and arguing animals and birds. "Remember," a printed notice warns. "Do not approach penguins, albatrosses, seals or any other wildlife so close that they move away from you, act agitated or change their behavior."

No worries here. It's the wildlife that approaches us. For starters, landing on a beach in South Georgia means running a gantlet of 600-pound fur seals and mammoth elephant seals.

Though both species smell like fish sticks and produce resonant belches, it's the fur seals that are the problem. They show us mouthfuls of wolf-sharp choppers. And, we are told, they bite. Since we've interrupted their spring-break beach party, they are annoyed. Luckily, the guides from the ship know expert tricks with tripods and clapping hands to keep them at bay.

As for elephant seals, no sweat. Think vacuum-cleaner bags with snouts — ones that are full to the brim. We step around them to the main attraction: thousands of walking, whistling, swimming king penguins.

Earlier in the trip, we'd sighted a few of these fat guys floating past on top of ice chunks. But this is penguin central. It is not a colony. It is a noisy city.

There are penguins surrounding you. Penguins eyeing you. And penguins passing by like pedestrians on Fifth Avenue.

Some stop short for pictures, some have urgent business, and here and there are penguin chicks that instead of the grown-up black, orange and white are bundled in down.

Remembering Shackleton

The weather's been eerily warm so far, but temperatures sink down into the 20s and it begins to sleet as we circle the South Georgia grave of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and drink a toast to him with paper cups of Irish whiskey.

It is time for our own Shackleton adventure. Those who are up for a steep 1,000-foot climb and hike over loose rocks and snow will try to retrace the last segment of the explorer's route back to civilization after his catastrophic shipwreck. With the ship's doctor along just in case, a band of us stagger up into the hills over South Georgia's Fortuna Bay.

Stormy weather

Back at sea again, we're on our final leg to Antarctica and we are busy toasting again. This time it isn't Shackleton we drink to, but our hike, and there are shots of aquavit, plates of pickled herring and glasses of beer. Then the storm hits.

Wind, waves, nausea, aftertastes of herring, bitter regrets about the aquavit and beer. I try to chill out in the library but things seemed permanently tilted. I head out on deck to find an eerie light in the sky that's leaking from somewhere and swirling spray whipped up by Godzilla winds.

Late in the evening, things get quiet. Everyone is out by the rail watching the sea lie down and snapping pictures of pure, prismatic oranges and purples that have spread over the ship like a wild umbrella.

It is the middle of December. According to the ship's program, the sun will set at 11:57 p.m., and after a few hours of afterglow, will pop up again at 3:22 am. No one even tries to sleep.

Air temperature: 26 degrees. Water temperature: 29 degrees. Latitude: between 65 degrees South and 64 degrees South. Ship's position: just southeast of James Ross Island off the Antarctic Peninsula.

We have made it.

The White Continent is ours to claim. Our welcome? It is the sound of crunching. The sea is solidly frozen and though the ship reverses its engines, punches and pushes, we can go no farther.

Later, we will load the Zodiacs and make landfall on Brown Bluff. We will visit snowy Antarctic islands, and a few of us will even slip underwater for a wink-quick, breath-swiping "swim."

But somehow it is this second when we are shoving up against sea ice that makes the abstract idea of the Pole entirely real.

Peter Mandel is an author from Providence, R.I.