Antarctica: Part One
You want as much of it as you can get!
PSA: our friends at Burlap & Barrel are having a sitewide fundraising sale on their big containers—an awesome spice value. Today only, stock up on your favorites. Discount is applied automatically at checkout.
Earlier this year, I was in Antarctica.
After what turned out to be a minor Christmas snowstorm that delayed us 24 hours—12 of which were spent at everybody’s favorite place, JFK—we arrived in Buenos Aires and immediately went to the city’s port, where we boarded the Regent Seven Seas “Splendor,” a mid-sized ship that would sail to Antarctica with a mere 650 passengers and some 500-odd crew.
After walking up the gangplank (is that really what it’s called?) we were greeted by a dozen or so of those crew members, some of whom were holding trays of flutes of Champagne—and real (Heidsieck) Champagne to boot. Intentionally virtuous (an attitude that lasted for about four hours, then bubbled away), we declined and headed to our stateroom, where there was…a bottle of Champagne on ice, which we also ignored. (Even more evidence of our good intentions.)
I shouldn’t go further without mentioning some key elements of this trip. One, I was working: we have a deal where we support Regent by my showing up and cooking and talking, and they support us by sending me/us on trips, and also sponsoring our podcast in part. Two, we brought along our friends Mark and Suzie (he’s been my friend since we were two, according to our mothers), because we thought it would be more fun. (We were right.) And three, unlike most other passengers (or maybe all the other passengers), this would be my third trip to the white continent; I went in 2005, and in 2014. I will go again before 2035; it’s that good. It’s so great. It’s like nothing else. (I’ll shut up now.)
I have written about the joys and stresses of cruising before; some aspects are both joys and stresses, particularly the food and drink. People say the food on cruise ships sucks, but I can assure you that’s not the case on Regent; people also say that there is a limitless supply and that you will gain weight, and this is true.
If you put a huge variety of decent-to-very-good food in front of people, almost all the time, they will, except for those very few with rare conditions or great determination, all gain weight.
In fact, it’s an interesting social experiment:
