Matthew Engel celebrates cricket and cherries at the South Pole, in his Financial Times’ review of his South Pole Flights experience. www.ft.com.
FT’s Man at the South Pole
Matthew traveled as a guest of ALE for the celebrations held at the Geographic South Pole on January 17, exacly 100 years after Robert Falcon Scott and his team reached this spot. As Matthew reports, “…the British adventurer Henry Worsley found a touch of soaring eloquence when he paid tribute to the dead: “Their footsteps have long since disappeared but they echo through eternity.”
During his tour, Matthew visited Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, meeting the Station Manager and scientists who work in this inhospitable place. He was also given a trip to Vinson Base Camp with our mountaineers: “The Vinson massif rises from a horseshoe-shaped valley and when we touched down, there was no wind; there was fresh-fallen snow which had a dessert-like quality (Meringue? Baked Alaska?); and the sky was a blue I had never seen before, way beyond Alpine: a product of the unique Antarctican air: its clarity, its coldness, its dryness and its altitude. It felt like Shangri-La. And at that moment I understood what the fuss was about.”
We are now taking bookings on our South Pole, Mt Vinson and other Experiences for the 2012-13 season. Join us for another great year of Antarctic exploration and, like Matthew, you will return home to say “…Great God, this is still an amazing journey.”