LUXURY TRAVEL: Antarctic

Our other companions are the seals - we see a number of different species, their bodies heavy with blubber, their limpid brown eyes dreaming of the depths of the sea - and the arctic seabirds.  The ornithologists on board are in raptures.

One day we also encounter a pod of about twelve orca whales and journey with them until they threaten to lead us too far out of our way.
However, in the end it is the ice which is the star turn.

I sit on deck and watch giant icebergs, far bigger than our ship, glide past us like ghostly galleons.  There are 'bergs stretching as far as the eye can see.  The scene is mesmerising.  I sit for three hours and think only half an hour has passed.

At Paradise Bay, an Argentinean base, we set foot on the great continent itself - almost twice the size of Australia and 98 per cent of it covered by ice and snow.

Glaciers hundreds of metres high form icecliffs at the edge of the sea.We take a ride beneath them and our black rubber Zodiacs are as insignificant as water beetles as we skim past. At the edge of one glacier there's a cathedral of ice as big as Notre Dame and iridescent-blue icecaves like giant gaping mouths.

During our travels we come across several ruined huts.  Man has made his mark here.

The early explorers Scott and Amundsen and Shackleton were followed by whalers, then adventurers and scientists. A number of countries which jointly lay claim to the continent have bases here (Australia claims 42 per cent). But our footprint in the snow is light.  At any minute the vastness of Antarctica threatens to wipe it out again.

As our ship ventures further south into the Weddell Sea we get a taste of how overwhelming the white continent can be. Ice floes which have broken away from the Larsen iceshelf float around our ship, pressing in on it.

We plough forward slowly; the ice gives way reluctantly against our reinforced bow.  All around us the ice creaks and cracks. There is no danger; the captain has no intention of venturing too far south. But it's easy to imagine the fate of some early explorers when the ice closed in and squeezed the hulls of their boats until they split open like Brazils in a nutcracker.