Seriously, I'm looking online and prices run between $10,000 to $25,000 which is quite outrageous. If you want to reach the south pole, at least $70,000!!! WTF... But I do badly want to visit there someday.
shareAre we talking about Antarctica right now? Y’all internet folk act lol me you got something to say.. let’s all try to think for ourselves,..what y’all got??? I wAnna know.
I’d rather go to new zealsnd. Also. I’m not above punching Bambi in the face.
It's a LONG and DANGEROUS trip to the most inhospitable area on earth! BTW, I hope to make it there eventually. It's one of the two continents I have not visited yet. The other one is Australia.
PS It's also really COLD!
😎
There's nothing there but research installations from various countries. Isn't there some kind of International Treaty where the continent can't be settled or claimed? That kind of traveling is not going to be cheap.
shareSo, nobody owns Antarctica then?
shareThe closest you can get to Antartica without being rich is going on a cruise.
shareEric56: Ant. is a multi country agreement that it would be used only for scientific purposes until 2100 or something like that. After that I believe the agreement will need to be renewed.
shareProbably not very many people want to go to Antarctica, so the price is high. If you wanted to go to somewhere popular like Paris, it would be a lot cheaper because everybody wants to go there.
shareI usually like the opposite of what most people like. I think it's a lot more cooler/unique/impressive to say you've been to Antarctica rather than Paris (boring!!!).
shareYeah because the nightlife is impressive. I hear the research scientists and penguins that live there throw raging parties.
I was never into parties or the club scene. It doesn't excite me. Even in my teens and early 20's, I didn't do any of that stuff.
shareI've never understood the attraction of places like the bar scene or parties where drinking and/or drugging is the goal. Crowded venues with a bunch of people you don't even know? Meh.
shareAgreed. I've always avoided them. I also don't feel sympathy for anyone who OD's from these parties. Hard to feel sympathy for someone who made the decision that they knew could be potentially lethal.
shareI think slimones point is that because people want to go to paris regular trains planes and automobiles schedules are alreadu set up and in use every day.
whereas, if you want to go to antarctica , you have to charter your own boat , or find a few other people to split the cost with.
Also - what do you expect to see there?
do you just want to get to the beach or the pole?
I think you misunderstand if you think drinking/drugging as the primary goal. It's actually only a secondary goal to the hookups and hot sex. But if that doesn't hold your interest when you're in your early twenties than I'm really not sure what would.
shareWell, it's because your money worth nothing in Antartica, duh. They have high living standards, y'know...
shareIt’s not that expensive. A bunch of my relatives went on a cruise there and they are ordinary middle class peoples. I think they flew to Argentina then met up with the ship. The cruise was led by naturalists and they got to see penguins and ice. I had to look at an hour of their photos and videos of it over the holidays. It was interesting, for about five minutes. All the photos were of white ice and penguins, endless photos of white ice. Zzzzzz.
shareI went to Antarctica! I loved it down there. I ate lunch with the greatest scientific minds in the world every day!! I went as a photographer to document the science projects and had the greatest experiences a person could ask for.
I camped out in 80 below, using 3 sleeping bags, one inside the next. The food is second to none because it's a psychological advantage for your employees to look forward to their meals instead of hating the quality of it and being disgusted about that. If a person eats well they are often a happier employee and I met no one down there that was unhappy in the least.
I went with the New Z dogsled team over to the back side of Mt Erebus (a live volcano) and skiied down the side of it on New Years Eve, 1980. They had a tow rope and generator set up so people could actually go there and say they skiied down the volcano. And I can!
I met wonderful intelligent people that were there for one purpose: to help the science community advance knowledge of the surrounding environment and seeing how that affected and applied to the rest of the world.
How great is that??
Incredible! I would love to read any stories or accounts, no matter how small, you may wish to provide. I imagine living on Antarctica is just as dangerous, if not more, than walking on the moon. It's more than the frozen wasteland it appears to be.
shareThe day I landed, Nov 28th 1979 was the day that the traumatic incident of the New Z airliner accident in Antarctica occured, when the pilot erroneously crashed into Mt Erebus. If I do recall he was new to that particular flight as it was not a heavily traveled one, and mistook his headings and hit the side of it. People had paid $10k per to make the flight, all 247 were killed, sadly. It was a celebratory flight of Scotts Expedition if I remember correctly. Keep in mind I am 64 and that was almost 38 yrs ago.
That was a very sad day for all and the entire base was swept into action and people were flown in that were expert ice climbers from China and Japan to help ascend the side of the volcano and hopefully find survivors. Unfortunately that was not the case...even if they had survived the crash the weather most likely would have caused them to succumb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901
I really appreciate you taking the time to recount such a personally invoking memory. I was not aware of this tragedy until you brought it before my attention, being before my time, born in the 90s. The fact that people came to help in moment of need, in spite of all the confusion, speaks volumes of the humanity shown that fateful day. I hope you did not feel guilt for being alive when news of the doomed passengers surfaced, thinking that should have been you. We all have so much to live for. Thank you, again.
shareI spent hundreds of hours printing the photos taken and relived the pain each person experienced at their tragic end, over and over. Each negative got more painful to print, the enlarger was not forgiving and opened it's lens to show all of us how terrible and cruel death can be when it comes to take you. Regardless of fame, fortune or wealth each person on this flight was brought to be equal with the others at the end.
Ironically that was the second plane crash I had been part of, the other was a P3 Orion that crashed in Maine in 1978 I believe it was. This provided me with the ability to step outside myself and do the job.
What no one will ever tell you is that when you come home from a job like that, working in and around the rubble, burnt corpses, and spending day after day searching for clues and documenting each one with a camera, is that you literally have to throw your clothes away because the smell will almost never come out. You shower with a ferventness and try hard to wash your hair clean of the scent...
I am working hard to be very respectful of the situations and not over dramatize it and certainly not to feel at all sorry for myself, but rather to represent the truths of working in these extremely complicated scenarios and presenting it in a non-cinematic manner or fashion. These types of situations are represented daily on screen and what the movie screen cannot and does not do is to represent the reality of each situation, that being that those that document, study, explore, scientifically work to examine it all can never put a simple handkerchief over the memories, they are implanted for eternity.
My point, you ask? There is nothing romantic about working in the industry that helps study the accidents or murders after the fact, but there is something that needs to be said and that is, every person involved in the chain of command needs to be given the utmost of respect because it is a "permantly ugly scar on that persons memory or soul"
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Penguin Empire too strong!
Serious note: I think the high price tag is meant to deter tourist, commercial, and industrial businesses from heading to the continent in an effort to limit ecological contamination people could bring, international agreements notwithstanding. Most people currently stationed there are scientists from fields and backgrounds of all kinds, from environmentalists to climatologists likely there on a government contract.
I suspect and hope there is truth to that suspicion. I see little reason for them to be there, it's so cold and there is NO public recreation, the reason anyone goes it to brag back home that..."I went to Antarctica, just got back, gosh it was cold!!"
shareAnyone who believes in these explanations has no idea of how the real world works:
It all comes down to bribes and kickbacks. Any aircraft or surface craft approaching the coast of Antarctica will be subject to observation by at least 2 if not 3 of the patrol ships guarding the vast 75,000 mile (120,000 Km) coastline that encircles the entire world.
This goes all the way back to project high-jump (ostensibly, an R&D project on extreme cold weather operations and Antarctic geology), an on-going containment effort attempting to limit and, hopefully, reverse the rift between dimensions that the Nazis opened to attempt to make contact with some Lovecraftian ‘Old-Ones’-style omnipotent , evil critters.
Any interference by untrained tourist lay-people types could exacerbate said rift and have severe global consequences (GLOBAL? I’m offended, but I digress…)
So, Money is needed to bribe at least 2 crews, often 3, sometimes 4 or 5, to ‘look the other way/convincingly spoof target acquisition telemetry. There was once a precedence-setting case involving the bribing of SEVEN crews. This has led to the practice of travel brokers charging enough to make a profit after greasing the palms of seven crews and pocketing the difference if (almost certainly) fewer bribes are required.
Caution: consumption of this response without a grain of salt may cause; upset stomach, loss of appetite, nausea, an urge to drag-race bulldozers in the nude, vomiting, diarrhea, vertigo and ‘cerebral-flatulence’.
Fascinating theory. I spent 6+ months there and never heard that "urban legend" uttered.
I suppose that in the past there may have been some truth to it but I would be hard pressed to believe it now.
Apologies if my response seemed to be making fun of yours, it was intended to poke fun at multiple conspiracy theories and the growing trend of people looking to the least likely, most outrageous explanation for anything first instead of the simplest or most likely explanation.
shareok. :) humor rec'd. :)
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