Even after four decades of traveling, I still find it hard to believe that you can insert yourself into the cigar-shaped fuselage of a jet and step out hours later in another place, perhaps a quarter way around the globe. That was my experience as I traveled from A-ROSA Silva on Germany’s Rhine River to the southernmost human settlement in the world, Ushuaia, an Argentine town that refers to itself as the end of the world.
My journey to this remote outpost was the starting point for what promises to be a life-changing adventure. I was setting sail on Silver Explorer, across the world’s most fabled sea passage, to a place that is on nearly every traveler’s bucket list: The White Continent, Antarctica.