November through March is the season when ships make their way down through the rough-and-tumble waters of the Drake Passage from the southern tip of South America to the northern reaches of Antarctica. It’s the ice continent’s summer.    Photo by Gene Korte

Antarctica is home to 90 percent of the world’s ice. Because of that, it’s a thrilling other-worldly place. As our ship moved along iceberg alley, bergs almost as large as small towns appeared and ranged in hues from white to blue and green. Our ship, the Endeavor, occasionally stopped to cut through ice, sounding like the largest blender ever.

Despite being the continent with the most hostile environment, last season there were 37,000 visitors to Antarctica, about 1/3 of whom are from the USA. They come in the southern hemisphere’s summer, November through March, when temperatures likely reach from 30 to 50 degrees, and the sun is out a glorious 18 to 24 hours a day.

Most travelers get to Antarctica by flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina or Santiago, Chile and continuing on by air to Ushuaia, the town on the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of South America. It’s in the harbor of this colorful place where passengers board ships that travel through the Drake Passage, an often tumultuous body of water where the world’s oceans mix. Some 40 hours later, they arrive in the calm waters around the northern Antarctic Peninsula.

Although there’s no government, as such, down here, dozens of nations have research stations and most tour operators are members of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), http://www.iaato.org, which advocates environmentally responsible tourism travel.

Here are some favorite parts of the Antarctic experience.

The penguins

Yes, you’ll find dozens of sunning seals and diving whales spraying water through their blowholes on a trip to Antarctica. And, sure, there are hundreds of birds to admire from the albatrosses that surf the wind of the Drake Passage to the white petrels that pester the penguins. But the penguins steal the show with their charming waddling walk, devoted parenting, chirpy chatter, and total obliviousness to human presence. These birds never paid any attention to us, even when we stood only a couple of feet away. Of course, visitors are forbidden to touch any animal here. Penguins have no enemies on land in Antarctica. It’s not until penguins go into the water to feed or migrate that they are in danger from seals and whales.

Our first landing was on a brown sandy beach. Even if we hadn’t seen the many thousands of penguins on the hillside, the smell of their guano miles away announced their presence. Home for most penguin couples is a dry rock or side of a hill. Perched about 18 to 24 inches from their neighbors, they crowd their nests close together like big city apartment dwellers.

We saw rookeries of Adelie, Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins, all basically black and white and three feet tall with a few subtle differences. The Chinstrap, for instance, sports a black line under his chin. Our biggest sighting on this trip was an estimated 6,000 Adelie penguins in one place. Penguins return to the same rocky islands each year to nest, and will usually return to the same spot they had the year before.

The place

What visitors see in Antarctica in the summer is mountainous islands, bays, sandy beaches, and the occasional field of orange-and-green lichens with snow never far away. The numerous icebergs have strata, which are many thousands of years old. Imagine looking at ice that was laid down before recorded history. Our brief close-up moment to all this was from the seat of a kayak inches from the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. Away from this northern peninsula where ships visit, this continent is somewhat flat and covered with a mile or two of ice topped with a layer of icing-like snow.

Port Lockroy, once a British research station, is now a tiny museum and post office station, complete with the sounds of Benny Goodman. It’s home to Gentoo penguins that live right outside the door and two staffers who sell stamps and pens and will mail your postcards to anywhere in the world.

The food

Sure we dressed in red parkas, long underwear, insulated clothes and knee-high rubber boots whenever we left the ship. But onboard, we had hot water for showers, three meals and often pre-dinner appetizers every day. I thought of those early explorers, like Sir Ernest Shackleton, who came down here in wooden boats. These adventurous men wore wool that was usually wet — not the water-resistant micro fibers we had. And they ate penguins, from all published reports not the tastiest of meals. We, on the other hand, dined on smoked reindeer mousse, Swedish pancakes, and cream soups, while admiring the world of ice and water outside the panoramic dining room windows. On one occasion a snowstorm chased us all inside just in time for afternoon tea. Because the weather outside was frightful, crustless egg salad sandwiches, muffins and the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate marble cookies were the tastiest of tea offerings.

The ship

The optimal way to visit Antarctica is on an icebreaker expedition ship because the ship’s smaller size — about 100 to 125 passengers — allows access to areas unreachable by the big ocean liners. If you’re going to go all the way to the bottom of the world, wouldn’t you want to get off the ship and walk on the land? You can do that if you travel on an expedition ship. They have zodiacs, inflatable boats that hold a dozen people, just for that purpose. The ship’s staff is experienced in getting people of all ages, sizes and physical condition into these boats. If you can walk, you can manage this exotic trip. Expedition ships are low-key with no swanky shows and casinos, and evening entertainment is usually a briefing by one of the several naturalists onboard.

Lindblad, http://www.expeditions.com, was the first company to take non-scientists to Antarctica more than 40 years ago and the first to offer kayaking when weather permits. They have numerous Antarctic departures as does the Silversea Explorer, also an icebreaker expedition ship, http://www.silversea.com.

© 2011-2015 Diana and Gene Korte

For many years the gleaming carriages of the Orient-Express train, the Eastern & Oriental, have taken travelers in grand style from Singapore to Bangkok.       Photo by Gene Korte.

Many regard riding the rails on fabled trains as one of the world’s great travel experiences. They hark back to a golden age when every moment of a journey was to be savored and enjoyed. They’re located on most continents and offer a level of service, posh surroundings and all-inclusive fine dining that you will not find on any commercial airline flight today, never mind on a road trip where you have to do all the driving. And in this economy there are bargains to be had when booking passage on luxury trains that include reduced prices, extended stays and additional stops.

Among these one-of-a-kind trains are those operated by Orient-Express. Some of their collection includes the Hiram Bingham in South America that travels from Cusco to Machu Picchu in Peru, the Venice Simplon Orient-Express in Europe and the Eastern & Oriental Express in Southeast Asia. They all offer exclusive china and crystal, white linen and handsome rail cars. And as you gaze out the window, each train creates the magic of a bygone day, http://www.orient-express.com.

To continue reading this article, go to http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2009-04-07/sf-jewish-journal/0904060054_1_machu-picchu-hiram-bingham-trains

For more information about train travel in general, visit The Society of International Railway Travelers, http://www.irtsociety.com.

Hope Korte stands at the Stone Hut overlooking the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, one of the most visited sites in South America. Photo by Gene Korte.

Back when our granddaughter, Hope, was 13 we traveled with her to Peru. It was Hope’s first international trip and also her first time traveling alone with us. We found seeing Peru, especially through her eyes, was a great way to get better acquainted and also a wonderful opportunity to introduce her to South America.

Hope wanted to see Machu Picchu, the Inca site built in the 1400’s. To get there we flew to Lima, the capital of Peru and the gateway city for most travelers from the US. It’s about eight hours nonstop from New York and in the same time zone half the year. Planning our trip was easy with Peru Experiences, a division of Orient-Express. They specialize in private or family travel and offer one-stop shopping for everything we wanted to see and do.

Gene and I had traveled in Peru several years earlier with a group tour, but this time we saw more of the local people and the countryside and enjoyed a wider range of Peruvian cuisine. We also saw remnants of and heard more about the heritage of the powerful Inca warriors who ruled this part of the world for 300 years before the Spanish arrived in the 1530s.

EATING LIKE AN INCA

The Inca rulers didn’t just eat lunch. They feasted at their midday meal. We did, too, at our barbecue at the Libertador Valle Sagrado Lodge in the Sacred Valley outside Cusco. After a giant salad of fresh greens, we were each given a platter of vegetables cooked in a pachamanca, an underground oven. One of the delights was an eight-inch-long bean pod. When our guide, Miguel, told us the big, oval-shaped beans inside were lima beans, Hope said, “I get it — lima like the city in Peru.”

Click here to read the rest of the article, http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4607980

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Fast-moving dog walkers and their charges are a frequent sight near the parks in the capital city of Argentina. Photo by Gene Korte.

Tourism is up in Buenos Aires. And why not? It’s more affordable than most exotic destinations, it’s big city fun, and it’s home to the tango and all that this dance brings to visitors who come to this city known as the Paris of the South.

When the snow is flying in New York City, it’s springtime in Buenos Aires, a port city on Argentina’s long Atlantic coast. And the time zone for both cities is the same half the year. The temperature is mild year-round, and in the winter it’s sunny and in the 80s.

The jacaranda trees will be in their spring finery of purple blossoms. And the fast-moving dog walkers and their charges — sometimes 20 or more leashed dogs spread out like moving petals on a flower — will take people-watching to a whole new level.

Spanish-speaking Buenos Aires, perhaps the most European of cities in South America, is a sprawling metropolis of parks, cafes, museums and some 2,000 monuments.

The tango was born here. It appeared in the 1880s with the music and the dance, it’s believed, coming from some combination of Italian immigrants, African slaves and brothels. Tango is taught around the world now, but Buenos Aires is its birthplace.

Visitors can take tango lessons all day in Buenos Aires, or dance in the streets in the colorful La Boca section of town where the Italian dockworkers first settled. At night there are more than 30 tango dinner theaters to choose from or you can skip dinner, find a tango bar and just watch (www.turismo.gov.ar).

Among the popular tango dinner clubs in Buenos Aires is El Querandi (http://www.querandi.com.ar). The night we were there the men were each given a black fedora, white scarf and suspenders, so that they looked like tango dancers. And the women were each draped with a red boa, a red rose necklace and long black gloves. In this club the tango is danced on a small stage in vignettes that tell a story about the dancers. Two dancers and an accordion player in one scene, two couples by the piano in another, a singer by himself and so on during an enchanting evening. This stop was arranged by Abercrombie & Kent, http://www.abrocrombiekent.com.

Many airlines fly to Buenos Aires from several continents, but LAN Airlines (www.lan.com) is a traveler favorite and the leading airline in South America. Chilean and other wines are served in all classes. Argentina is famous for its beef and it is available everywhere in this country, but we enjoyed our best steak flying over Argentina on a LAN flight. Check the company website for details of the LAN Airpass.

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(c) 2011 Diana and Gene Korte

http://www.ihavenet.com/vacation-travel/Bound-For-Buenos-Aires-Argentina-Vacation.html