It’s a tough choice and we need to make a decision soon. we’ve been scouring the brochures and the internet for information. It’s Australia Day today and we’ve been piecing together possible flight schedules to some of the most inaccessible places on earth. It all depends on what we want to achieve, available time and our budgets. As with everything else in life, this takes time to plan but the most important question is – what is the purpose of the trip, what do I want to see/do/achieve wthin the time frames and finances that we have? If only we could view two worlds in one….
Polar bear and Penguin? Incredulous.
My check list of what I want to see:
Polar Bears – easy find in the Arctic on a ‘Bearantee’ Antarctic cruise
Narwhal whales – a lot harder to find but magical to behold, expensive to get to (Lancaster Sound in the Arctic)
Penguins – go South to the Antarctic and there are plenty – just sign up on a cruise
Penguin chicks – need to wait a little till they hatch
Aurora Borealis – no guarantees on the Northern side
Aurora Australis – no guarantees on the Southern side, but 2012 and 2013 are the likely years for this event, possibly visible from Tasmania in March and September, so perhaps we do not need to travel too far to see this phenomenon.
Inuit cultures – Greenland
or… if it’s all too hard, just view them via Youtube and go to the zoo (but no Narwhals there).
But the best bit is that we know what we want, now we just need to prioritise what we want to do/see and perhaps split the event into 2-3 trips over several years. After all, starting from Sydney, we need to get to either the Norwegian/Oslo side of the Arctic to Longyearbyen for the polar bears, or via Copenhagen (Denmark) or Montreal (Canada) onto Greenland for Narwhals. And then to the South from Ushuaia onto the Antarctic Peninsula via the Drake Passage by cruise ship.
We’re leaning towards the Arctic at this point as it is more accessible, cheaper and a gentler introduction.
The Snow Goddess 