ATHLLC3374798610
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:01.800 | - Hello, and welcome to a special bonus episode
00:00:04.140 | of "All The Hacks,"
00:00:05.120 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.
00:00:07.640 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,
00:00:08.800 | and in my last episode,
00:00:09.960 | I was joined by one of the most well-traveled friends
00:00:12.280 | I have, Lee Rowan,
00:00:13.880 | where we had an amazing conversation all about Italy.
00:00:16.900 | However, just a few weeks before we recorded,
00:00:19.480 | Lee happened to have an amazing opportunity
00:00:21.620 | to take a trip to Antarctica,
00:00:23.520 | which has been on my bucket list for years,
00:00:25.600 | and until our conversation,
00:00:27.200 | I don't think I'd ever met anyone
00:00:29.000 | who'd actually been there.
00:00:30.600 | So I couldn't help but ask him to stick around
00:00:32.960 | and share why it was one of the most impactful trips
00:00:35.280 | he's taken in his entire life,
00:00:37.160 | and he's traveled a lot.
00:00:39.060 | We'll talk about the experience,
00:00:40.400 | what it's like there, how to get there,
00:00:41.840 | and so much more.
00:00:43.000 | So without further ado,
00:00:44.400 | let's get started right after this.
00:00:46.680 | (upbeat music)
00:00:48.880 | First off, Lee, thanks for sticking around
00:00:50.720 | and talking about Antarctica.
00:00:52.600 | - Thank you.
00:00:53.440 | I mean, we've gone from the heart of happiness
00:00:55.400 | and sunshine and warmth to a very cold place,
00:00:57.960 | but it's a very good place,
00:00:59.480 | and I'm excited to talk about it
00:01:00.640 | and share the fact that out of all the places
00:01:02.600 | I've ever been in my entire life,
00:01:04.280 | I have never been moved,
00:01:05.920 | I have never been blown away and shocked
00:01:08.960 | as much as I have by my experience in Antarctica,
00:01:11.760 | and I cannot wait to share why.
00:01:13.400 | - So I wanna hear why,
00:01:14.840 | but I will just preface this with,
00:01:17.340 | I'm fairly certain that anyone listening
00:01:18.860 | who's looking for a deal,
00:01:19.840 | there is not a cheap way to do Antarctica.
00:01:22.000 | Can we just set that as guideposts?
00:01:23.840 | 'Cause I don't want people to listen to this,
00:01:24.920 | get really excited, and then be like,
00:01:26.680 | how do I do this on a budget?
00:01:27.920 | - Well, there's two ways of doing Antarctica,
00:01:29.400 | and I'll talk about both really briefly.
00:01:31.280 | One is flying into the continent, which is what I did.
00:01:34.660 | I got very fortunate to go,
00:01:35.940 | and I'll explain more about what that experience is like
00:01:37.960 | and how later.
00:01:39.240 | The second, of course, is cruising,
00:01:40.560 | which is what most of the people
00:01:41.520 | who go to visit the seventh continent do,
00:01:44.120 | and that requires you to leave from Ushuaia
00:01:46.200 | or somewhere in South America,
00:01:48.160 | take a two-day crossing across the Drake Passage,
00:01:50.560 | which is usually a very harrowing experience
00:01:52.860 | for a lot of people,
00:01:53.840 | and then spend up to a week or 10 days
00:01:56.240 | exploring the Antarctic Peninsula
00:01:57.800 | before returning and going back to South America.
00:02:00.060 | So all told, you're on a boat for about 14 days,
00:02:02.280 | seven to 10 of which are exploring Antarctica.
00:02:05.000 | Now, that general two-week experience
00:02:07.520 | or 10 to 14-day experience on a boat
00:02:09.640 | can cost anywhere between 10 and $100,000 for most people,
00:02:14.200 | and there are ways of actually lowering that cost.
00:02:16.560 | If you're very flexible and you are okay
00:02:19.000 | kind of positioning yourself down in South America
00:02:21.480 | for a little bit,
00:02:22.540 | you can jump on a last-minute boat trip
00:02:24.720 | that has a cancellation,
00:02:25.920 | and you don't know where you're going
00:02:27.320 | or which voyage you're on,
00:02:28.380 | but if you're down there,
00:02:29.760 | you can get that sometimes for half-off.
00:02:31.640 | So four or five grand for two weeks,
00:02:34.640 | still a lot of money,
00:02:35.780 | but it's not as bad as it could be
00:02:37.880 | if you were paying full retail.
00:02:40.200 | Now, most of the people who book these cruises to Antarctica,
00:02:43.680 | they do so well in advance,
00:02:44.920 | 12 to 18 to sometimes even 24 months out,
00:02:47.840 | and so when you look at that booking window,
00:02:50.880 | the fact that you might be down in South America
00:02:53.560 | and in two days hop on something that wasn't available
00:02:56.380 | kind of comes as a shock to some people,
00:02:58.300 | but that's the way you can do it on a sort of deal.
00:03:01.000 | Otherwise, expect to plan, budget, save,
00:03:05.000 | and then go eventually down the line.
00:03:06.880 | - The first option you mentioned
00:03:08.080 | that you were fortunate to do,
00:03:09.320 | I assume that starts at a higher floor.
00:03:11.640 | - A little higher.
00:03:12.480 | So there used to be a few operators
00:03:14.200 | who would fly into the interior of Antarctica
00:03:16.600 | who could take you all the way sometimes to the South Pole.
00:03:19.320 | That number has now been reduced down to zero
00:03:21.120 | or one in this case.
00:03:22.200 | A company called White Desert out of South Africa.
00:03:25.100 | White Desert was founded by a fellow
00:03:27.200 | who has done pretty much everything to get to the pole
00:03:29.680 | or around Antarctica.
00:03:31.000 | So he skied, he packed a sled, he took a kite,
00:03:34.480 | next year he's gonna bring a hovercraft.
00:03:36.360 | He's pretty incredible.
00:03:38.000 | And so he set up a polar expedition experience on Antarctica
00:03:43.000 | that is unlike anything else that's out there,
00:03:44.760 | and it does involve flying either an A340,
00:03:47.440 | an Airbus jumbo jet, or a G550, a Gulfstream private jet
00:03:51.920 | from Cape Town down to Antarctica.
00:03:54.220 | And he actually, this is really incredible,
00:03:57.400 | he set up one of the only private blue ice runways
00:04:01.780 | in the world.
00:04:02.920 | What's a blue ice runway?
00:04:04.280 | - I'm just imagining a giant A340 landing on ice.
00:04:07.760 | - I was on it, and it's incredible
00:04:09.560 | because when you land on that ice runway,
00:04:11.960 | which has been groomed for almost a day straight,
00:04:15.120 | they take a snowcat and they pull it along
00:04:17.560 | at about three miles an hour,
00:04:19.040 | and they just build these ruts into the ice
00:04:22.880 | on this glacier.
00:04:23.800 | And they smooth this runway perfectly
00:04:26.600 | so that a jumbo jet, flying at almost 200 miles an hour
00:04:29.880 | when it lands, can land and has the right friction
00:04:32.720 | to grab the wheels and slow it down.
00:04:34.840 | And so it's a 3,000 meter runway,
00:04:37.480 | and so almost 10,000 feet.
00:04:39.360 | And when we landed, we only used half of the runway,
00:04:42.880 | which is insane.
00:04:44.280 | We're landing on an A340 with four engines, fully loaded,
00:04:47.920 | and the thing landed like smooth,
00:04:49.920 | as if you were landing at SFO.
00:04:51.640 | It was incredible.
00:04:52.640 | And then, of course, you step out and you're like,
00:04:54.520 | "Whoa, I'm on Mars, this is not Earth.
00:04:57.000 | "This is something totally different."
00:04:58.520 | Because the advantage of flying into the interior
00:05:01.720 | is that, number one, fewer than 300 people a year do it.
00:05:05.440 | Unless you're a scientist stationed at a base somewhere,
00:05:07.720 | you don't have a chance, as a tourist,
00:05:10.000 | to really go into the interior of Antarctica.
00:05:12.480 | The boats only reach the coast,
00:05:14.360 | and they only go a couple hundred feet inland at most.
00:05:17.200 | This, you're 150 kilometers from the shelf, from the sea,
00:05:21.040 | when you land on the A340 on the ice.
00:05:23.200 | And then you fly around from there in other aircraft.
00:05:26.120 | They use a converted DC-3 Basler, it's called.
00:05:29.440 | These Canadian guys fly it all the way from Canada,
00:05:31.720 | where it's stationed in the Northern Hemisphere, summer.
00:05:34.400 | They bring it all the way down to the Antarctic in the fall,
00:05:38.120 | switches to spring when it gets down to South America,
00:05:40.200 | and then come early November, it's on the ice.
00:05:43.560 | And they fly it all around the Antarctic continent.
00:05:46.200 | You can go to the South Pole.
00:05:47.520 | I unfortunately did not get a chance to do that on my trip.
00:05:49.980 | It's a seven hour journey, one way, in the plane.
00:05:54.220 | And you actually stop along the way,
00:05:55.960 | because you have to pick up more fuel.
00:05:57.960 | This is the crazy part about Antarctica,
00:05:59.520 | that it just boggles my mind.
00:06:01.760 | How do you get fuel?
00:06:02.760 | - Yeah, I was just thinking, there's not a gas station.
00:06:04.440 | - Right, right.
00:06:05.680 | So what they do is, once a year,
00:06:07.860 | they bring a ship from Cape Town,
00:06:09.740 | down to the Antarctic shelf.
00:06:12.240 | And it unloads with this giant crane,
00:06:14.520 | containers of fuel, and a hovercraft, and food,
00:06:18.380 | and whatever else they need to bring.
00:06:20.400 | They leave it on the ice,
00:06:21.640 | and then they begin, basically, a convoy,
00:06:25.200 | to bring that fuel, and that stuff,
00:06:27.680 | down to where it needs to go.
00:06:29.440 | So it goes from the continent's shelf,
00:06:31.400 | all the way down to 83 degrees South,
00:06:33.500 | which is like a 45 day, one way journey.
00:06:36.760 | Can you imagine?
00:06:38.080 | Imagine these guys were like, driving a snowcat,
00:06:40.640 | it's fully sunny all day,
00:06:41.720 | and they're just driving it south for 45 days,
00:06:44.300 | just to drop fuel, so that you can fly
00:06:45.840 | to the South Pole for an hour.
00:06:47.160 | It's mind boggling, right?
00:06:48.320 | The whole thing is incredible.
00:06:49.820 | So, anyway, we didn't get to do that.
00:06:51.340 | We did get to fly those Baslers to the coast,
00:06:53.420 | to see penguins.
00:06:54.740 | And when I say penguins, I mean,
00:06:56.160 | I saw emperor penguins, freshly hatched, little chicks,
00:06:59.940 | who obviously had never seen humans before,
00:07:01.540 | because we were some of the first in the season
00:07:03.780 | to visit their colony.
00:07:05.240 | In the entire year, they maybe will get 150 visitors, ever.
00:07:10.240 | I mean, it's insane, right?
00:07:12.220 | So you literally feel like you're on a different planet.
00:07:14.900 | You're not seeing humans for a week at a time.
00:07:16.820 | You're doing your own thing.
00:07:17.860 | You're in your own space.
00:07:19.700 | And you feel like, wow, I've left Earth.
00:07:21.800 | And yet you come back at night into these luxury digs,
00:07:25.440 | where you're sleeping in an explorer tent with fine linen,
00:07:29.260 | and there's like sparkling water.
00:07:31.540 | And if you want wine, there's wine.
00:07:33.060 | And there's this creature comforts to take care of you.
00:07:35.980 | But the actual logistics of the experience
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00:10:13.340 | - How would someone who I guess probably has saved a lot
00:10:16.260 | even consider going on this?
00:10:17.580 | You said it's down to zero, one.
00:10:19.540 | Is this an expedition that people can go on?
00:10:21.860 | - Absolutely.
00:10:22.700 | So there's one provider, White Desert,
00:10:24.460 | who does this on a yearly basis.
00:10:26.400 | They have three camps that they operate in Antarctica,
00:10:28.840 | in the interior.
00:10:30.140 | And you sign up through either your travel advisor
00:10:32.340 | or directly with them on their website
00:10:33.900 | to sign up for which experience and expedition camp
00:10:36.500 | you wanna stay at.
00:10:37.740 | One is a space-agey kind of camp.
00:10:39.500 | One is located on an oasis.
00:10:42.220 | An oasis in the Antarctic term means a rock outcropping,
00:10:45.180 | not ice.
00:10:46.340 | So that's kind of weird because we think of an oasis
00:10:48.860 | as a place that would have water in a desert, vice versa.
00:10:51.660 | The desert in Antarctica is all the ice all around you.
00:10:54.860 | They only get a few centimeters of snow per year
00:10:57.280 | on this glacial cap.
00:10:59.100 | But the rock facing is only about 2% of Antarctica,
00:11:02.220 | and those are called oases.
00:11:03.620 | And that's where they actually built one of their camps.
00:11:05.900 | You can spend time there,
00:11:06.820 | or you can spend time at their sort of runway base.
00:11:08.980 | But yeah, you basically, you save up your money.
00:11:11.060 | Their trip started around $50,000 US per person,
00:11:14.180 | double occupancy.
00:11:15.060 | So that's per person in a two-person room.
00:11:17.540 | I heard stories when we were down there
00:11:18.860 | of people who had saved up for three or four years.
00:11:21.060 | This was their vacation fund.
00:11:22.500 | They put away year over year over year,
00:11:24.140 | and this was their incredible trip they took.
00:11:26.460 | Some people have crowdsourced or crowdfunded a trip
00:11:28.860 | to go down there.
00:11:29.780 | - Some people have started luxury travel companies.
00:11:32.740 | - And got very lucky and knew the right person
00:11:34.740 | at the right time.
00:11:35.580 | They have an incredible product
00:11:36.540 | that is definitely worth those dollars
00:11:38.260 | and worth that experience.
00:11:39.700 | What's really incredible that I thought
00:11:41.700 | about the Antarctic Peninsula versus the Antarctic interior
00:11:44.420 | is that there's a sort of a circuit you can do
00:11:47.020 | on the Antarctic Peninsula
00:11:48.060 | where you're gonna see the same colonies,
00:11:49.700 | the same islands, the same glaciers,
00:11:51.140 | as every other boat that comes through that area.
00:11:52.740 | Whereas in the interior, you'd wake up in the morning
00:11:54.540 | and then you'd be like, "Well, what do you wanna do today?"
00:11:57.340 | I'm like, "What do you mean?"
00:11:58.700 | And you had a list of options of,
00:12:00.140 | oh, you could abseil down a mountain,
00:12:01.700 | or you could climb a mountain
00:12:02.900 | that maybe only a hundred people ever have climbed.
00:12:06.060 | Or you could take a flight seeing trip
00:12:07.580 | where you go out in the Basler
00:12:08.700 | and you go flight see out to different parts
00:12:11.700 | of the Antarctic interior.
00:12:13.180 | And you could land places where you were the only human
00:12:15.580 | and you were confident in seeing this
00:12:17.340 | that has ever landed there and climbed that rock
00:12:19.660 | or that Nunatuk or that mountain.
00:12:21.100 | It was insane to think that's something
00:12:22.580 | that was just accessible to you that you could do.
00:12:24.740 | So I think that the scale, you are infinitesimally small,
00:12:29.820 | you are insignificant and nothing amongst this ice
00:12:33.100 | and amongst this, wow, it was just so mind boggling for me
00:12:36.300 | and so beautiful and so humbling.
00:12:39.380 | - Do you think if you'd done the cruise,
00:12:40.540 | you would have had a similar experience?
00:12:41.540 | I feel like at this point, you're like,
00:12:43.340 | interior was such a more magical experience,
00:12:46.100 | but I imagine very few people are gonna have
00:12:49.540 | the two-person $100,000 budget, myself included,
00:12:53.140 | to do that, is doing a cruise
00:12:55.700 | and cutting that cost significantly
00:12:58.300 | still gonna be as magical?
00:12:59.980 | - So I personally am not cruised,
00:13:01.420 | but I know a lot of my clients who have,
00:13:03.260 | and I know a lot of my fellow travel industry folks
00:13:06.540 | who have talked about the same life-changing experience.
00:13:08.700 | That they go down to the ice,
00:13:10.140 | they're surrounded by these colonies of penguins,
00:13:11.700 | and even if there are other boats
00:13:13.180 | and there's other people around,
00:13:14.300 | it's just this overwhelming sense of, God, I'm so small.
00:13:17.020 | And I'm just seeing this field of view in front of me
00:13:20.060 | that is so massive, and yet I am a little person.
00:13:23.620 | So I definitely think there's that overview effect element
00:13:25.740 | that people get when they go to Antarctica.
00:13:27.620 | It's exotic, it's crazy, it's uninhabited,
00:13:30.180 | it's so otherworldly in so many ways.
00:13:32.480 | And it's always a place that people come back from and say,
00:13:34.940 | I'm so grateful that I had a chance to do this,
00:13:36.740 | I'm so glad I did this.
00:13:38.020 | No one ever says, well, that was a long boat ride
00:13:40.380 | for nothing, it's always very, very positive
00:13:43.260 | about the experience.
00:13:44.100 | And really, look, no matter which way you choose to do it,
00:13:45.860 | whether you go on a research ship
00:13:46.980 | or a super high-end yacht or boat,
00:13:49.460 | or you go fly in to the interior,
00:13:51.660 | no matter what, your experience will be incredible
00:13:53.260 | because you've never done this before.
00:13:55.180 | This is something absolutely out of the ordinary.
00:13:57.980 | And I asked Patrick, the fellow who set up White Desert,
00:14:01.220 | who's the explorer, who's gone to all the poles,
00:14:03.500 | and he's gone everywhere.
00:14:04.620 | And I said, what is it that keeps you
00:14:05.780 | coming back to Antarctica?
00:14:07.540 | And he couldn't put his finger
00:14:09.660 | on just one particular thing.
00:14:10.940 | It's just this grandness and this opportunity
00:14:13.300 | to explore and see an experience
00:14:16.480 | that is just so overwhelming.
00:14:18.140 | There's just so much down there.
00:14:19.980 | And it's the majesty and the space,
00:14:22.780 | it's just really quite incredible.
00:14:25.060 | - Wow, probably not a good one for the young kids, but--
00:14:27.740 | - Kids eight and older.
00:14:28.740 | - Eight and older, so I've got seven years
00:14:30.660 | to save up for a trip to Antarctica.
00:14:32.380 | - Or just leaving home.
00:14:33.740 | - Yeah, find childcare, we can sneak away,
00:14:36.100 | and find time for a two-week boat adventure,
00:14:38.580 | which means they're probably gonna need
00:14:39.580 | to be a little bit older.
00:14:40.620 | - Exactly.
00:14:41.460 | - I think it's hard to find any family member
00:14:43.080 | that wants to watch your children for two weeks
00:14:45.540 | while you go on a nice cruise.
00:14:47.060 | - Well, the nice part is you could leave them
00:14:48.300 | back in Cape Town, and you could fly with White Desert,
00:14:50.560 | and you're only on the ice for four, five, six nights.
00:14:53.340 | And we'll need the seven years to save for it anyways.
00:14:56.740 | - That's right.
00:14:57.580 | - Yeah, not gonna crowdfund that,
00:14:58.700 | although maybe I can at least call it a business expense.
00:15:00.820 | - You never know.
00:15:01.660 | - So.
00:15:02.500 | - Talk to your tax advisor.
00:15:03.320 | We've had a few on the show.
00:15:04.160 | I will say one last thing, which is that
00:15:06.100 | there's a slight chance that the White Desert folks
00:15:08.820 | are gonna be putting together a very cool,
00:15:11.560 | round-the-world, all-seven-continents-in-one-month
00:15:15.460 | private jet expedition.
00:15:16.860 | And it wouldn't be marginally much more expensive
00:15:20.260 | than one of their traditional trips to the ice,
00:15:22.780 | but it would touch all seven continents
00:15:24.100 | in the span of about 21, 24 days.
00:15:26.540 | So keep an eye out on that.
00:15:28.580 | That may be coming sometime next year.
00:15:31.060 | - Any other parting Antarctica advice?
00:15:33.340 | - One of the things that I felt so grateful for
00:15:37.020 | coming back from the ice was that
00:15:40.140 | the things we take for granted,
00:15:42.160 | having an Amazon delivery, right,
00:15:44.100 | or having trash just taken out,
00:15:46.040 | are truly things of a cooperative society
00:15:49.300 | and of innovative companies that make our lives so easy.
00:15:52.820 | And when you're forced to create that all on your own
00:15:56.540 | in a unique environment like Antarctica,
00:15:58.980 | where their trash is taken out once a year,
00:16:01.940 | and so literally the very minimal trash
00:16:04.180 | I created into Antarctica is gonna stay there
00:16:07.200 | until next December, and then it'll get taken to Cape Town.
00:16:10.940 | Just that logistical idea alone blows my mind.
00:16:13.980 | We live in a space and in a place and in an age
00:16:16.700 | where we're like, these things are just like second nature
00:16:19.580 | and we just think, oh yeah, we can recycle something
00:16:21.860 | or throw something away or get something delivered tomorrow.
00:16:24.100 | And that's an incredible luxury.
00:16:25.820 | I had to go a very far distance
00:16:28.820 | and spend a lot of money and blah, blah, blah
00:16:30.740 | to realize how luxurious I have it at home.
00:16:33.540 | - Wow.
00:16:34.640 | I do have two questions that are probably pretty normal.
00:16:38.460 | How cold and how bright?
00:16:40.420 | - So bright.
00:16:42.060 | Oh my God, so bright.
00:16:43.740 | So the disorienting thing for me was that
00:16:46.380 | obviously we're underneath the Antarctic Circle,
00:16:48.500 | 24 hours of daylight.
00:16:49.820 | The sun does move.
00:16:51.140 | It doesn't just stay right overhead
00:16:52.420 | like it does at the South Pole.
00:16:53.920 | It moves around in sort of like a oval shape.
00:16:56.900 | The vistas are so wide
00:16:58.220 | that it doesn't go down below any of the mountains
00:17:00.740 | 'cause in most places you're 30 to 50 miles away
00:17:03.460 | from mountains that look like you could reach out
00:17:04.940 | and touch them, but they're super far away.
00:17:07.340 | So the brightness is real, obviously from the sun,
00:17:10.940 | but also from sun glare off of the snow.
00:17:12.780 | So you have to wear specialized glasses
00:17:14.580 | that really wrap around any open area,
00:17:17.300 | including your nose, where sun could get in
00:17:19.060 | because otherwise it zaps your eyes.
00:17:21.300 | So even like the moments of like,
00:17:22.820 | I'd like briefly take off my glasses,
00:17:24.640 | I'd be like, whoa, like put them back on
00:17:26.380 | 'cause it's intense.
00:17:27.540 | Sunscreen as well, put sunscreen everywhere
00:17:29.340 | 'cause you will burn any single spot that is exposed.
00:17:33.640 | Cold is an interesting thing.
00:17:35.180 | Cold is relative to how much wind there is.
00:17:37.700 | Standing on ice, obviously you're at about zero Celsius
00:17:40.280 | or a little below.
00:17:41.260 | When the wind blows, you're at very cold very fast.
00:17:44.420 | And they have these things called katabatic winds,
00:17:46.620 | which is basically when the wind picks up
00:17:48.700 | in what would be the afternoon.
00:17:50.440 | There is time by the way, but there's no time zone.
00:17:53.180 | It's very strange.
00:17:54.200 | But anyway, in the afternoons, the winds would pick up,
00:17:57.060 | they'd come from the South.
00:17:58.400 | So blowing from the South North,
00:18:00.020 | from the South Pole up towards where we were,
00:18:02.300 | it could get pretty windy pretty fast.
00:18:04.100 | If so, you get these little shards of ice and snow
00:18:07.720 | that whip off of the glacier
00:18:09.620 | and they feel like exploiting treatments.
00:18:11.780 | They're strong, but with a good wind jacket on
00:18:14.880 | and like a face buffer, you're fine.
00:18:17.180 | So we were out skiing and up sailing
00:18:19.540 | and having fun in strong winds.
00:18:22.260 | Wind chill wise, it could go down to negative 10,
00:18:24.660 | negative 15 Celsius like that.
00:18:27.300 | I never felt cold.
00:18:28.500 | There were days where I felt hot,
00:18:29.860 | where we'd be hiking up and down a glacier or a hill
00:18:32.820 | and I'd like take off layers 'cause it's toasty.
00:18:35.860 | - But because you were working.
00:18:37.180 | - 'Cause we were working out, we were well-dressed.
00:18:40.060 | You definitely take care of yourself in the surroundings.
00:18:43.420 | There was one night where I walked from my pod
00:18:46.220 | where I slept to like the communal pod
00:18:48.700 | where everyone was like having dinner and hanging out
00:18:51.100 | and I wore sandals as a joke and my toes got a little cold.
00:18:54.380 | - And you said time zone,
00:18:56.420 | like is there a time zone in Antarctica
00:18:58.180 | or how does that work?
00:18:59.020 | - There is, so each scientific base that's down there
00:19:00.860 | chooses their own time
00:19:02.100 | based on where their sort of home country is.
00:19:05.200 | So we were closest to an Indian base and they chose GMT.
00:19:09.620 | They chose London time.
00:19:10.620 | We were on London time as well,
00:19:12.580 | but we were technically like one time zone over
00:19:14.700 | and South Africa was one time zone further from us.
00:19:17.460 | There's a Russian base down there that chooses Russian time
00:19:19.940 | even though they're on the other side
00:19:21.020 | of the world from Russia.
00:19:22.600 | There's obviously a lot of US bases
00:19:24.340 | and they choose New Zealand or US time.
00:19:26.920 | So it just depends on where you're sort of aligned.
00:19:30.180 | - But you could conceivably get in one of these planes,
00:19:31.980 | fly from one place to the other in the middle of the day,
00:19:34.140 | but when you get there, everyone's sleeping.
00:19:35.440 | - Totally, and that's the disorienting part
00:19:38.100 | is that like you wake up at two in the morning
00:19:40.180 | to have a glass of water and like it is bright out.
00:19:44.380 | And I'm not saying bright, I mean like sun is overhead.
00:19:46.900 | - Wow, thanks for doing a little bonus here.
00:19:49.900 | - Thank you.
00:19:50.740 | - On a place that most people don't get to go.
00:19:51.780 | - Yeah, I hope more people will get to go.
00:19:53.300 | It is truly magical and fascinating
00:19:55.160 | and well worth your investment.
00:19:56.740 | Save your time, save your money and go.
00:19:58.620 | - All right, thanks for being here.
00:19:59.700 | - Thank you.
00:20:00.540 | - I hope you like this little bonus episode on Antarctica.
00:20:04.860 | I have mixed feelings because now I really wanna go,
00:20:07.980 | but wow, is it really expensive.
00:20:09.660 | So no idea how I'm gonna make that happen,
00:20:11.980 | but it still remains on my bucket list,
00:20:13.500 | so we'll see what happens.
00:20:14.660 | See you next week.
00:20:15.940 | (upbeat music)
00:20:18.520 | (whooshing)
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