Travel

01/26/16

The Big Melt

Antarctica

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In all mythic, transformational trips--acid, ayahuasca, Mars or across the river Styx--the voyagers must, at some point, face down their deepest fears. For expeditions into Antarctica, the most deeply strange place on Earth, the Drake Passage is where that happens.

This tumultuous realm--where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans converge at a latitude where water unimpeded by land flows in a continuous circle around the globe--was first sailed by Sir Francis Drake, the storied 16th-century English naval explorer. Winds and swells in the passage are commonly "hurricane" on the Beaufort scale. Its harrowing reputation prompted a 19th-century theory that the Drake Passage was a planetary drain leading to the South Pole, a notion Edgar Allan Poe used to terrifying effect in his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle," in which a cargo ship passenger narrates the destruction of his vessel and the events before his death.

Read about Antarctica.

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