Antarctica becoming a hip new vacation destination

As the sun sets and the cloudy sky melds with the glaring white of the frozen terrain, tourists trudging in single file line marvel over blue glaciers in Antarctica, a hip new vacation destination.The group paid a

small fortune — $3,000 per head — for a quick five-hour visit to the frozen continent, arriving by plane.

“Coming to Antarctica was a dream for me and my wife,” American John Reiss, 81, said as he stood beside his wife Sharon, 73.“We signed up a couple years ago, but we couldn’t get on it, so we went on a waiting list. This year we signed a year in advance and we made it.”The couple boarded a cruise ship in Florida, where they live, to head to Punta Arenas in the south of Chile, where they caught a two-hour flight to Antarctica.

Penguin colonies

The tourists visited the island of King George, in the South Shetlands archipelago and the neighboring Russian station of Bellingshausen with its out-of-place Orthodox church.They also saw the small Chilean hamlet of Villa Las Estrellas home to just 64 people and colonies of penguins.Another option is to tour Half Moon Island, a habitat of seals and penguins that is home to the Argentine base of Teniente Camara.There they can sip a hot cup of coffee, send a postcard and get their passport stamped with a picture of a krill, a kind of small shrimp that is the symbol of the base.

“It was a fantastic experience. The first thing that makes this trip special is being able to visit such a well-preserved, untouched continent,” said Canadian Maureen Malone, 69.“The second is being able to see the penguins. Everybody loves the penguins. Also, I was able to see around the bases, see how the different countries are sharing the region.”