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Article: Over Antarctica: A $1,599, one-hour look at a continent on ice.
- Article from:
- Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
- Article date:
- January 22, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Chicago Tribune. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Alan Solomon
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile _ It isn't the way to do Antarctica.
From the air, penguins look like poppy seeds. Sea lions, in the words of our naturalist-guide, look like yellow smears. If we'd seen a whale _ and we didn't _ it wouldn't have looked like much of a whale.
On a flyover, no one sets foot on the continent. No one smells the reality of what necessarily occurs when thousands of birds, no matter how cute, concentrate in one place and there's no place else to go.
From an airplane, the only sounds are the voice of the narrator and the clatter of cameras and the muffled drone of engines.
And yet _ it was ...