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...crossed the passage over 40 times, and this is the worst I've ever seen it," was the promising summary from our expedition leader Aaron, as 20-meter waves smashed over the bow of our ice vessel. The wind was bordering on cyclone intensity and, with another lethal wall of icy water rearing up, I began to appreciate why the fierce 1,000-kilometer Drake Passage?renowned for consuming ships as they round Cape Horn?is considered one of the fundamental barriers to Antarctic tourism. The others are exorbitant cost, the remoteness and (should you ever forget it) the cold...
...nearly 15,000 people a year make the schlepp. Antarctica stands at the lofty apex of adventure travel; it is the loudest of holiday boasts. Ninety-seven percent of its visitors depart from the southernmost Argentine port of Ushuaia, where about 20 international tour operators sell cruises on 100-meter ice vessels, each carrying about 100 passengers. Other trips leave from Christchurch, New Zealand; Hobart, Tasmania; and South Africa's Cape Town. All offer a beguiling array of experiences from close-up views of mothballed whaling stations to courtesy calls at scientific ghost towns inhabited by haggard meteorologists and bearded...
...mercifully warm refuge from the icebound expanse was the 117-meter, scientific-cum-tourist ship Akademik Ioffe, with its hot breakfasts and convivial bar. In a place where 15-story glaciers regularly shed apartment-size chunks into the ocean, I was glad of this sanctuary. I gingerly asked Kathy, the expedition's kayaking instructor, how long I would survive in the near-freezing water if I fell in without wearing a wet suit. "About six minutes or so," she said...
...serious failure in security arrangements "the understatement of the year." January 1994 Cambodian student David Kang runs toward Prince Charles and fires two shots from a starting pistol at an event in Sydney. Charles displays considerable sangfroid as his would-be assailant is wrestled to the ground a meter away from him. He maintains that security was "well handled" by Australian police. February 1994 American prankster James Miller paraglides onto the roof of Buckingham Palace, then strips to reveal that below the waist he's wearing only a coat of green paint. Scotland Yard say the incident doesn't raise...
...sunbaked Caribbean island of St. Croix, where his smiling visage now adorns a giant billboard at the airport, Duncan's first sport was swimming, not hoops. Like his older sister Tricia, who swam backstroke in the 1988 Olympics, he was a high ranked amateur in the 400 meter freestyle. But after Hurricane Hugo destroyed the island's only Olympic pool in the fall of 1989 - and his mother Ione died of breast cancer several months later - Duncan never again competed in the water. He only started playing organized basketball in high school, but as a senior Duncan caught the attention...