Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica

Too much introspection, not enough about Antarctica and the people there. I don't care that the author gave up alcohol or suffers from depression back in the UK.

I've returned a bit to my Polar obsession, since reading Brother Ice earlier this year. A continent full of ice, beautiful, frozen, cruel, alternating between the eternal night and the eternal day. The romantic ideal of many late heroes.

Terra Incognita is a travelogue interspersed with the history of men on Antarctica. In the mid 1990s Wheeler visits the many international science camps that are distributed over the continent. We learn of all the minute details life on Antarctica entails. We hear of exploding toilets, frozen beards, many delayed flights, dart games over VHF radio, igloo sleepovers, hygiene without showers. In small quarters, shared tents and huts, we meet all these characters - mostly scientists, but also a few escapists - who keep returning to the ice, again and again, despite it's many hardships.

Unsurprisingly it's quite the boys-club down there. Though the unwelcomness that Wheeler experiences at the British camp, really reads like quite a little nightmare. Yet she bites back in her writing, keeping it sharp and funny at the same time.

Reading this book made me curious about how life down in Antarctica has transformed in the last 2 decades.