Sunrise today – New Years Eve – was about 3.20 a.m. local time and I awoke at four – Lisa shortly thereafter. Outside we were met with a stunning spectacle! We were entering the Gerlache Strait, named after the great Belgian Antarctica explorer Adrien Gerlache who discovered and mapped this part of the peninsula and offshore islands in 1898.

Brabant Island was on our starboard side and the Danco Coast of mainland Antarctica on port; everywhere snow and ice clung to the hills and the plateaus with hardly a bare piece of rock to be seen. Icebergs large and small, of every shape and colour, were scattered along our path as the bridge crew steered the Minerva skilfully between them. Apart from a few clouds hanging over the mountaintops, which climbed in places to over 2,000 metres, the sky was completely blue for the next several hours and the early morning light was spectacular.

This was the Antarctica we had almost – but not quite – anticipated, and the feelings inspired by our surroundings are difficult to put into words. The sheer scale and extent of it all – this ice covers an area of land much larger than Europe – is mind numbing. No one has ever lived permanently on this landmass, or even close to it, and it was only discovered and explored in recent times – the area we spent the morning in has only been known to mankind for a hundred years, further south even less. And the sheer, stunning beauty of it all; the light, the colours, the textures all-changing as the sun rose in the sky or as one turned one’s head in another direction.