Excitement ahoy! My trip to Antarctica and Patagonia is finally approaching – I’ve been waiting for this moment for literally years. Steve and I booked – and paid in full for – our trip back in 2020, and we were originally booked on a voyage that was scheduled to sail in February 2022, but was later postponed for pandemic travel-related reasons (long story). After three years of hardly daring to believe we’re really going on this dream trip – and to be perfectly honest, I still hardly dare to believe it – it seems like it’s actually going to happen. Our final booking confirmation and documents arrived just days ago, and I’m currently elbows deep in all the literature that the expedition company sent, plus planning activities for the Patagonia portion of the trip. (Because people always ask, we’re traveling with Quark Expeditions and very excited.) And naturally my planning and preparation process includes books – lots of them. Here’s my Antarctica and Patagonia reading list, for both before and during the trip:

Before Embarkation Day:

• Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals of Captain R.F. Scott, by R.F. Scott – Robert Falcon Scott is one of the iconic Antarctic explorers and naturally I have his expedition diaries at the very top of my reading list. (Spoiler: not a happy ending.)
• South Polar Times, by R.F. Scott and his crew – The South Polar Times was a magazine compiled by Scott and his expedition crews, and I have this absolutely gorgeous facsimile compilation from The Folio Society. I’ve been saving this to dive into closer to the trip.
• Pole to Pole, by Michael Palin – Palin is a classic travel author and this is his account of an epic journey he made from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Because only a small portion of this book is actually devoted to Antarctica, I may save it to read after the trip – I definitely want to read it soon but it’s not my top priority.
• The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard – A decidedly not starry-eyed account of Scott’s ill-fated expedition. It’s a bit of a doorstopper and I don’t know if I’ll get to it before the trip, so I also downloaded a copy for my kindle.
• Philosophy for Polar Explorers, by Erling Kagge – I’ve already read this, which was a quick and mostly pretty common-sense roundup of life lessons that Kagge acquired during his quest to be the first person to complete the “three poles” challenge (walking to both the North and South Poles and reaching the summit of Mount Everest).
• Whale Song, by Margaret Grebowicz, and Guide to Marine Mammals of the World, by the National Audubon Society – Since the reason we are going to Antarctica is to catch the southern whale migration (hopefully – Gaia permitting) I have whales on the brain right now. I’ve had Whale Song on my TBR for ages and this seems like a perfect time to read it. And I’m not planning to read all of the Audubon marine mammals guide, but I will flip through it and read over the sections on the wildlife we’re likely – or hoping – to see: Antarctic orcas, humpbacks, minke whales, Southern right whales (my dream sighting!), leopard and Weddell seals, etc. I may or may not bring the Audubon guide with me on the trip itself; I judged it worth the weight in my dry bag when Steve and I kayaked the Salish Sea back in 2019, so it has a history of coming with me on trips and it’s been splashed by salt water already. But I have most of my spare ounces dedicated to camera gear, so we’ll have to see if it fits this time.
• Three Letters from the Andes, by Patrick Leigh Fermor – I’ve dreamed of hiking in the Andes since I was very young and I’m so excited to step foot in these mountains on the Patagonia portion of the trip, finally! The tiny corner of Argentina that I’ll be in – Tierra del Fuego – is just a small segment of what these iconic mountains have to offer, and I believe Leigh Fermor’s book focuses on other parts of the mountain range, but I still want to read it before Patagonia.
• Lonely Planet: Antarctica and Moon Guides: Patagonia – Another couple that I won’t be reading from cover to cover but am definitely planning to review before the trip. The Antarctica guide is for information only, really, because our expedition team will be making all decisions about shore landings and we’ll go where we’re told to go. The Patagonia guide, which I gave to Steve for Christmas, will be handy for planning hikes and activities for a few days in Argentina, when we’ll be on our own.
• Antarctica: A History in 100 Objects – Unpictured here, but I gave Steve an art book illustrating… as you can see… the history of Antarctica through a deep dive look at 100 objects. Not sure I’ll get to it before the trip, but I am definitely planning to borrow it from him and read it after we get home, if not before we leave.

En El Mar:

Once we’re actually at sea, I don’t expect to have nearly as much time to read as I do in everyday life – once we get our first sightings of Antarctica I expect all I’ll want to do will be to drink in the views of icebergs, breaching whales and bellyflopping penguins. But there are a few long plane journeys between me and the seventh continent, not to mention four days at sea on the Drake Passage (two days from Ushuaia, Argentina to the first sub-Antarctic islands, and two days back). We will have plenty to do even on Drake days – the expedition teams give wildlife briefings, and Steve and I will also be going through kayak equipment checks with our paddling group, not to mention I’m planning to spend multiple hours per day on the lookout for whale action. But some reading time might still be possible and it’s better to be prepared, right? So I’ve downloaded a suite of kindle content to read on the trip, time permitting. (And Drake Shake permitting, although I’m not prone to seasickness so I’m not really worried about that.)

• South Pole Station, by Ashley Shelby – Thanks to Sara for this recommendation! I had not heard of it, but the summary sounded great, so I downloaded a copy to take with me and read on the Drake.
• Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, by Sara Wheeler – One of the things that I feel like my list is missing is a woman’s voice. Wheeler’s memoir about seven months she spent living on Antarctica sounds wonderful, and the fact that Beryl Bainbridge described it as “essential” is that much more the selling point.
• South!, by Ernest Shackleton – My pre-trip reading is very Scott-heavy, so Shackleton needed a place on the list too. Plus, how can I resist that exclamation point? To paraphrase the great Phoebe Buffay: the exclamation point in the title scares me. It’s not just South, it’s South!
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple – This is actually one of my favorite books, but I haven’t read it for years. I loaned Peanut’s kindergarten teacher my copy and never actually got it back. Kindle to the rescue. If you don’t know what this has to do with Antarctica I’m not telling.
• An Antarctic Mystery, by Jules Verne – I have literally no idea what this is about. But it’s been on my kindle for years, awaiting this trip.
• In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin – A classic of travel literature, which I’m planning to save for the return trip across the Drake, before the Patagonia segment of our adventure.
• Horizon, by Barry Lopez – Lopez is one of the most revered of American nature writers and I’ve never read any of his work. He writes about northern climates much more – he has an entire book about the Arctic, which looks beautiful – but Horizon has some Antarctica sections. I have the audiobook and am planning to listen to it on the plane and at sea, especially if we have a rough crossing and I can’t read my kindle.

Well! Do you think I have enough reading material here? If I get to a third of this, I’ll be lucky – especially once we’re mid-adventure, I doubt I’ll be reading much. But better to have the books and not need them, right?