The White Continent
by Lauren Arzbaecher
Illustration by Cailin Hall
Lauren Arzbaecher for Fools Magazine
We departed from the southernmost tip of Argentina, the boat docked in the small port town of Ushuaia, ominously nicknamed “The End of the World.” It was a two-day trip across the Southern Ocean to the Antarctic Peninsula through the notorious Drake Passage, known to be so rough that one in five passengers experiences seasickness. Brandishing ourselves with armfuls of pressure point bracelets and all the Dramamine we could take, we prepared for the worst. Two days of suspiciously low waves later, the captain came over the intercom to announce that we would be reaching our anchorage point off the peninsula in around an hour, and that he would like to thank us all for bringing good weather with us in our travels across the “Drake Lake.”
Though the ship was a smaller size to navigate around any stray ice flows, our trip was still accompanied by around 200 other guests. People from countries all over the world had joined in on the expedition, but most of those on the trip to “The White Continent” were travelers from the US and UK. This moniker for Antarctica seemed fiercely ironic while I sat on a boat mainly filled with white people. The realization that wealth could still divide people on an unpopulated continent was more unsettling than any seasickness.
My family has traveled to so many places that it became easy for me to forget the majesty and privilege of travel. The facts were these: my father built up his wealth working in a higher-up position for 30-plus years that allows our family the means to travel, and even though it isn’t money I worked to earn, I benefit from it. Being appreciative of the opportunity to see the world while grappling with the weight of spending such a large amount of money while wealth inequality in the US continues to exacerbate is a tricky tightrope to walk—though certainly a fortunate tightrope to even be upon.
As laughter and arguments overheard throughout the trip revealed, many other passengers also came as families. Some couples were “seeing the world” in retirement, others taking their first steps abroad. Ages ranged wildly, with people on board between 7 and 88 years old. Throughout the two-week trip, my family became friends with a few of the guests, but mainly revelled in the joy of people-watching. We often holed up at a table in the main lounge area playing one of the games my mother had packed in her suitcase—Yahtzee, Sequence, Rat-a-Tat Cat, or others—but were more focused on the conversations of those around us than the game itself. With little to no Wi-Fi available during the voyage, imagining the history of people’s relationships and what their lives were like outside of the boat was our own form of entertainment.
One night during dinner, we were sitting a table over from an older couple from upstate New York, the wife of which we had overheard say “I don’t do lines” a few nights before when she came upon a small wait to get into the dining room. In almost every way, they were the complete opposite to my family. Quiet, overly concerned with decorum, only wore designer labels. My family had packed one “fancy” look each, often talked with our mouths full or too loudly, and was more focused on having a good time than anything else. As they eyed my father who donned cargo shorts to dinner, we could sense the judgement towards us emanating from their swirling wine glasses. Our waiter, Arthur, who we had become close with, then came around to take dessert orders. My family debated between a selection of ice cream flavors, chocolate cake, or a cheese plate—the clear choice for a table of Wisconsinites. Once Arthur had finished with our table, he moved over to our newly appointed enemies.
Cailin Hall for Fools Magazine
My family continued our conversation, finishing off the last of our nightly bottle of wine until we heard the word “orange” from one table over. Instead of any of the wonderfully crafted dessert options, this woman asked for an orange for dessert. Yes, an orange. Strange, but harmless enough. But she didn’t stop there. She then proceeded to request the fruit be cut into precisely four slices, with the peel left on. Arthur nodded in polite appeasement and walked off to the kitchen to enter the orders. We sipped our wine through smiling cheeks, trying to hide any laughs that might escape over the oddity that was occurring next to us. A few minutes later, Arthur returned with a plate containing the lone orange, cut just as the woman had asked. Before he could step away, she scrunched up her nose as the word every person in the service industry dreads came out of her mouth: “Actually…” Even though the orange had been brought to her exactly as dictated, she requested it be taken back to the kitchen to be cut twice more, making eight total slices. For optimum citrus consumption, I suppose? We needed another bottle of wine to quell our giggling.
Even as we joked about the quirks of some of our fellow passengers, I couldn’t escape the commonalities between us all. No matter how easygoing our family may have been in comparison to those who requested ornately cut fruits, we were still on this cruise. To Antarctica. To our seventh continent. Truths that only apply to a very select few. Sure, we may be a carefree, Target-wearing, Midwestern-rich family, but at the end of the day, we are still a rich family. Travel displays a different form of privilege than an expansive collection of Hermès bags, but both require wealth.
The disparities between the guests continued even when we were off the boat. With every penguin or seal that we saw, my sisters and I squealed, fascinated by the wilderness we were fortunate enough to be privy to. I burned through two memory cards taking as many pictures as I could. Yet the more wildlife colonies we saw, the more cruise guests cut their expeditions onto the Antarctic mainland short, simply glancing at the thousands of animals in front of them as if this spectacle was something they could find in their own backyard. As if to say “eh, I’ve seen enough of these already.” They would look around for 5-10 minutes, then get in the tender to be shuttled back to the ship for a snack, or a nap, or both. The warmth of the boat was apparently more appealing than being within spitting distance from some of the rarest species in the world. It was difficult for me to comprehend the logic behind this, but even some of my own family members began to subscribe to this warped mindset as the vacation went on.
Cailin Hall for Fools Magazine
Towards the tail end of the trip, we visited a beach that hosted a king penguin colony of around 80,000 breeding pairs. The landscape was littered with black and white dots for miles, each one of them a penguin. And even if you couldn’t see them, you could hear them. One thing Happy Feet gets right is how much penguins like to sing. Most of our excursions on land were deafening from all of the squawking. I stood in silent awe of the scene next to my father, who, after a few glances through his binoculars, turned to me and said “Well, if you’ve seen one penguin, you’ve seen them all.” I just about pushed him into the ocean. What we were seeing was otherworldly and he was just looking towards the next thing, playing a sort of wildlife bingo. His perspective was most definitely shaped by the concept of vacation as a time simply to enjoy—or party—and the frequency of travel he has been able to experience for a majority of his life. The ability to travel comes with privilege, and privilege comes with blindspots.
I am not a perfect traveler. I reckoned with my own blindspots during the last days of the trip, questioning what I took for granted during the voyage. My sisters and I often joked about how small our rooms were on board, but for a ship, these cabins were above average quality and cleaned daily. We were essentially living in a floating hotel, and a nice one at that. There had been three lectures available for guests practically every day of the trip, providing information on subjects spanning from the biology of animals in Antarctica to historical tales of previous expeditions to the continent. Even though learning about new parts of the world and the people, animals, and culture within it is my favorite aspect of traveling, I didn’t attend every lecture. My family and I cherry-picked the ones that seemed the most interesting, opting more often than not to miss a lecture in order to sleep in, go to the onboard spa, or watch a movie in our cabins. When there was free time for sightseeing, I didn’t always go up on deck to look for wildlife or take in the majestic surroundings. If the weather wasn’t ideal or there weren’t any animal sightings, I chose to read, edit photos, play a game, or the most frequent option, nap. I am not a perfect traveler.
But does the perfect traveler exist?
Socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors all contribute to the total costs of seeing the world. If you were to truly consider and effectively account for all the ramifications that come with traveling, you couldn’t feasibly travel at all. It exploits too many entrenched issues that cannot be tackled on an individual level. I was deeply uncomfortable with the level of disdain some of the other passengers were willing to show towards the smallest inconveniences in such a privileged space, and I wanted to be able to fix the problem myself. My head filled with plots to take over the bridge and sail the ship back to the US and bring everyone who had never left their home country aboard. Sadly, no mutiny could be achieved.
In the middle of the cold Southern Ocean, I realized how I might start to quantify what my travels mean to my own growth. Being grateful for the wealth of knowledge and emotional expansion one gets from exploring different parts of the world and using that knowledge when I return home. Not just ask for more orange slices.