Father and Daughter Meet Mother Nature in Antarctica

(Dec. 10) -- "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

So goes one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes, and one my 14-year-old daughter, Claire, and I applied full force recently.

In August, Claire, who for two years has been a student journalist for Time for Kids magazine, heard about an essay contest. Quark Expeditions, a leading polar expedition company, had teamed up with SeaWorld to offer the chance for two to go on a spectacular 2 1/2 week Antarctic expedition to Snow Hill Island to see the emperor penguins aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov, the historic Russian icebreaker.

The essay asked entrants 21 or older to write about their efforts to help preserve wildlife, so I wrote about Claire's volunteer efforts at the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center and some of the columns I've written about the Bolsa Chica Wetlands here in Huntington Beach, Calif., where we live.

Shortly after the contest closed, we received the phone call: We'd won. With little more than a month to plan, we prepared for the journey.

Claire and I arrived in Ushuaia ("the world's southernmost city") at the bottom tip of Argentina about 36 hours after leaving our house. We toured the gorgeous Tierra del Fuego National Park and the next day boarded the venerable ship along with about 90 other passengers, including celebrity guest Julie Scardina, animal ambassador for SeaWorld.

Soon after leaving the port city of Ushuaia, we were crossing the Drake Passage, called the roughest stretch of sea in the world.

For 48 hours, we rolled and bounced about our cabin ("Price of admission to Antarctica," a British passenger chuckled over an abbreviated dinner one evening) before we entered the Antarctic Sound. Passing gorgeous blue icebergs and glaciers, we soon arrived at Snow Hill Island, and the Kapitan created a parking space for itself by cutting into the ice. We took an ice walk after arrival for about an hour and saw lots of emperor penguins in the distance checking us out, as if they sensed that the aliens had arrived.

Next day, the helicopters flew us from the ship to the emperor penguin colonies. There, we witnessed, up close enough to touch, literally thousands of emperors and their chicks. It was amazing. We did the same thing two days later, communing with these special creatures in an icy, desolate, pristinely beautiful place that hardly any people have ever visited.

From Snow Hill Island, we set sail for Devil Island, Whalers Bay at Deception Island and a number of other mysterious, tucked-away refuges where Adelie penguins, Gentoos and chinstraps all thrive -- beautiful, foreboding places that almost dare you to try to survive what they offer up, be it cold, rough seas or dense, rocky shores.

We saw the prettiest sunsets I've ever witnessed, more icebergs and glaciers and even Weddell seals. We cruised around in Zodiac boats, exploring life among the smaller hunks of ice floating in this chunky sea. We enjoyed numerous educational presentations on board the ship ("This is an expedition, not a vacation," I was told) and enjoyed wonderful meals with interesting people.

We watched nature documentaries, observed an on-board artist document the animal life around us, and watched one of the last great Russian icebreakers crush through tons of ice as we plowed back toward Ushuaia.

We enjoyed a faraway place that was so exotic, pure and intoxicating that we cannot wait to go back.

As a travel writer, this was certainly an experience to treasure. But as a parent, it went beyond anything I could have imagined. This was a chance to experience something with my daughter that I hope both of us will never forget -- a journey to a far-off place of dreams, an icy paradise dominated by penguins and blue-ice mountains.

A place where I watched my little girl do things she may have never imagined, but will most certainly do again some day.