”It is no short hop” to Antarctica, Anthony Bourdain said in his sojourn to the Southern Continent in March 2017. “And no easy thing to see it the way it should be seen.” It would prove to be one of his finest hours of television. “The last unf**ked up place on Earth.”
Trust in science. Tony Bourdain’s whirlwind fly in visit aboard a Lockheed C-130 Hercules to Antarctica during Parts Unknown’s ninth season in 2017 showed a different side of the White Continent than that usually portrayed in the popular media. Antarctica, aka ‘The Ice,’ lies at the far ends of the earth; you might say it is the one place on the entire planet where scientists hold sway and the petty politics of an overcrowded, slowly spoiling world seem far away.
It is a place of unrelenting wind and extreme cold, and unexpected dryness. Despite the ice-covered razor-tooth mountains at its core and the sprawling sheets of ice that line its coasts, Antarctica is technically a desert, where it hardly ever snows and precipitation of any kind is as rare as it is anywhere else on the planet. The sun rises, and falls, just once a year.
Most TV programs focus on Antarctica’s unique wildlife and sprawling landscapes, and why wouldn’t they? Penguins, leopard seals, krill, and phytoplankton have evolved to survive some of the harshest conditions known to science, and there are still vast regions — unexplored terrain — yet to feel the human footprint.
At the outset of the program, Bourdain, fully decked out in “Big Red,” the standard — and mandatory — thick, goose-down red parkas of scientific expeditions in the southern continent, huddles in cargo bay of the massive plane, crouching together with the dozens of scientists, engineers, forklift operators and explorers who fly in at the beginning of the Antarctic summer on late September, and then fly out again months later, in late March and early April — right now, in other words — with the onset of the southern winter. Just 100 or so of the more than 1,000 seasonal arrivals tough it out through the long, dark months of winter, when darkness lasts 24 hours and the outside cold can reach as low as -89.2°C (19.3°F in American money), recorded at Vostok Station in July, 1983, some 10.7 °C (19.3 °F) colder than subliming dry ice.
This is a place where carpenters, mechanics, pilots, electricians, riggers, fuel workers, heavy equipment operators, waste collectors and cooks are held in equal esteem with Nobel Prize candidates, climate scientists … and TV celebrities. Everyone is equal. Everyone has a job to do. And if that job isn’t done — whether its wrangling helicopter parts or scrubbing floors — the entire operation is in peril. You get along, or you don’t go. It’s that simple. There’s a camaraderie there, an egalitarianism, a fraternity perhaps unlike any workplace on the planet.
“We’re driving Ivan (the Terra Bus),” the airport shuttle driver at McMurdo Station tells Bourdain on arrival, “forty feet long, 67,000 pounds, 23-years-old, made out of good Canadian steel. Sometimes, the heat actually works. This year, it does.”
“The first year is for the adventure,” a chef and five-time returnee tells Bourdain over a plate of stew, midway through the hour. “The second year is for the money. And the third year is because you don’t get this s**t anywhere else.”
There’s no rat race here, another long-timer explains.
You do get German talk radio, though — and stories of “evil, crazy Nazi cyborgs” (Bourdain’s words) hiding in the ice, awaiting their marching orders from You Know Who.
In Antarctica’s quieter, more pensive moments, Bourdain is brought to near tears, immersed in bittersweet reverie at the savage beauty of the place, humbled by the dignity and professionalism shown by the men and women he finds himself with. “Above us only the stars.”
From here, everywhere points north. There is no east, west or south from Antarctica— only north. This is a place where Mare Pacifica meets the Southern Ocean, where springtime blooms are short and sweet and circadian cycles are thrown out of sync, if only for a moment.
For all his travels around the world, had Bourdain lived to this day, it’s not hard to imagine him making Antarctica his home, his moral and temporal compass, the one place where every trick of the sun is a memory halo. It is, as Bourdain says, achingly beautiful.
Food is important here, don’t kid yourself. Ingredients are flown in, waste is flown out again.
“We don’t really do fancy food,” Bryan Denham, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station’s resident chef, tells Bourdain. “We do basic food well.”
It’s easy to see why line cooks command as much respect as the evolutionary biologist who’s just discovered a new form of life.
“We ate in the galley a lot,” episode producer Josh Ferrell told Zero Point Zero executive Helen Cho in her interviews with crew members for CNN’s Explore Parts Unknown blog. “They have a to-go station, (with) pre-wrapped sandwiches that you’d just throw in your bag. We always had a solid supply of that, but mainly we ate in the galley. The galley is where Tony caught me eating pizza with ranch dressing, which I will not hear the end of.
“By far the best was Rae’s [camp manager Rae Spain, Lake Hoare Research Camp, said to be the best cook on the continent]. “Rae does the best she can with what she has. The pork loin they had was from 2012, and she has a giant vault worth of spices. It was something special — it was a fantastic meal.”
The hour’s highlights: the helicopter flight over an active volcano — the helicopter a bright red against a backdrop of white ice and smouldering ash clouds — an afternoon spent with a colony of Adele penguins, the farewell beach party at the foot of an imposing glacial wall, and life-affirming conversations about what it means to live in extreme conditions at the bottom of the world.
Bourdain’s respect for science — real science, not the populist kind — shines through in virtually every frame. Science’s motto is not “trust us” per se; science’s true motto is the opposite. It is that of the Royal Society: nullius in verba, the Society’s motto after its founding in 1660, roughly translated as: “Take no one’s word.” Trust no one.
Or, if you prefer, trust but verify. That’s trust in verifiable evidence — real evidence, demonstrative evidence, documentary evidence.
Bourdain again, in his own words — words that resonate today, if not more, than they did in 2017:
”At a time when science is held in open contempt … when painfully acquired data is actually being deleted from computers if it conflicts with preconceived policies, these guys are looking at some deep stuff. Where do we come from? How does it all work? How far can we go? What are we, as sentient humans, capable of?”
[pause]
“And what’s on the other side?”
Zero Point Zero longtime production executive Helen Cho’s behind-the-scenes crew interviews of what it took to film in Antarctica:
https://explorepartsunknown.com/antarctica/how-to-film-in-antarctica/
Supplementary reading:
https://explorepartsunknown.com/antarctica/bourdains-field-notes-antarctica/
https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-antarctica/
https://explorepartsunknown.com/antarctica/the-antarctic-biennale/
https://explorepartsunknown.com/antarctica/what-you-should-know-about-climate-change-in-antarctica/
The full episode is available on YouTube at:
CNN