The Antarctic It’s a captivating mystery. This distant white continent, about which little is known, still offers an astonishing backdrop to even the most experienced travelers. Marko Mastera 38-year-old photographer and filmmaker, embarked on a month-long journey aboard a sailboat through this icy area and shared all the details of his journey on his social networks. Her videos are hypnotic due to the opulence of her surroundings.and the content creator manages to create just the right atmosphere so that the viewer feels like they are surfing with him from the comfort of their mobile phone. Thanks to these clips, he gained more than 40,000 followers on his Instagram account in just a few weeks.
Marko is what you might call a traveling soul, thanks to his work at the production company BigAir Factory He has already visited more than 40 countries around the world to make various documentaries and audiovisual projects. From his native Bariloche – a place he described as “the best in the world” – he brings with him this love of nature and winter sports, and that’s exactly what he went to Antarctica to look for: to soak up the snow and icebergs and ski in the mountains of the South Pole.
“It was a very intense journey and a dream come true” He assured in conversation with LA NACION and explained in detail how his trip went. He traveled on the boat Ypake II, a sailboat about 20 meters long, under the leadership of the experienced Ezequiel Sundblad, who had already been to the White Continent several times. The boat is special because of what it is Because of the danger of drift ice, it is made of hard metal.
“The sailboats that go to Antarctica are metal boats. If you hit something, nothing happens. Since the bottom is not mapped, You don’t know where there are rocks or where you can go in, you have to explore” said Marko, who shared the trip with nine friends, seven Argentinians and two Australians. They started from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, and crossed the 1000 kilometers of the dreaded Drake Passage, known for its turbulent waters and gigantic waves.
“The weather was severe for the first three or four days of the crossing and the boat moved quite heavilybut it is relative. “I’m used to sailing, I’ve crossed the Atlantic twice,” he admitted. The group’s first stop was the South Shetland Islands, an archipelago in the Antarctic Ocean located about 120 km from the peninsula’s coasts.
“We went to the Island of deceptionwhere there was an abandoned whaling base and an old Spanish base. “It is a crater of a volcano, it is very safe to walk and it is good to get there because you can hide in the calm water,” he clarified. These islands were just a snack on their journey, as Marko and his group then disembarked at dozens of locations on the Antarctic continent.
“We went to the mainland and it was crazy. It was the place that impressed me the most visually, it’s all ice, snow, nature in its purest form.. I love experiencing something so inhospitable and natural that allows for the discovery aspect. Really It’s a privilege to be there“, assured the traveler, highlighting a detail that surprised him the most and perhaps not everyone noticed: the silence. “Antarctica is silence, when there is no wind there is complete silence, the feeling is so strong that it overwhelms you.” It’s like it’s another planet“, he said.
Marko assured that there are some “A lot of misinformation” on the Antarctic continent and this trip allowed him to get to know the peculiarities of the Antarctic continent in detail. “I thought it was an ice desert, but it’s not. There are very high mountains with peaks of 3,000 meters and they are very close to the sea. It’s a very special terrain, it’s like being at the top of the Himalayas but at sea level,” he explained.
“The fauna is incredible, unlike anywhere else in the world, The animals are not afraid of you because there are no people present here.. “You’re surprised to have them so close, they’re getting closer,” he said, listing the sightings of penguins, seals, elephant seals, birds and whales, among others.
According to him, there was not as much snow as expected and the weather was “incredible”. As they hiked through the area, the cracks in the ice posed the greatest danger, so they traveled with ropes tied between members of the group. Because of the hard ice, there is no danger of avalanches, explained one of his friends, who works as a tour guide in El Chaltén in the province of Santa Cruz.
Together with his companions, Mirko took walks through the area and showed all the details. You can see that in his videos Skiing in the mountains, hiking through the vast ice and even swimming in the icy waters of Antarctica.
The photographer didn’t plan to film his daily life, but a friend encouraged him and so he started posting a video every day. Without looking for it, it became very popular on social networks due to the quality of the images. “I’m not an influencer, I used my Instagram as a portfolio. I started uploading the videos because a friend told me about them I don’t know what happened that went viral. When I left I had 8,000 followers and now I’ve passed 50,000. “I want to show the part that is not visible, the immediate, the daily life on the boat,” he said.
Since then, Antarctica has been under strict protection Antarctic Treatysigned in 1959. Scientific research and tourism are allowed on the White Continent, but environmental protection is mandatory, which is why they had to go through an approval process from the National Antarctic Directorate before the trip.
“When I show this place, I do so with a little fear that it will be ruined by tourism. There are many threats, we have to protect it. I want people to see what we have so we can protect it.” These are very vulnerable environments“, he asserted, saying that climate change is already eroding the natural landscape: “We have seen grass in some places and where there used to be ice, there is no longer any,” he warned.
The journey to Antarctica is not all roses. Living on a boat with eight people for a month can be a challenge for even the most experienced traveler. “Life on a boat is an experiment, the world is reduced to a very small place. Everything you do will have an impact.“From food to waste creation to personal relationships, if you fight, you can’t get out,” he said.
Faced with bad weather and distance from loved ones, there is one everyday thing that becomes essential: the food. “Food was not a problem, we ate very tasty food, from lamb and empanadas to fruits and vegetables preserved due to the cold weather,” he recalls.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty of the trip was that he was only able to shower on the boat twice in the entire month. “That’s why I jumped into the ice water, even though it was salty, it was cooling,” he said with a laugh. Marko was able to fulfill his dream of a trip to the white continent and conquered his followers with his content. It remains to be seen what his next adventure will be and how he will satisfy his new community, eager to see the world’s most incredible landscapes.
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