In Antarctica, your journey is where the continent allows

It was a question that barely needed asking, and one that was met with fervent affirmation when it came: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have received a radio communication saying that favourable ice conditions in the Weddell Sea, on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, mean that we can try to reach Snow Hill Island. It's home to the only emperor penguin colony on this side of the continent, what do you think?" When the clapping and clinking of glasses subsides, our expectations can hardly be tempered by the crew's caveats: the famous penguins may have already left the island; the ice conditions might change; and this is only the second time in the history of the Antarctic Dream'ssoutherly voyages that an attempt is possible. The first one failed. To the 56 passengers on board this converted Chilean naval vessel, none of that matters: if there is even a slight chance of seeing the emperors then we are willing to take it. That they were never on our original itinerary - a classic route down the west of the peninsula - makes it all the more appealing. We are now roughly following the Swedish scientist-explorer Otto Nordenskiold's fraught 1902 expedition through the perilous Weddell Sea to Snow Hill. "The weather had changed as if by magic; it seemed as though the Antarctic world repented of the inhospitable way in which it had received us the previous day, or maybe it merely wished to entice us deeper into its interior in order the more surely to annihilate us," wrote the Swede at the time, though he could easily have been writing on board our own ship today. "At all events, we pressed onward, seized by that almost feverish eagerness which can only be felt by an explorer who stands upon the threshold of the great unknown." Our first stop on the continent proper is at the Esperanza research station. This is in Hope Bay, so named because hope was the only commodity available to three crew members stranded here when Nordenskiold's expedition turned to disaster. Today it is home to a very modern Argentinean research base. While the Swedes survived the long nights of winter by building a stone shack and roasting penguins, the 10 families who are semi-permanent residents today have a school, a small church and, improbably, a tiny casino. In 1978 Emilio Palma was born here - the first human ever to enter the world on the white continent. His birth, coupled with this continued habitation, was intended to bolster Argentina's claim to its slice of Antarctica, part of which overlaps with territory claimed by Chile. The reason why they'd want it is complicated, but the white continent was once very green, so it's not unreasonable to believe that there is an ocean of oil beneath its protected, frozen crust. Whatever their true motivation, the residents of the Esperanza station enjoy a relatively comfortable life, especially during the austral summer when it never gets dark and the average temperatures nudge just above freezing. Conversely, in 1903, when Nordenskiold was finally reunited with his men who had wintered in Hope Bay, he thought he had discovered an aboriginal people living in Antarctica. Trudging through the white vastness several kilometres south of this spot, the captain saw three figures on the horizon and believed that the black-haired, dark-skinned men were of a native tribe. When they offered a relieved "hello" in Swedish, though, the greatest scientific discovery of the age was discarded. Instead, by pure chance, he had stumbled across his countrymen, who had been staggering south in rags, making a final, desperate attempt to find their party. The spot of this miraculous rendezvous is still known as the Cape of Well Met, and is one several important sites in one of the most unlikely, and least-told accounts of Antarctic survival. However, it's a fantastic tale in a place where the extraordinary is the norm; Antarctica is full of statistics that are almost incomprehensible. It's no surprise that it's the coldest continent but it's also the driest, windiest and highest. The average altitude is higher than Asia despite the Himalayas and higher than neighbouring South America with the Andes.