Our last night on Seabourn Venture, disembarking in Ushuaia, a full day waiting in Buenos Aires, and sleeping the whole way home to JFK.

Our final stop was New Island in the Falklands, a long hike out to a huge rockhopper penguin colony sharing its cliffs with more albatrosses than I could count.

A day on West Point and Saunders Islands in the Falklands, with rockhoppers and albatross chicks nesting together, tea in the garden, and three penguin species on one beach.

Our first Falklands stop was Stanley, with a bus tour of town, fish and chips at the pub, whale bones everywhere, and the best gift shopping of the trip.

Antarctica gave us three penguin species. South Georgia and the Falklands gave us four more, plus chicks at every age along the way.

New Year's Day at Fortuna Bay, where Shackleton came down from the mountains, and thousands of king penguins with molting "oakum boy" chicks.

The closest call with a whale on our entire trip happened while I was holding an espresso martini.

An abandoned whaling station, king penguins, seal pups, and Shackleton's grave on our first South Georgia landing from Seabourn Venture.

Two sea days to South Georgia meant a full biosecurity check, a rat-detection dog, and running the ship dark to protect its wildlife.

It didn't read as an iceberg at all. It looked like solid land.

Brown Bluff, our final day in Antarctica — 20,000 pairs of Adélie penguins, a calving glacier that sent penguins running, and a leopard seal hunt caught on drone.

Check with your doctor first, seriously. Mine rolled his eyes when I asked.

I'm a swimmer, a Scorpio, and water is basically home. There was no version of this trip where I skipped the plunge.

A missed landing that I didn't even notice was missing, until I went back and checked.

The itinerary you're handed is a plan, not a promise. Here's what that actually means once you're on board.

Snow, ice, and thousands of penguins. This was the day that finally looked like the Antarctica I'd pictured my whole life.

Ask anyone who hasn't done an Antarctic crossing what the days on the Drake Passage are actually like, and you'll usually hear some version of restful. Sea days, nothing to do, maybe a book and a nap. That is not even close to what actually happens.

The trip down to the end of the world started with a 3am wakeup call, a sleepy bus ride to the airport, and a very early morning JetSmart charter flight out of Buenos Aires.