Later, we nicknamed Rinie the “whale-whisperer”. Something quite magical had happened that afternoon in Wilhelmina Bay, when Rinie Van Meurs, standing in the stern of our Zodiac, hand on the tiller, hundred-mile stare scanning the bay, had found us friendly schools of minke and humpback whales.

A few days earlier, Rinie, polar travel expert and author, had told us we had an especially good chance of seeing humpbacks, which feed close to shore, and which he called the clowns of the ocean for their tendency to “breach” — leap out of the water — for no obvious reason other than high spirits. March, when we visited, is their peak feeding time here, and we learned how they gulp up to 1,000 litres of seawater at once, filtering it for krill, the shrimp-like plankton that they live on.

And suddenly, here they were: humpbacks all around our Zodiacs, three or four together, “spy hopping” — poking their heads up to look at us — then swimming gracefully past, their dorsal fins breaking the water beautifully.

Their ease in the chilly seas only highlighted our clumsiness as, togged up like Michelin men in layers of coldweather clothing topped with a blue lifejacket, ten of us bounced off each other in the cramped Zodiacs in our efforts to get the best picture. Several times, bringing the biggest gasps and flurry of camera clicks, we saw the humpbacks “fluking”, lifting their tails out of the sea, a curtain of water gushing off them as they dived deep under the icy water.

We spent more than two hours with the whales, several adults of around 15 metres and a calf, whose behaviour suggested that they were curious about us and not alarmed: they seemed to enjoy popping up on different sides of our Zodiacs as if to say, “fooled you!” In the dining room that evening, during the daily after-dinner briefing from the expedition crew, we realised how lucky we were. “This is not an everyday thing for us,” said Dr Lynn Woodworth, a conservation geneticist. “In the four years we have done this, we have perhaps seen that sort of behaviour two or three times with minkes and humpbacks — it was genuinely unbelievable.”

Much about Antarctica is, if not unbelievable, at least eye-popping. For a start, you’re visiting a continent that only about 150,000 people — explorers, whalers, scientists and now some 10,000 tourists each year — have ever visited.

And as we hit a Force 12 hurricane in the Drake Passage, the 960km (600 miles) of rough sea that separates South America from the Antarctic Peninsula, I understood why: it was like spending 24 hours on a rollercoaster. “The Drake Passage is probably Antarctica’s most important protective mechanism,” said Bill Davis, a naturalist on the expedition staff. “There are a lot of people who will not come here because of it.”

Nevertheless the Drake Passage route is the quickest and cheapest way for tourists to reach Antarctica. I joined a ten-night expedition out of Ushuaia in southern Argentina on the Akademik Ioffe, a Russian scientific vessel originally designed for underwater acoustic research. While it is still sometimes hired by scientists, it is chartered from December to March by the Australian operator Peregrine to offer trips to the Antarctic Peninsula, carrying up to 100 tourists at a time. Peregrine is a member of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, which requests that ships put no more than 100 people ashore at one time.

First impressions were of a concrete tower block plonked on to a ship: the Ioffe is not a beauty. But inside she’s cosy enough: functional cabins with plenty of shelf space and a tiny shower room; a small bar and lounge, with coffee and tea always available; a well-stocked library; a popular sauna. A dining room where surprisingly good, hearty meals (and fresh fruit and salads even on day ten) were prepared by Australian chefs and served by the cheery Russian crew (the best way round, I felt) and shared at communal tables, with no seating plan. It was a relief not to bother with smart clothes: dress code for the captain’s dinner was “formal fleece”, Dr Woodworth joked.

Best of all, both expedition staff and fellow passengers were as enthusiastic a bunch as any I have travelled with. We passengers were a fairly even split of Australians, Americans and British, with a handful of other nationalities, but with a wide range of ages — from 12 to 82 — a good mix of singles and couples, and diverse motivations.

Many, such as Tim Gillingham, 50, an American now living in Australia, admitted to a fascination with Scott, Shackleton and the early explorers. Ann and Tony Salmon, in their sixties, from West Sussex, were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary and were keen to see whales.

Myres Tilghman, 29, a Nasdaq trader from Baltimore, wanted to visit all seven continents by the age of 30 — this was his last one. Carl Jones, 33, a Briton living in Melbourne, had won A$16,000 (£6,500) on Australia’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and was using the money to finance his second major ambition, Antarctic travel. Louisa Garnier, 30, from South London, had gone travelling around the world after a car crash left her with compensation money and needing a change of direction.

The youngest party member (and the only child on board), Oli Forsyth, 12, from North London, was with his parents Nikki, 43, and Nigel, 47, a family of inveterate travellers who had long wanted to visit Antarctica. They held us spellbound in the bar one night with the story of how they had been on the British Airways flight to Nairobi in December 2001 that nearly crashed when a man grabbed the controls — and how they had vowed that this would not put them off travelling.

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