Travel road news

Looking for a cool place to take your students on a field trip? There's no cooler place than Antarctica! And you and your students can go there. You can take a trip to the coldest place on Earth via a handful of hot Internet sites!

Check out some great Web sites that offer "virtual tours" or personal journals of previous trips to the icy land way down under! For starters, and best for younger students, check out the Virtual Tour put together by the folks at the Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA). Your tour will start where most every Antarctic expedition begins, in New Zealand. You'll fly from there to McMurdo Station on the coast of Antarctica and then on to the bottom of the Earth -- the South Pole. At each stop you'll learn some cold, hard facts and a little bit of history. Click on the postage-stamp-size photos for a clearer look at images of the important sites at each location.

In New Zealand, take a look at all the gear you'll need for your trip to the South Pole as you wait for your plane to McMurdo (Antarctica). Your flight is bound to take off on short notice due to the ever-changing nature of Antarctica's weather. And the flight conditions aren't exactly first class! See the photo inside the airplane to get an idea of how cramped conditions will be for your 8-hour flight!
The excitement builds as you see McMurdo from the air. (McMurdo is Antarctica's largest community, with more than 100 buildings!) See a bunch of photos here, including a couple shots of the hut built here by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who established a base here in the early 1900s. Check out the link to lots of other McMurdo photos before heading to the cold ol' pole.
Finally. You made it! You landed at the South Pole in your ski-equipped airplane. Here you'll learn what it's like to live at the South Pole. Learn that South Pole Station is located about 350 feet from the actual geographic South Pole -- but it's moving closer to the Pole all the time! So how cold is it here? You're probably visting in December or in January, when it's summertime at the South Pole. The average summertime temperature here is about 20 degrees below zero (Centigrade). While you're here, be sure to check out the link to "more cold facts"!