Broken edges of a land time locked in ice. Beneath all of the thousands of feet of frozen glaciers, pushed down against the lithosphere lays the continent of Antarctica. Trapped in its sediments, the history of living creatures remain as fossils of former inhabitants that lived on the ocean floors or transited across the southern hemisphere of Gondwanaland. No time for the gentle smoothing associated with more temperate climates, everything looked like broken porcelain. The steep cliffs of Deception Island where Shackelton left his crew as he crossed the Drake passage to South Georgia Island from where we had just come. The massive fjords with its steep sides of the Danco coast, the Gerlache Straits. The Amundsen Sea which we floated on in kayaks, zodiacs and the comfort of our vessel teased us with smooth bays and inlets along the western shores of the Antarctic peninsula.