South Pole on bucket list of rich Chinese tourists – with trips costing US$100,000
Chinese tourists to Antarctica are increasing in numbers as wealthy adventurers spare no expense to tick the South Pole off their list. A tour guide takes intrepid elderly adventurers to the bottom of the world
As a tour guide for wealthy Chinese tourists, I have heard polar guides exclaiming, “We really don’t understand why tourists want to go to the South Pole.”
According to Russian “polyarniks” – the hardened “polar men” who work on Antarctic stations: “It is a nightmare to fly to the Pole, and there is nothing to see there. Why don’t they pay the same money to go to see the mountains or glaciers around the Antarctic coast instead?”
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The pragmatic polyarniks do not get the idea of “bucket list” travel – that to the tourist who can afford it, a photo at the South Pole is worth paying for. A trip to the South Pole remains the most exclusive of all Antarctic destinations, costing around US$100,000 per person (local flights and up to 10 days’ accommodation, depending on weather, included).
Travel is as much about numbers as it is about experiences to high-end Chinese tourists. Waiting for a flight to Antarctica from Cape Town in South Africa, our eight-person South Pole tour group eats at the same Chinese restaurant in Cape Town twice a day, every day for three days (Western food is consumed only under extreme duress) and dinner conversation revolves around one’s trips, past and future – how many countries visited, how big the group was, and how much it all cost.
“I have visited every country and territory in the world,” says one of my clients, Mr Deng. “Lao Wang [Old Wang] still has five to go; I beat him.” He pokes his faithful travel companion. Wang, a bear of a man, sporting a black Mao hat and an Armani jacket, does not seem to mind, and grins.