People made it all the way to Hawaii on wooden canoes over 1,000 years ago. But people didn't make it to Antarctica until the year 1895, and it took specially-built ships to do it. The closest bit of land to Antarctica is called Tierra del Fuego, and it looks like a little curling finger at the bottom of South America--and this is still over 600 miles away!
Because Antarctica is covered in slippery ice and snow, it's really hard for airplanes to land there, so sailing between Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica is still the best way to get there. But that doesn't mean it's easy. That 600-mile stretch of water between it and South America is called the Drake Passage, and it includes the roughest seas in the world.
The water in the Drake Passage is relatively shallow, and it's the only spot where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans touch. If you've ever been to the beach and seen how the waves get bigger and fall over themselves as they approach the shore, you can apply that thinking to the Drake Passage. All the energy in the ocean hits that shallow water and turns into huge waves, sometimes over a hundred feet tall. If you hit rough seas like that while you're sleepig in your bunk, you can get thrown right out of bed!
