No, it's not free from all laws. Visitors are governed by the laws of their own country.

In practice it operates as a "common heritage of mankind" with all disputes resolved "in house" or by the UN's international court and all of the scientific endeavors undertaken there are exempt from the law as long as they fall within the guidelines of the treaty.

No. You can go. Book a tour. Sail a boat. Fly your plane.

This is funny because no, you can't at all. Did you expect me to not call you out for this blatant lie?

Try to book a vacation to Antarctica and see how far you get. Do you have any proof of any individual visiting Antarctica who wasn't a part of the international research that goes on there and who was allowed to do so freely?

Nobody has every found any of that.

Notice the words "there are reports". I'm not stating any of this as fact my friend.

They links you provided were not blurry. Are you even looking?

Ha! Now you're just fucking with me. Here's an experiment - go to google Earth, find Antarctica, and zoom in. What do you see? I can read the license plate of the car parked outside my building but when you zoom into Antarctica it is blurry as hell. Try it yourself.

No, you're telling us you haven't really searched. Knock yourself out

Did you look at your own link? Try to zoom in, you can't at all. No detail. It's like you're proving my point.

Of course planes can fly over. And boats go there all the time.

Source on either of these claims? Flights all around the world seem to avoid flying over Antarctica even when it would apparently be more convenient for them to do so.

An education, apparently.

Nice one man, you really put me in my place.

Yes, chartered and sanctioned trips are the only kind allowed. No one can visit without being approved by the relevant authorities.

Met lots of people sailing their own yachts while I was in Antarctica.

I would love to see some evidence of this but I won't be holding my breath.

Met lots of people at the south pole who flew in on private charters, usually booked through ANI: http://www.adventure-network.com/

I'm not saying you literally can't go there at all, I'm saying that you can only go on approved/sanctioned trips to very specific locations. You are not free to explore the continent. There are no public airports, you can't fly overhead without being approved, and despite your claims about private boats being able to dock there I have seen no evidence whatsoever of this being the case. And I've looked.

But I've been there, I've done these things. I have the photos.

Do you have the photos? Also, where did you go? My guess would be the Antarctic Peninsula since that's the relatively small area where just about every possible trip to the continent is limited to.

First of all, thank you for the links. But again, every single one of those expeditions was pre-approved and followed very specific routes.

The first one: "Authorisation: Full permissions were granted for this specific expedition".

Second one: That was to the North pole and went through Alaska. Has nothing at all to do with Antarctica.

Third one: Not really many details at all, not even the full extent of his crew is known according to your link. If you try searching for details of the expedition you come up mostly empty.

Fourth one: Again, these are for expeditions and again, you need to receive clearance from the relevant authorities. According to your own link: "All Antarctica-bound yacht expeditions must be authorized by the operator's own country or the vessel's flag state."

A few other details I've found in your own links:

"Over the years significant protocols and regulations have been agreed between the parties and enacted into domestic law. For example, under UK law, any British vessel or any person on a British expedition to Antarctica must have a permit and strict penalties exist for proceeding south of 60° without one."

"Although Antarctica covers over 17 million square kilometres, the vast majority of yacht visits are to the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula which stretches towards the tip of South America."

"There are a number of areas in Antarctica which are protected due to their outstanding environmental, scientific, historic, aesthetic or wilderness values, or ongoing/planned scientific research. These have been designated Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPA) and a special permit (Section 9), applied for in advance, is required to enter them. A number of further areas have been designated Antarctic Specially Managed Areas (ASMA). The purpose of ASMAs is to assist in the planning and coordination of activities within the specified area, avoid possible conflicts and minimise environmental impacts. ASMAs may include areas where activities pose risks of mutual interference or cumulative environmental impacts, as well as sites or monuments of recognised historical value. Individual Management Plans are prepared for each ASMA. Entry into an ASMA does not require a permit, but activities should be guided by the Code of Conduct set out in the Management Plan. Please note that within an ASMA there are likely to be smaller ASPAs requiring a permit for entry."

TL;DR: It isn't the open and shut case you're making it at all and you cannot just go exploring the continent as you please, nor can you visit by plane or boat without being fully approved in advance.

Yachts visit where they do because, well, that's where the ocean is. Accessibility.

The ocean surrounds the continent. It's a massive island - yet the yachts only approach from one side and land in one section of it.

ASPAs and ASMAs are like, <0.1% of the entire continent, and they're protected for a reason -- usually because there's some biological study going on and they don't want people to muck with it.

This isn't true. Have you ever looked at the size of some of these areas? Those are all just on the first page out of seven. Tens of thousands of kilometers in some cases - that's quite a bit more than .1%, I think we can agree.

Yes, I've spent the last 20 years living there and studying it. Got the t-shirts.

Okay well in that case you're either most likely in the one area where visitors typically go or you were there working for the government/military in some capacity since no civilian populations live there to any substantial degree.

not just along the coast. Book a trip. Done.

Which coast? The Antarctic Peninsula?

Can you arbitrarily land on someone's airstrip?

Yes but you can't land on any airstrips, is the point. There are none open to the public.

Nature might.

So you're telling me you can just stroll up to Deception Island, jointly run by Argentina, Chile, UK, US, Spain, Norway and walk up to Base B? You think you'd get within 500 yards?

You can only go there as part of an "expedition", you aren't allowed to venture around freely and you can only go to a couple specific places. You'll notice in your first link that just about every single trip is to the "Antarctic Peninsula", which is a very small section of this very huge continent.

Your second link is for a cruise, which obviously provides no freedom to explore whatsoever for anyone on it. The point is that you can't travel around at will, any visits are sanctioned and monitored.

As far as flights? Is that the only website in existence that lets you fly there? You certainly can't book one over Kayak or any other airline and even the site you linked doesn't really provide any details. You can't choose dates or airports to visit and if you look, the next flight isn't for another 296 days! So between now and December of this year, not a single flight to Antarctica apparently exists.

So no, you really can't just fly there on a whim.

And my statements were referring to a person flying over the continent themselves or taking their own boat. You can't do either, everything there is closely monitored and limited to very specific areas.

"Pleasure trips" with some major caveats though, like having to wait 9 months and be pre-approved and/or only being allowed in one small section of the continent, and the overall point is that you can't just sail over to Antarctica by yourself and start poking around.

But you're right, I can see how my initial post could've been misconstrued and I apologize for that.

So why has no one ever gone exploring on their own then? If someone has gone, do you have some evidence of that? If no one has gone, why haven't they? Surely someone out there has the wallet and survival skills to have given it a shot and documented their trip in some way.

Thanks for the insults though man, they were totally necessary.

And a lot of clandestine international government/military activity protected under international law and "scientific freedom".

Yep there have always been reports of UFO activity in that region of the world. To me it makes sense in that it's such an isolated area so would be perfect for any type of research using technologies meant to stay hidden from the rest of us. But the other aspect of it is that because literally no one is allowed near Antarctica aside from "approved personnel", which are basically military with top secret clearance (and presumably intelligence agents/contractors/etc.), I take everything that comes out of there with a grain of salt since the information is coming from the very people who've been hiding whatever it is that's being hidden there.

As to what's going on there now who can say.

Well, someone can I'm sure. Just not I unfortunately, although I find the mystery of it inescapable.

Well there are over 50 countries that have a presence there, I would imagine there are things in place to ensure that no one violates the No Fly Zone. The most simple proof of this is the fact that I've never seen or heard of anyone actually attempting it, so either no one ever has or there is something preventing them from doing so.

It's the same thing at the North Pole, it's been declared a "military zone" and no planes can go near it.

Hmm no I haven't seen that before thanks - it would make sense for HAARP testing to be done in a remote location like that. Interesting when combined with all of the talk of strange magnetic anomalies coming from Antarctica as well.

Who? When? For what purpose? Are there any pictures of these flights?

I have googled it, I found nothing. As far as "commercial flights", someone else in this thread provided one link for this which requires pre-approval from "the authorities" and doesn't even offer a single flight for another 9 months, with no option to choose any airports or specific locations.

And that's a pretty weak answer on your part man.