While all permanent Antarctic bases have a pub, the bases are scattered across the continent which is roughly the size of the lower 48 United States. Thus it may seem that a pub crawl is not possible in Antarctica without the use of helicopters, jet aircraft, snowmobiles, and ice axes.

Au contraire mon petit.

In the tradition of the great explorers, every day in Antarctica is an Irish funeral, the Feast of San Gennaro, Bastille Day, or any other international excuse to blotto one's self to stupidity. The great 19th and 20th century Antarctic explorers were typically navy men who knew they would spend up to three years eating nothing but penguins and seal blubber in the company of likewise gristled males. There was a strict caste system and no comforts. Death was likely, and there is a classic advertisement in which the great Sir Ernest Shackelton trolls for crewmembers for the voyage of the Endurance, describes the hardships and great dangers likely to befall any crewmember, promises lousy pay, and ends his ad with "Safe Return Doubtful".

Of course, he couldn't hold back the flood of applicants.

But one presumes with a 21st century mind the only diversions from suicidal ennui for these hearty explorers were drunkenness and frequent masturbation, and an occasional homosexual encounter. These stalwart traditions live on in the modern Antarctic program, and with the welcome addition of a nearly equal ratio of the sexes on the ice, getting laid in Antarctica has never been easier (unless you're a geek, in which case even close quarters, no escape, and co-ed sleeping arrangements with attractive people won't help). See: Antarctic sex. Though I digress...

A pub crawl between the bars at McMurdo Station and the pub at the New Zealand Scott Base is entirely within the possibility of any United States Antarctic Program participant who can remember how to walk. Let's see what's in store for the intrepid explorer with a desire to get shit faced.

In addition to coffee, lattes, cappucino, whatever, they pour wine here. Here is where you can get wasted on a fine Australian Shiraz while regaling your friends about your narrow escape from a ravenous leopard seal. Here is where you quietly ask someone to sleep with you rather than asking to trade their clothes for beer (which is how they do it in other bars). Conversations here are muted. You are liable to hear Dave Grusin on the stereo.

In the short part of the "T" there is a movie theater where they play whatever DVD or VHS features people have brought with them to the ice. Typical titles would be The Princess Bride or When Harry Met Sally.

After you have numbed your sensibilities on Cabernet and PG-13 movies and your eyes are dangling from their orbits by the optic nerves, you can take solace in the fact Gallagers and a proper mental destruction are only 200 yards away.

Bars at McMurdo station close at 11:00PM on work nights, which are all nights except Saturday. On Saturday the bars close at 1:00AM. After that, revelers and those requiring sex scatter to a variety of dorm lounges, ice huts, boiler rooms, utility tool sheds, broom closets, saunas, and dorm rooms to continue the partying. As the sun is always up, the partying can be eternal.