"There, it was sunny," says her cousin Kerri McPherson, a Grade 11 student at Chief Albert Wright school. "People were like sun tanning down there.

"It's a lot like the same (as here) except there's different animals. There's snow, there's rocks, there's water."

And of course, "lot's of icebergs," chips in Megan, whose in Grade 10.

The girls were joined by their teacher Liz Halina, Inuvik student Angela Storr, and 25 students from Canada, Ireland, Argentina, and the U.S. for a trip to the world's southernmost continent over the Christmas holidays.

They were all travelling with a Canadian-based organization called Students on Ice, who take pupils to some of the world's most extreme locations every year.

The students made stopovers in Toronto, Miami, and Buenos Aires before travelling to Antarctica by boat from Argentina. Halina says it was five-star treatment all the way.

To pay for the trip, the Tulita group raised about $3,000, the NWT Youth Secretariat donated $5,000 and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development chipped in about $22,000. Storr received about $6,800 from the Carpenter-Stallworthy Account and the NWT Youth Secretariat.

"The ship was like a floating hotel, it was incredible," says Halina. "I couldn't imagine having better staff on the ship. Three square meals a day, and we're not talking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You know, we're talking sirloin steaks and shrimp."

Halina says even though the girls got seasick at the beginning of their voyage, they learned a lot about the area.

"They learned about the history of the exploration, they learned about the different wildlife," says Halina. "We saw three species of penguins. We also saw humpback whales on two different occasions."

She said seeing 500,000 penguins roosting on an island was simply breathtaking, if not a bit smelly.

"The sound was deafening and the smell was just as strong too," Halina laughs. "Penguins stink."