Opel employee Gerald Heeb traveled to the Antarctic Circle.

“I could have done without the cold,” he says. But if, like Heeb, you have a weakness for icy landscapes, you’ll need to brave very low temperatures to see them up close. When push comes to shove, though, that’s no problem for Heeb, a native of Rüsselsheim, Germany. While others vacation in Bali or the Caribbean, the mechanical engineer, who has been working at Opel since 1997, travels far north-locales such as Scandinavia, Svalbard, Greenland, and Iceland.

Heading to the South!

Most recently, though, Gerald Heeb took a trip down south; to the Antarctic, to be precise. To get there, he flew from Frankfurt to Madrid, and from there to Santiago, Chile, and finally to Punta Arenas, where he boarded a ship. Onboard the 135-meter-long MS Midnatsol, his journey took him from Punta Arenas, through Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands to the Antarctic peninsula, then up through the Falkland Islands and back to Punta Arenas. “I’m mainly interested in witnessing the beauty of the landscape and the local wildlife,” says Heeb of his passion for cooler climes. The breathtaking photos he took in the Antarctic testify to that passion. They also demonstrate – in a tongue-in-cheek way – that the Opel ADAM model he specially packed for the trip is weatherproof.