The equator runs around the wide waist of the world, exactly halfway between the North Pole and the South Pole. If you start from any place on the equator and travel due south for 12,430 miles, you should find yourself standing exactly on the South Pole. But you would need an expert to check the stars and other objects to prove you were on just the right spot.

The South Pole is under a sheet of ice perhaps two miles thick. The vast ice field covers Antarctica, which is shaped somewhat like a nibbled cashew nut. You could land at the inside curve of the cashew nut, which is the Ross Sea. If you land and travel south over the ice for about 930 miles, you would be at or very near the earth’s South Pole