The first thing that strikes about Antarctica: The colour white really has very little to do with the overall effect of the place.

This has long occupied my mind, that is, how people assume it's a world of white, white out, white ice, white snow.

Antarctica's ice has a base color one might call blue or aqua or turquoise or green or celadon.

According to Wikipedia, "...the ice is blue for the same reason water is blue: it is a result of an overtone of a OH molecular stretch in the water which absorbs light at the red end of the visible spectrum." 

Science aside, maybe we think of the ice as mainly white because the first images were black and white -- and maybe those haunted, twisted moments of mast and sail before high white ice wall -- will forever lure us into believing Antarctic ice is white.