After a few minutes, I was brought into Abol Fotoh's corner office, a well-furnished room with a couch and large desk.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Offering a few expeditions a year to their upscale, well-furnished camp, the group affords a few hundred travellers the chance to experience the inner part of the icy continent with (almost) all the comforts of home.

BBC: Camp with penguins in Antarctica

But the produce comes from the ranch of owners Catherine and Joe Bartolomei (sister and brother, not husband and wife) just up the road in Forestville, and a quartet of chickens roam the property. (Granted, they live in a peaked-roof house well padded with straw and furnished with a heat lamp.) Then there is that quintessential inn amenity, a house cat.

FORBES: Sonoma Country Rustic Luxe: The Farmhouse Inn