British explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Stroud were eating hearty meals Saturday after each lost about a third of their body weight on a record-breaking three-month trek across Antarctica.
Fiennes and Stroud ended their journey 350 miles short of their target Friday because of malnutrition and frostbite. They had walked 95 days dragging sleds with all their food and equipment.When they ended, they said they were "more dead than alive."
The pair broke two endurance records - the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent on foot and the longest unsupported polar march.
"They are just relaxing and eating," expedition spokeswoman Morag Howell said from Chile, explaining they were on a high-protein diet and eating a lot of eggs.
A rescue plane lifted Fiennes, 48, and Stroud, 37, from the Ross Ice Shelf early Friday and took them to an expedition tent camp at Patriot Hill in Antarctica where they are stuck because of bad weather.
It will probably be several days before the weather clears and an aircraft can land to pick them up.
Fiennes is suffering from a foot infection that had not responded to antibiotics. Both are suffering from hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, and frostbite to their their lips, feet, noses and fingertips.
Last Sunday the men reached the edge of the icy continent after traveling 1,281 miles. Two days earlier they broke a mark for an unsupported polar crossing of 1,245 miles, breaking a record set in 1909 by an expedition led by Australian Douglas Mawson.