Destination focus: Antarctica, the frozen continent
Ever more adventurous options are opening up to cruise‑goers eager to explore the stellar wildlife and gritty history of the forgotten corners of Antarctica, writes Mark Stratton
“Antarctica is out of sight and out of mind,” says Marty Garwood, expedition leader for Polar Latitudes, during a recent cruise on the small ice-class vessel, Seaventure.
With an icecap up to 4.8km deep, the sheer magnetism of snowy mountains and bays choked by blue-tinged bergs – not to mention the constant wildlife interactions – makes a cruise to the frozen continent an experience of a lifetime.
Earlier in a season that runs from November to March, penguin rookeries thrill visitors as the new-born chicks battle for survival. By late season, before 24-hour darkness descends, whales leap out of the water, energised by their full bellies after feasting all summer on krill.
Onboard AE Expeditions’ Greg Mortimer, on my first morning on the Antarctic Peninsula, I awake in Paradise Harbour. It is snowing and -3ºC. Gentoo penguins porpoise through the brash ice and humpback whales’ rasping blows merge with the gunshot ricochets of calving glaciers.
It is everything I imagined Antarctica to be. For 75 per cent of travellers, the peninsula is the first exposure to Antarctica. It rises like a crooked witch’s finger pointing towards South America, to Ushuaia, two-days’ sail away across the Drake Passage.
This is the quickest and cheapest way to see Antarctica, with trips lasting roughly 11 days. Voyages explore the fractured archipelago of the peninsula’s western Bellingshausen Sea side, with some vessels taking guests as far as the Antarctic Circle.
Typically, guests get to enjoy-twice daily excursions via Zodiacs to cruise around icebergs or head onshore to visit penguin colonies or historic British bases maintained by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.
The quirkiest offering by far is Port Lockroy base’s Penguin Post Office, where guests can mail a postcard to friends and family (given that it’s the southernmost post office in the world, don’t be surprised if they beat it home).
Nowadays, peninsula trips are more multi-faceted. They feature citizen science projects that help analysts learn more about everything from clouds and birdlife to phytoplankton. “Citizen science adds value to your voyage by collecting data for researchers who do not have the financial resources to come here to study,” says Polar Latitudes’ science coordinator Dr Annette Bombosch.
Meanwhile, other commonplace activities include kayaking, dry-suit snorkelling, helicopter flights and spending a night on the ice in durable bivouac bags. Don’t be deterred by the tales of woe and shipwrecks of the magnificently remote Weddell Sea.
Just a small percentage of voyages sail down the Antarctic Peninsula’s eastern flank into the Weddell. Historically, it was notorious for trapping ships in a huge circulatory clockwise gyre of ice, most notably Shackleton’s vessel, Endurance, which sank there in 1915. Yet voyages into it feel special and unique.
When I first entered the sea to the southernmost limit ships typically reach, an area named Snow Hill Island, our vessel was only the sixth to make it there that season. “The Weddell has certainly been overlooked due to the challenges of shifting ice,” says Alex Mudd of Swoop Travel.
Guests may enjoy Zodiac safaris under the midnight sun, visit the world’s largest Adelie penguin colony at Cape Adare at 2am or watch pods of Orca hunting Toothfish along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at any hour of the day or night.
“But venturing into it is expedition cruising par excellence, with the added excitement of following in Shackleton’s footsteps.”
Expect to see huge quantities of drifting ice shelf and massive Adelie penguin rookeries. And while the history of Shackleton’s travails are revealed during lectures, Snow Hill tells the gripping yarn of Otto Nordenskjold, trapped there from 1901 to 1904. You can visit a perfectly preserved hut where the Swedish scientist overwintered while awaiting rescue.
The most ambitious activity is visiting the peninsula’s only accessible colony of emperor penguins, which involves a helicopter flight off your vessel. Comparatively few expedition ships make the Ross Sea.
Midway along southern Antarctica’s shoreline, the Ross Ice Shelf is the world’s largest extent of floating sea-ice (the size of France) located at the head of the Ross Sea. It’s inaccessible apart from a few Austral summer months (from late December to early March) and typically accessed from New Zealand.
Heritage Expeditions offers a 28-day cruise each January. “Our voyage sails further south into the frozen continent than any sea route and into the realm of 24-hour daylight during the 10-12 days we spend in the region,” says expedition leader, Aaron Russ.
“The itinerary is dictated by nature, so guests may enjoy Zodiac safaris under the midnight sun, visit the world’s largest Adelie penguin colony at Cape Adare at 2am or watch pods of Orca hunting Toothfish along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at any hour of the day or night.”
The world’s tallest penguin, the emperor, has an ice-shelf breeding ground at Cape Washington in Terra Nova Bay, where 20,000 males brace for winter. Its relative geographical proximity to the South Pole has also left a fabulous legacy of historical sites, as a result of epic early 20th-century expeditions.
You can visit Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound, built for his 1907-09 failed Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole. There’s also Robert Falcon Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans, constructed in 1911.
Kitted out with bedding, maps, kitchen utensils, and clothing, it looks as if his Terra Nova Expedition crew upped and left just yesterday. Scott reached the pole in 1912 only to tragically perish on the return journey.
It feels like you are in a David Attenborough documentary, where you’re completely surrounded by wildlife that doesn’t care about your presence
If spotting Antarctic wildlife is your customers’ primary reason for booking a cruise to this enchanting region, think about a longer three-week voyage incorporating the Falklands and, most notably, South Georgia. The latter is Antarctica turned up to 11.
After recovering from wholesale slaughter by sealers and whalers that ended by the mid-1960s, South Georgia presents one of the most thrilling wildlife spectacles on Earth today. “It feels like you are in a David Attenborough documentary, where you’re completely surrounded by wildlife that doesn’t care about your presence,” says Dan Brown, Polar Latitudes’ naturalist onboard Seaventure.
Major sights include St Andrews and Gold Harbour to see King penguins numbering several hundred thousand and beaches wriggling with fur seal pups. South Georgia also witnessed the denouement of Shackleton’s epic escape from Antarctica. In 1916 he arrived on the island in a flimsy lifeboat after a death-defying sea crossing.
He then traversed the island’s glaciated spine on foot to find safety at Stromness whaling station on the east coast. At Grytviken’s ex-whaling station, travellers can visit the site of his grave where he was buried after passing away in 1922.
Trips sometimes offer guided hikes following his cross-island journey, the best of which is a four-hour yomp from Fortuna Bay to Stromness. Trans-antarctic ambition In 1914 Shackleton launched an ambitious plan to cross Antarctica. It ended very badly.
In recent years such ambition has been mirrored by ever more adventurous and extensive expedition voyages tracing rarely visited corners of Antarctica. These voyages may involve 30-40 days at sea, typified by crossings between the eastern to western reaches of the 7th continent – Australasia and South America.
Only a few thousand people make these expensive and infrequent voyages each year, costing between £35,000 and £50,000. From 2026, AE Expeditions’ Douglas Mawson will make a 34-day trans-antarctic traverse from Dunedin to Ushuaia, while Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot is at sea for 29 days following a similar route.
