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Antarctica - Discovery and learning + Long hikes

A transformative Antarctic quest blending immersive long hikes, wildlife encounters, and deep discovery in pristine polar wilderness.

Highlights Itinerary Dates Extras

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Length

10 Days

Embark

Ushuaia

Disembark

Ushuaia

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Highlights

Venture on challenging three-to-four-hour Antarctic hikes, exploring remote, rugged terrain few travelers ever set foot upon.
Encounter penguins, seals, seabirds, and whales while navigating iconic sites like Neko Harbour, Paradise Bay, and Port Lockroy.
Retrace explorer routes across the Drake Passage, joining enriching lectures and Zodiac adventures that elevate every polar moment.

Embark on a journey to the world’s most remote frontier, where towering glaciers, rugged islands, and wildlife-rich shores shape an unforgettable Antarctic adventure. This expedition combines discovery with invigorating long hikes, granting you rare access to vast, untouched landscapes that only a select few ever experience on foot.

Sailing from Ushuaia, you’ll trace the historic path of early polar explorers across the Drake Passage before entering a realm of sculpted ice, snow-draped peaks, and thriving penguin rookeries. Traveling during the heart of the Antarctic season means crisp scenic clarity, heightened wildlife activity, and excellent chances of spotting roaming whales and soaring albatrosses as you venture deeper into the Southern Ocean.

Your days unfold through a dynamic blend of exploration: Zodiac cruises through iceberg-dotted bays, visits to storied sites like Port Lockroy, encounters with gentoo and chinstrap penguins, and optional long hikes across rocky ridges and snowy ascents that reveal sweeping polar panoramas. On board, naturalist-led lectures bring scientific insight and storytelling to life, deepening your understanding of the continent’s fragile ecosystems.

This voyage invites moments of awe and personal triumph—whether summiting a ridge on foot, navigating volcanic calderas in the South Shetlands, or feeling the profound stillness of Antarctica’s vast wilderness. It’s a journey perfect for adventurous travelers, wildlife enthusiasts, active explorers, and anyone seeking a deeper, more immersive connection with the White Continent. You’ll return home enriched, exhilarated, and forever changed by the polar world you stepped so boldly into.

Ships

No departures available at this time

Standard Activities

Lectures

Navigation Workshops

Photography Workshops

Snowshoeing

Zodiac Cruises

Itinerary

Fly

Cruise

Day 1

End of the world, start of a journey

Your voyage begins where the world drops off. Ushuaia, Argentina, reputed to be the southernmost city on the planet, is located on the far southern tip of South America. Starting in the afternoon, you embark from this small resort town on Tierra del Fuego, nicknamed “The End of the World,” and sail the mountain-fringed Beagle Channel for the remainder of the evening.

Ushuaia

Embarkation Point

Days 2-3

Path of the polar explorers

Days 4-7

Enter the Antarctic

Gray stone peaks sketched with snow, towers of broken blue-white ice, and dramatically different wildlife below and above. You first pass the snow-capped Melchior Islands and Schollaert Channel, sailing between Brabant and Anvers Islands.

Sites you may visit include:

Danco Island – Activities here may focus on the gentoo penguins nesting on the island, in addition to the Weddell and crabeater seals that can be found nearby.

Neko Harbour – An epic landscape of mammoth glaciers and endless wind-carved snow, Neko Harbour offers opportunities for a Zodiac cruise and landing that afford the closest views of the surrounding alpine peaks.

Paradise Bay – You may be able to take a Zodiac cruise in these sprawling, ice-flecked waters, where there’s a good chance you’ll encounter humpback and minke whales.

Port Lockroy – After sailing through the Neumayer Channel, you may get a chance to visit the former British research station – now a museum and post office – of Port Lockroy on Goudier Island. You may also be able to partake in activities around Jougla Point, meeting gentoo penguins and blue-eyed shags.

When conditions are right, you can snowshoe around the shore and to the old ski-way at nearby Damoy Point.

Danco Island

Neko Harbour

Paradise Bay

Port Lockroy

Melchior Islands

Day 8

Scenes of South Shetland

The volcanic islands of the South Shetlands are windswept and often cloaked in mist, but they do offer subtle pleasures: There’s a wide variety of flora (mosses, lichens, flowering grasses) and no small amount of fauna (gentoo penguins, chinstrap penguins, southern giant petrels).

In Deception Island, the ship plunges through Neptune’s Bellows and into the flooded caldera. Here you find an abandoned whaling station, and thousands of cape petrels – along with kelp gulls, brown and south polar skuas, and Antarctic terns. A good hike is a possibility in this fascinating and desolate volcanic landscape.

As an alternative, you may be able to engage in activities near Half Moon Island. Here chinstrap penguins and Weddell seals often haul out onto the beach near Cámara Base, an Argentine scientific research station. Conditions on the Drake Passage determine the exact time of departure.

South Shetland Islands