Antarctic Planning
In 2015 I had the great blessing of travelling to Antarctica. It was an amazing experience and I’m often asked what it took for me to get to there.
In this post you will find the resources and research that I did, and my decision-making process. Hopefully, other aspiring Antarctic explorers will find it helpful.
In doing my research I stumbled upon IAATO (International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators). This is a member organization of many expedition companies and sets standards for safe and environmentally sound travel within the region.
Consider the vessel
I spent a bit of time on the IAATO site to learn about some of the guidelines that would impact me as a tourist. One of the more impactful rules that I encountered was that a maximum of 100 passengers can be ashore from a vessel at any one time. From trip reports I’ve read, if the ship has more than 100 people, landing times are either staggered or time on land is scheduled. (If a ship has over 500 passengers, they are unable to make any landings)
With this in mind, I wanted to find a vessel that would sail with 100 or fewer passengers. I wanted to ensure that I had maximum time with my “boots on the ground”.
To do this I started looking at the IAATO member vessels directory to help narrow my search down to specific boats I wanted to travel on. There were only a handful of vessels that had capacities in the 80-120 range and I didn’t have any desire to “sail” in a yacht across the Drake passage. So this narrowed down the list significantly from the vessel directory. From there it was much easier to choose a vessel and determine the tour operator.
Consider the itinerary
Once I narrowed down the vessels and subsequently the operators, I started looking at the itineraries. There are A LOT of different itineraries that offer a good amount of variety. Generally though, there seem to be about three main “types”:
- “Classic” “general” Antarctic itinerary (approximately 10 days)
- Antarctic Circle itinerary (approximately 10-14 days)
- Antarctica + the Falkland Islands + South Georgia (18+ Days)
Depending on your preferences and what you want to see or “accomplish,” narrowing down by the itinerary type helps a lot and from there the path to Antarctica is pretty easy! For me, I wanted to cross the Antarctic Circle and I didn’t have enough time to include the trip to the Falklands so it made my selection easier.
Depending on your dates, cost constraints or other personal preferences, choosing an itinerary at this point should be straightforward. I’ve found that a majority of the operators tend to offer similar “perks” or value-adds to their itineraries, these would include things like:
- Onboard professional photographers (that will assist and teach about shooting in the Antarctic)
- Onboard experts in geology, wildlife etc.
- Optional sea kayaking
- Optional camping in Antarctica
- Polar Swim
Again, depending on your preferences you may choose an itinerary if there is an activity you really want to engage in. For myself any itinerary I chose would HAVE to have Antarctic camp.
For myself, I ended up going with One Ocean Expeditions on their Antarctic Circle Voyage (It looks like they’ve changed up their itineraries since I went, but aside from the departure and return points, the itinerary does seem similar). They checked off all the boxes on my list and I had an amazing time on this journey! Check out my Antarctic Adventure here!
Do Over?
“IF” I were to go back again, I probably would go about things a little differently. Because it’d be my second trip, I’d be more flexible about which expedition I’d go on.
This time around I would fly straight to Ushuaia and plan to stay a few days there. What I noticed, was there were several tour/travel offices in the city. And in my few days in Ushuaia, they constantly had last minute deals on Antarctic cruises posted in their windows. There are several expedition operators operating out of the port and probably have vacancies or last minute cancellations to fill. These deals were sometimes half the price of a regular expedition. I would spend a day or two and find one of these deals to get to the frozen continent again.