Antarctica : Shackleton's Antarctica

Antarctica Adventure Holidays will take you on a voyage from Buenos Aires to the white continent. The tour will visit the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, which are vital breeding grounds for seals, penguins and albatross. The comfortable MS Nordnorge is specially designed to cope with polar and penguin exploration, making for a very safe but nonetheless thrilling voyage. Our Antarctica Adventure Holidays enable you to experience the cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires and incredible wildlife.

Lectures and talks are conducted by experts on the region’s fascinating heritage, natural history and polar exploration, these will prepare you for the visual feast and adventure that the Antarctica will present from: vast colonies of penguins, to iceberg-lined channels and historical sites which are frozen in time.

For your ease and convenience the itinerary described below is based on your South America package and voyage and does not include intercontinental flights. Flight add-ons costs from £985 per person and a range of free regional connections are available.

The Path of the Endurance
Beginning in Buenos Aires we embark on the ice-classed ship MS Nordnorge. It is from here that Shackleton and his crew of intrepid explorers first set sail towards South Georgia, on their incredible journey on board the Endurance. As we voyage down the coast of Argentina, our on board team of expert guides will give talks on wildlife, the history of exploration, geology and ecology of the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Antarctica - with emphasis on the fragility of this environment and the guidelines which must be observed during our visit.

South Atlantic Islands
On the Falkland Islands we look out for the black-browed albatross, elephant seal, southern sea lion, five species of penguins including the king penguin and visit the capital Port Stanley. Next stop is South Georgia, and a truly wild landscape of snow-capped peaks, blue glacier ice and emerald green bays. Here we hope to see Grytviken Whaling Station with Shackleton's grave. South Georgia's wildlife is world-famous and we have a great chance of seeing the smallest polar penguin, the rockhopper, cape and giant petrels, as well as fur and elephant seals. Our Polar Cirkel inflatable boats enable us to land just about anywhere.

Frozen Antarctica
Solitary icebergs greet our arrival to the icy continent and as we get close to the Antarctic Peninsula, our specially adapted ship and experienced Norwegian crew will navigate expertly through the cool waters. Beneath the Antarctic sun we will watch humpback whales breach, as huge blocks calve off the front of glaciers into the calm waters below. Wide eyed seals blink as they wake from their daydream to watch us pass, and curious penguins patter by as we make our regular landings. We will marvel at the vistas, step through abandoned settlements, and possibly take a dip in the hot springs at Deception Island. If our lucks in we will visit the narrow, silent and starkly beautiful ice-lined Lemaire Channel. Finally we head north, past Cape Horn, to the Argentine town of Ushuaia.