Antarctica and Falkland Islands

The chilling adventure to Antarctica starts in Buenos Aires, also known as “The Paris of South America”. Though it's a cosmopolitan city Buenos Aires culture has been preserved by its Eclectic European architecture, which makes a good reason to pull you outdoors to explore this wonderful city on your own or join our optional city tour. After a tiring day, you enjoy an overnight stay here before beginning the sea expedition next day.

Today we get up early to catch our chartered flights to the simple and beautiful town of Ushuaia, where our ship Ms Fridtjof Nansen awaits for embarkation. If time permits, we will give you a brief tour of this town, before you aboard the ship. Once embarked, explore the ships Scandinavian modern architecture, attend safety briefings, and enjoy a Welcome dinner as we start sailing.

Prepare yourself for Antarctica as we cross the famous Drake Passage. This is the same passage through which explorers found the prominent route to this cold continent. Our ship is especially designed for such polar explorations and offers both knowledge and entertainment. To keep everyone engaged, there will be lectures held out at the activity centre on geology, history, wildlife, etc. Biologists sharing their knowledge at the Science Center, and activities taking place to help you mingle with fellow travelers. Watch out for Antarctic Petrels, and various sea birds, from the Explorer Lounge, or simply head out on the decks to breathe the chilling winds.

Enter the frozen continent, Antarctica. Being one of the most isolated regions in the world has its benefits of preserving and cultivating diverse forms of nature exclusively here, which will become evident as we explore this continent everyday during the next few days. As the captain announces our entry, you will see stunning glaciers, snow covered land, sea covered with occasional ice sheets in all directions, making it picture-perfect. As the excited photographers change their cameras into landscape mode, enjoy the vast expanse of naturally made sculpture-like iced structures floating around you. The moment you set foot on this continent, you will be a Polar Wilderness Explorer. You might not see the sights we mention here, or you may see the sights that someone before has never seen!Trust us when we say that every second of this journey has something new to offer. Elements of weather, sea and ice will play a big role in determining our activities here, but to expect the unexpected is what expedition is all about. On clear days, after determining prime safety, we hop on with our expedition team on smaller boats To enjoy close encounters with wildlife and glaciers, go on hikes to explore the land, scientific stations and abandoned whaling stations. Once in this continent, there is no specific route. We explore on the go everyday, every minute, every second. This is why every Antarctica experience will be unique. Therefore, we need to be pragmatic; we change landings, re-route and sailing plans as we go along. This also means that we will take advantage of the o en ideal conditions – spend hours ashore, on the water with kayaks, hiking or simply cruising amongst huge pods of whales. Weather, wind and ice conditions have a great influence on our programme and schedule. We will attempt to land several places, including Deception Island, Half Moon Island, Brown Blu , Cuverville Island and Neko Harbour. All of these places are serene and o er untouched nature, opportunities to observe penguin colonies, seals, , glaciers, icebergs in every shape and colour and old whaling stations and. It ́s hard to sum up all the impressions you will gain. As a well-known quote from veteran Antarctic travelers puts it: “If you can describe Antarctica with words, you have probably never been there. As our boat slushes through the streams of water in pitch silence embrace the thick cloud of mist brought by the cold winds. With splashes of penguins swimming here and there, if you listen very carefully you will be able to hear the crackling of glaciers far off making a symphony of their own. We reach the Paradise Harbour a descriptive name from the whalers during the last century. Wilhelmina Bay here with its stunning scenery is also often called “Whale-mina Bay”, because of the large number of humpback whales spotted here in December. We have planned plenty of activities here to make you experience Antarctica in the best way. On some days, you will get to feel the salt and wind as you cruise between the sea ice, looking for leopard seals taking a snooze on the ice. An onboard photographer will guide you on the basics of expedition photography. Test your learned skills out there and click away as soon as you spot the Antarctic fur seal, Wandering Albatross, Leopard seals and maybe a flock of King Penguins. To find more sanctity take a kayaking adventure out in the ocean to drain your tensions. You can even take a hike or a walk with an undisputed bliss of solitude. On days where we cant make a landing, join gatherings where the various members of the expedition team recount the day’s activities, make presentations, and the expedition leader discusses the next day’s plan. These gatherings are great opportunities for sharing and making a shared memory while mingling with the expedition community.

Once we say adieu to the exhilarating continent, we set course for the Falkland Islands. Gather around our expedition team, as they give you briefings about the history and diverse wildlife seen on the island. Days at sea would also give you chance to mingle with the expedition team, and your fellow travelers through various lectures at the Science Center on wildlife, geology, history etc. Enjoy some activities, or simply watch out for sea life from the panorama lounge or outside decks.

Having just been in Antarctica, it might seem a bit surreal to arrive in a town that looks like a miniature England, with red phone boxes, red buses and English pubs. Stanley is the capital on the Falkland Islands where we dock for the first day. Roam the city streets, the town is easy enough to discover in a day on foot, or join one of the excursions to explore the wilderness and wildlife in the surroundings. The Falklands are teeming with wonders of wildlife and nature. This is an unpolluted environment with fantastically clear blue skies, seamless horizons, vast open spaces and stunning white sand beaches. We dock at a different part of Island everyday for almost a whole day. As we reach the westernmost settled outposts in the Falklands you will see remote farms that have been family owned for six or seven generations. The sheep graze alongside immense colonies of albatross and rockhopper penguins, while predatory striated caracaras patrol overhead and upland geese forage at the water’s edge. Bird lovers will rejoice if we go ashore on Carcass Island. This is a bird paradise with several ducks, geese, penguins, albatrosses, caracaras and wrens. It is also one of few islands down here with trees. We use our small boats to go ashore for exploring, hiking or take a closer look at all the birds.

As we route back to Ushuaia, we complete, onboard we will have a recap of everything we have experienced during this memorable journey, via lectures and activities at the Science Center. For those who can't get enough of sea, make sure that you spend sometime out on the deck to watch the albatrosses, petrels or even dolphins guiding our way.

Our expedition comes to an end, and it's time to say bye to the crew, and the new friends that you made during this adventure. We reach Ushuaia by morning, and fly to Buenos Aires via our chartered flights. Feel free to stay back a day to rest before flying home, or extend your adventure via our post expedition packages.