Semi-circumnavigation of Antarctica

37 nights

The expedition starts from the Falkland Islands and travels via the Weddell Sea to Antarctica’s Far Side, reaching its conclusion in Fremantle, Western Australia. Planned visits include South Georgia, Cape Norvegia and Neumeyer Station, the Atka Bay Emperor Penguin rookery, Proclamation Island and the Mawson Coast. A detailed itinerary of this unique voyage can be found on our website: the list of place names above cannot begin to evoke the frozen Austral silence that lies within the Antarctic Circle

The Falkland Islands

The beautiful, remote, almost treeless Falklands is a paradise for birdwatchers: black-browed albatross, southern giant petrel and five species of penguin (king, gentoo, magellanic, rockhopper and macaroni). Elephant seals, fur seals and sea lions also abound. The capital, Port Stanley, is home to 2000 souls: now a charming, quiet town with a Hebridean feel to it, but once a thriving coaling station in the days before the Panama Canal.

Weddell Sea

Relatively few sailings aim to reach the Weddell Sea. The route is through the Antarctic Sound - known as ‘iceberg alley’, since a feature of both it, and the Weddell, is massive tabular icebergs, calved from the Larsen and Ronne ice shelves. There’s a chance that, on one of the many low ice floes, you may see a leopard seal or that most elegant of all penguins, the emperor. Paulet Island, at the mouth of the eastern end of the sound is home to thousands of adelie penguins. Nordenskjold’s hut is preserved at Snow Hill Island; here he and his group survived two Antarctic winters in what amounts to a potting shed.

The Far Side of Antarctica

Barely 400 visitors a year visit this remote land, where the wild south wind brushes the sea floor white. The extra effort to reach this part of the planet is repaid by scenery and an experience unsurpassed anywhere on earth. We offer a one-off expedition by icebreaker to reach the parts the others do not reach: a semicircumnavigation of the continent’s farthest shores.

South Georgia

Staggeringly beautiful. Two days’ voyage north from Antarctica across the Scotia Sea, South Georgia rises 2300m (9000ft) from the ocean - a land of alpine glaciated peaks, ice-scalloped fjords and protected valleys. Here also, at Salisbury Plain, is a huge rookery of magnificent king penguins. The rusting remains of the whaling stations at Grytviken and Stromness are a testament to the harshness of life here at the edge of the world. It was to the astonished manager at Stromness that Shackleton first raised the alarm of his wrecked ship, of his having rowed in two open boats with his crew from Antarctica to South Georgia via Elephant Island, and of having trekked across the mountains to stumble, exhausted, into the manager’s hut.