Antarctica Travel Forum

My friend and I are in the early stages of planning a trip to Antartica. Can anyone help us out with companies that provid services. We are from Los Angeles. We want a quick trip (2 weeks or less). What are the major countries that these ships tend to leave from? And of course, the cost...on average. Thank you, any information would be very helpful.

-Dar

You could try Aurora Travel - they specialise in trips to Antarctica. Not sure if they do the really short ones though. Here's their website
www.auroraexpeditions.com.au/

GAP adventures run trips from Ushuaia, Argentina. This where most ships go from. The shortest trip you can do is 10 days. As it becomes more popular the cost is going up. I think it now costs about $4000 for a shared cabin.

Dar, I'm going in January '08 with Lindblad Expeditions for 12 days. However, I had to make my reservations 1-1/2 years ago, because they fill up so early. You might want to contact them tho; maybe they've had a cancellation. -Bess

Hi! I can also highly recommend Aurora Expeditions, which are based in Sydney, Australia. Just got their new brochure and they have regular trips, between November & February, leaving from Ushuaia, Argentina, but have just announced a few trips, leaving from Tasmania, Australia & Bluff, New Zealand, in 2009. Prices b/w USD $5590 for 11 days, right thru to USD $23000, for 27 days. Check out my Antarctic page, triple share is fine & the Polar Pioneer is a great ship! Good luck with your planning, that's half the fun of a trip like this:)

We're getting ready to leave on Dec. 10 for a 10-day trip that we booked through Expedition Trips, a Seattle company. The customer service has been excellent so far. Check out their website at www.expeditiontrips.com.

I have just returned from a 13 day trip with Hurtigruten on the MV Fram. It was fabulous in every way. I made friends with a group on a photography workshop and had a blast. Most of them had some difficutly dealing with the New York office when booking the trip. I had a travel agent arrange those details and if she had problems, I was never aware of them. I was surprised to hear that the New York office seemed so disorganized because the crew onboard ran an amazingly efficient operation. Especially impressive in that this was only the second time this ship had sailed this itinerary. We made 7 landings in 5 days, more than any of us had hoped for. The Expedition Team was a truly impressive group of professionals intent on making this a safe and informative adventure of a lifetime.
I recommend Hurtigruten without reservation and should you have concerns with your booking experience, rest assured everything runs like clockwork once onboard.

Here are some others to look at: Abercrombie & Kent, Tauck World Discovery, Lindbland Expeditions, Quark. The ship owned by Canadian company GAP, the Explorer, just hit an iceberg and sank a few weeks ago, so I don't think they are the best to consider.

GAP do have another ship! One does hope that was a one off event, given the quality of all thier other operations. I think it is very sad that it sank, not just becuase it makes most of my Antarctica tips obselete :-)

I agree-- the sinking of the Explorer was very sad (certainly not GAP's fault). She was a great expeditionary ship that I've been on many times.

While on my recent trip, our crew retrieved a life vest and a life ring from the Explorer. Our crew had only the highest praise for the experience and professionalism of the crew of that great ship. It was a sobering moment when those items where brought on board our ship. Many of our crew members had sailed the Explorer as well. It was clearly very emotional for them. Thank goodness everyone was rescued safely.

We went with Quark, and they were fantastic. The lecturers were great (we had Shackleton's grandson with us), the food was really delicious (the pastries during tea-time was really good), there was a good mix of young-old people and various nationalities, and they keep coming up with surprises (i.e. they had our passports stamped after we visited an Antarctica base, there was a BBQ feast in the midst of Antarctica, etc.)

When we went in Nov. 2004, it cost us around $1800/pp for an 11-day cruise.