Antarctica Excursions
The main reason you take an expedition cruise to Antarctica rather than a typical tour is so that you take an active part in your surroundings. On an expedition, you can get close to the wildlife and are actually ON the landscape, so have a richer experience. I went with my affiliate, Hurtigruten, and highly recommend them!
You aren’t touring as if you are looking into a fish bowl, you are an active, close up participant in the scenery!
Everything is weather dependent, of course, but you may have the opportunity to:
- Hike
- Kayak
- Camp
- Snowshoe
- Zodiak Tour
- Photography Zodiak Workshop
- Science Experiments and Data/Specimen Collections and analysis
For all of these activities, you get in a zodiac: a motorized raft that will either motor you around the sea or take you to shore for a landing. They are very stable and the driver and expedition crew are extremely safety conscious.
Hiking
When we were at a port, there was often an included local walking tour to explain the town and its history. On several stops in the Falkland and South Georgia Islands, we had the option to take a longer, often more rigorous hike for an additional fee. And sometimes, the actual landing included a decent hike to go see, say, a penguin colony. Every time we were on shore was a fantastic opportunity to see the landscape and the animals up close.
Kayaking
One of our most thrilling adventures in Antarctica was kayaking among the icebergs and near glaciers, while watching penguins dart around us. Magical!!!
If you have the opportunity, even if you have never kayaked before, sign up for this optional activity!!! You are in a dry suit and they only go out if the conditions and wind are mild, so it is quite safe. There is always a zodiac close by in the rare event that someone does fall in. But the kayaks are well balanced and that shouldn’t be a worry. Just GO!!!
Camping
If the weather is good, often the Captain and Lead Expedition Leader will give the ok for folks that have signed up to camp to spend the night on the ice in Antarctica – how cool is that!
Around sixteen brave souls set up camp on our last night in Antarctica. We had been blessed with a perfect weather day, with zero wind and clear skies, so they had a beautiful night.
All the gear – four season gear that can handle the Arctic cold – is provided. The campers set up camp after dinner and were picked up the next morning for our trip back to South America. My two new friends, Tim and Kay, stayed up the entire night so they wouldn’t miss a thing. As photographers, they wanted to capture the special light that is difficult to describe. See my glacier photograph down below that I took with just my iPhone around 4 am that morning. The light was ethereal!
Other zodiac excursions included a special Photography Cruise (plus they got to go out in the zodiaca first, so there was no risk of our ‘red’ jackets messing up their pics), and some Citizen Science projects, where the team along with a scientist, would take samples, sometimes run and underwater drone and do critter counts.
You may be given other options, like snowshoeing available. My advice: sign up for as many as you can!
BioSecurity and What to Wear on Zodiac Expedition Landings
What to Wear on an Antarctica Expedition Landing
You can see from my photo, that in general, this is what I wore each time I went out on the zodiac. I brought hiking boots, but the muck boots were easier to clean, so I switched solely to the muck boots. You could only wear the boots on South Georgia Island where biosecurity is tightest.
- My red Hurtigruten waterproof jacket. This also has an arm pocket where you put your ID card they scan so that they know that you have left and then returned to the boat.
- A fleece zip up jacket (or a good puffy jacket)
- If it was really cold, also a fleece vest
- Wool base top and bottom
- Thermal ski pants (provide waterproof protection from zodiac splash, too)
- Long compression socks – I only wore these to prevent chaffing from the top of the muck boots
- Thick wool socks
- Toe sock liners
- Muck Boots – provided by Hurtigruten
- If really cold, a balaclava or buff
- Wool Hat
- Polarized Sunglasses with a holder
- Waterproof phone case, if inclement weather
- Wool liner gloves
- Wool mittens
- Life Jacket – provided by Hurtigruten
If you go kayaking, Hurtigruten will provide you with a thermal onesie, a neoprene dry suit, neoprene kayaking gloves, and rubber booties to keep you warm. Underneath, you just wear your wool base layer. I would also recommend wearing smartwool liner gloves as my hands did get a bit cold at the end, as our kayaking session was extended to let the zodiacs return first.
BioSecurity and Preparing for a Landing
One thing I was super impressed with about Hurtigruten is how seriously they took biosecurity. We meticulously cleaned our outer wear – and they inspected us before we left the ship – so that we didn’t inadvertently bring bird flu or other diseases, pests or invasive species of plants. Note that i am picking out pieces of sand and any possible fleck of bird feather from my muck boots. (By the way, Hurtigruten lends you a pair of muck boots.) It was our responsibility to fully vacuum and inspect our clothes, boots and packs (you only need to bring a pack if you are hiking or need to carry camera gear) before each landing.
Before we board the ship, and after our boots were inspected, we would disinfect our boot soles, which we did again with a scrubber when we returned.
When we were on shore, the crew made sure to remove any snow foot holes we created so that a penguin couldn’t fall in and starve. They also cleared up neglected holes from less scrupulous expeditions. I was duly impressed!
This is the photo I was refering to above, when I wrote about the ethereal light of the early dawn sun in Antarctica.
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