BREAKING THE ICE
From the incredible scenery to the unique wildlife, Antarctica is a destination unlike anywhere else on the planet. If this locale is on your bucket list, make your journey one of exceptional comfort aboard a luxury cruise.
If you’ve got Antarctica on your bucket list, you should get used to seeing it there. Not because you’ll never go, but because when you do, even while you’re still there, you will be planning your return visit. Nobody ever crosses it off. Part of what makes Antarctica so special is that it’s so hard to get to. That is, admittedly, a difficult claim to back up when you’re heading there on a Silversea cruise, and your butler wants to know your selection from the pillow menu. Though our ship – the Silver Explorer – is officially a 1A-ice-class expedition vessel, there’s no compromise on Silversea’s exceptional service and luxurious suites. Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton should have been so lucky.
The valiant adventurer does, however, provide a theme for the journey. Like him, we begin our expedition in Buenos Aires – from where we are flown by Silversea to Ushuaia, a colourful Argentinian town at the southernmost tip of South America. Boarding the Silver Explorer there, we sail away and – as the evocatively-named Lighthouse at the End of the World shrinks behind us – a mix of excitement and apprehension makes us feel a kinship with the legendary Shackleton. And then we go to the bar, for cocktails before dinner.
This will be the pattern for the duration of the cruise: we experience thrilling tastes of danger and exposure to the most hostile environment on the planet, while at the same time we’re cushioned in comfort and surrounded by reassuring expertise. The expedition staff, eagerly sharing their knowledge, make the cruise effortlessly educational. Cory-Ann is an expert on whales and seals, Anthony knows everything about Shackleton, and Luke is never stuck for an answer when asked about anything from icebergs to penguins. They deliver lectures, drive us in the Zodiacs, guide us onshore, and are always ready to share their passion for this very special place.
GETTING WILD
We sail to the Falkland Islands, where we enjoy our first up-close encounter with penguins and albatrosses – both of which are busily hatching eggs and feeding chicks at this time of year. It’s a barren, treeless place, and we instantly respect both the wildlife and the people who have chosen to live here. In the Islands’ capital of Stanley, we take a guided tour with a local, who is British to the core – as is the town itself, with its red post boxes and telephone boxes, and its welcoming pubs with warm ale on tap. The harbour is full of picturesque shipwrecks, which we recall rather uneasily as the captain fights with a 50-knot wind to slide the Silver Explorer through the appropriately-named Narrows on our departure.
After two days on the water we connect again with Shackleton. The island of South Georgia is where his illfated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 began and ended. The only people living here are scientists and the staff who serve them (and us). Picking our way past all the seals, we take a guided tour around Grytviken – a former whaling station turned research station – seeing the relics
of the whaling days; hearing stories about Norwegian sailors who could turn aftershave into hooch; and visiting the museum to inspect the homemade ice-shoes used by Shackleton’s men, the soles pierced with screws.
Then we walk around the edge of the once-busy harbour, and pass through the white-painted fence to visit the grave of Shackleton himself. We form a circle around his roughhewn gravestone and are led by one of the ship’s expedition staff in a toast to ‘The Boss’. This is Silversea: it’s champagne.
South Georgia is our introduction to the glories of the Antarctic. There are mountains, glaciers, seals, and colonies of the continent’s stars: penguins. We’ll encounter 11 species of penguin in total (some of them numbering in the tens of thousands), along with their fluffy chicks. The ones we meet on South Georgia are the biggest we will see during our trip – king penguins, almost a metre high, and handsome with their golden face markings. It’s also our first proper introduction to those other distinctive features of penguin colonies: raucous noise, and a pungent smell.
A WORLD OF WONDERMENT
En route to the Antarctic Peninsula itself, we stop off at Elephant Island – where Shackleton’s men huddled after abandoning their iced-in ship, while Shackleton set out on an epic rescue mission back to South Georgia. The rough sea that prevents our landing on the island gives us some indication of what those stranded men endured for four and a half miserable months, not knowing if rescue would ever come. We lurch about in our Zodiacs, gazing with mixed disbelief and admiration at the foam-fringed finger of rock they clung to all that time.
The next morning, we arrive at Antarctica proper. We’ve already encountered icebergs, and our wonderment at these infinitely varied things of beauty grows and grows: shape, size, colour, texture, they are all so different, and all so magnificent. They are often embellished by penguins and seals, which we also see plunging into and out of the sea, or arrowing through the water. We see whales too: humpbacks and orcas cruise past, while dolphins ride the bow wave.
We go ashore and get up close with penguins, which come and inspect us just as curiously as we observe them, pecking at our parkas and pulling on our zippers. The king penguin chicks are still developing their feathers, and their fine brown down ripples in the wind as they wait patiently in large groups for their next feed.
There is a hike through knee-deep snow to a clifftop to watch a glacier calving in slow motion. We also visit an Argentinian research base, walk around a desolate volcanic island where warm springs bubble along the shore, and cruise in the Zodiacs around a variety of icebergs. We even partake in the traditional Polar Plunge – running into the icy water, complete immersion required to earn the certificate. So many people choose to do it that we who went first are able to watch the others from the hot spa pool back on deck.
After 16 days of sheer delight, our one consolation on heading back to Ushuaia is that the Drake Passage – the body of water between Antarctica and South America, notorious for its rough seas – is beautifully calm. It’s the final treat of a cruise that’s been so full of them, everyone is addicted. We’ll be back.