16-day expedition cruise from Ushuaia to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, will five days exploring Antarctica on included and optional activities.
Get close to icebergs, go whale watching and see penguins, with chances to go hiking, kayaking, ice-cruising, and even camping on the Antarctic ice.
Explore the scenic, sandy beaches and wildlife of the Falkland Islands and visit the charming capital, Stanley .
Sail iceberg-filled waters as we journey from Ushuaia to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands. Spot penguins, seals and whales along the way. As always, nature is in charge. We’ll monitor conditions to give you the best adventure possible, including kayaking, ice-cruising, whale-watching, hiking and more.
Explore the rolling green hills and white sands of the picturesque Falklands archipelago. A warm welcome awaits you in the capital Stanley. You’ll also visit the penguin and fur seal colonies that populate the shores.
Flights
Hotel
Onboard activities
Landing activities
We'll help you plan where to go, when to visit and how long to stay
With its fusion of faded European splendour and Latin American panache, an overnight stay in Buenos Aires is the ideal way to start your Antarctic adventure. Why not arrive early to explore more or join our optional Pre-Programme to tour wild Patagonia.
T ake in the beautiful architecture. Visit the beautiful opera house of Teatro Colón, the pretty-in-pink Casa Rosada, and the National Museum of Fine Arts, displaying works by Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso.
Explore the colourful street museum in La Boca with its buzzy markets and restaurants. Or take in a tango show before savouring delicious Argentinian beef in one of the city's steakhouses.
Your adventure begins with an early morning flight to Ushuaia, where you'll meet your hybrid-powered expedition ship, MS Fridtjof Nansen, specially designed for sustainable cruising in polar waters.
This bustling port is the capital of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province. Set against the magnificent backdrop of the Martial Glacier, Ushuaia vies for the title of the world’s southernmost city.
After a briefing from your Expedition Team, you’ll have time to settle into your cabin and explore the comforts and amenities on board. Later, you'll join your Expedition Team for a welcome dinner.
As we cruise from Ushuia to Antarctica through the Drake Passage, the Expedition Team will equip you with all you need to make the most of your polar expedition.
Visit the onboard Science Center and find out what lies ahead. You'll learn about Antarctica’s history, wildlife and how we can protect this fragile Antarctic environment from the impact of climate change and plastic pollution. You can also find out about Citizen Science projects you can join.
There's plenty of time to relax so take an invigorating swim, unwind in the Wellness Spa, enjoy delicious cuisine or meet fellow adventurers in the Explorer Lounge.
Nothing quite prepares you for it. Surrounded by looming glaciers, and icebergs the size of floating cathedrals, Antarctica will fill you with wonder. Perhaps the most surprising part of Antarctica is the silence. It's a stillness that's broken every so often by the locals – the wildlife.
In the Antarctic summer, that might be penguins tending to their chicks; cormorants, sheathbills and egrets wheeling through the skies; or humpback whales and even orca feeding on the krill-rich waters. Antarctica is simply a place where nature is king and the rest of us, mere observers.
You’ll spend an exciting five days busily exploring several of the possible landing sites. Wherever we go and whatever we do, each day will offer something different and thrilling.
You'll join the Expedition Team on landings and ice cruises, all included as part of your expedition. You can join optional activities that include memorable possibilities such as kayaking, snowshoeing, hiking and even camping in Antarctica.
Our lecture programme continues, providing you with fascinating insights in real time. You can take part in Citizen Science programmes like the HappyWhale project. Upload your whale pictures to help researchers track migration patterns and population health, where your precious memories will contribute to real conservation.
As you savour your Antarctic experiences, prepare for more adventures ahead as we cruise towards the Falkland Islands. Your Expedition Team will brief you about the history and biology of the islands. In the Science Center, you can look through the microscope at the tiny krill and phytoplankton that sustains so much of the region's wildlife. Get tips from our professional photographer to improve your images, or join a workshop on wildlife painting and nautical knots.
You can also book a spa treatment, visit the gym, and enjoy the locally-sourced, regionally inspired dishes in our restaurants.
The Falkland archipelago is filled with seamless horizons and white sands teeming with birdlife. The occasional farm dots the landscape. You’ll find grassy hills, wildflowers, sandy beaches and turquoise waters, in contrast to the vast whiteness of Antarctica. You'll also enjoy an included community walk of Stanley, taking in the Jubilee Villa Gardens, Christchurch Cathedral and the Historic Dockyard Museum.
Our landings, hikes and excursions are, as always, guided by the conditions. We hope to visit penguin colonies, often found sharing space with fur seals, getting as close as we can without disturbing them.
Your action-packed expedition cruise, taking in the wonders of Antarctica and the wildlife of the Falkland Islands, nears its end. As we sail the final leg to Ushuaia, enjoy your final day at sea.
Join the Expedition Team in the Science Center to examine special interests in more depth. Learn more about photography, or simply relax on deck, mulling over the highlights of a memorable adventure. And don't forget to contribute your findings to Citizen Science projects.
End the evening in the Explorer Lounge with the new friends you’ve made on your trip, sharing experiences over a relaxing drink.
Your expedition cruise ends in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s southernmost province. From here, you’ll take a flight back to Buenos Aires, but it needn't be the end of your adventure.
If you’re not ready for the adventure to end just yet, why not join our optional Post-Programme to tour the magnificent Iguazu Falls. Summer is the best time to visit and it's a memorable way to wrap up your travels. Or you can stay and enjoy the sights of Buenos Aires before heading home.
Take a closer look at our ships typically used on this expedition
It's a mixture of adventure activities for individuals of all ages
Landing sites in Antarctica
An endless white wilderness, Antarctica is nature at its most sublime and haunting.
An endless white wilderness, Antarctica is nature at its most sublime and haunting. Read more about some of the possible landing sites you could explore on a sailing to Antarctica with Hurtigruten.
During our astonishing Antarctica voyages you will learn of the great explorers who paved the way into these southern oceans, gazing out across landscapes that have remained as awe-inspiring and unchanged as the day that man first set eyes upon them.
Four of Hurtigruten's explorer ships take you as close as possible to Antarctic wildlife and untouched wilderness. Each of our vessels offer a fascinating and varied schedule of landings, all designed to create unforgettable memories. MS Fram will carry only 200 guests, while MS Roald Amundsen and MS Midnatsol (MS Fridtjof Nansen from 2019) will carry 500 each. This relatively small passenger size allows Hurtigruten explorer ships to make landings in some of the most spectacular scenery of the area, following IAATO regulations. MS Fram is a category 1 vessel, offering the widest possible range of landing sites.
Completing successful landings require experience - in Hurtigruten we have over 128 years of it, and take pride in offering seamless landings to all our guests. From our tender pit - a small pier folded out on the side of the ship - you board small rubber boats that take up to 20 people. Then we take you ashore. But before this happens, we make sure to follow a few simple principles to make every landing run smoothly:
Guests are divided into boat groups of approximately 40 guests
To make it easier for guests to remember their group, we name them after animals in Antarctica, like albatross, krill or penguin species.
Groups are called by name over the ship's speakers to avoid lines
All guests get a patch with the animal of their group for their Explorer jacket before the very first landing.
Groups are put together by the Expedition Coordinator by language. Friends and family
also stay together.
All guests can eat whenever they want - before or after their outdoor activity. We put expeditions first, and fit your meals around them, which is what our explorer guests really love.
Once ashore, you will be greeted by the Expedition Leader or Assistant Expedition Leader at the landing site, offering you steps and helping hands to make the landing easier. Information about the landing site is provided, with tips on where to go and where to see animals. All guests are free to walk around the landing sites on their own, with the Expedition Team members nearby to answer questions or provide information. Special hikes and other excursions are always guided by experienced lecturers and team members.
Weather, wind, ice and local conditions will determine the exact nature of your programme and schedule. Safety is paramount and the ship’s captain will decide the final sailing itinerary during the voyage. Therefore every voyage is unique and all advertised routes, by the very nature of the region, can only be indicative.
Below you will find a selection of some of the possible landing sites in Antarctica depending on your voyage’s planned itinerary:
One of the highlights of the South Shetlands, Deception Island is a distinctive ring-shaped volcanic caldera, a portion of which has collapsed and created a navigable opening into the flooded interior. The natural harbour within includes Whalers Bay, home to an abandoned whaling station known as Hektor, as well as a derelict British base.
Staggeringly photogenic and blessed with some of the most spectacular Antarctic scenery imaginable, Half Moon Island is a glittering gem amongst these island treasures. Its serrated and creviced cliffs are home to a large colony of chinstrap penguins, as well as Antarctic terns, kelp gulls, snowy sheathbills, Wilson’s storm petrels and several species of seals who are regular visitors to the island.
Early sealers in the area used Yankee Harbour on Greenwich Island as a frequent base of operations, its remarkable setting providing a natural safe haven for the sailors. Remnants of those early days can still be seen littering the shoreline, but the big draw for visitors here is the large colony of Gentoo penguins, whose numbers are estimated to be around 4,000 breeding pairs.
Situated in the scenic Errera Channel, Cuverville Island boasts the largest known colony of Gentoo penguins. The narrow Errera Channel offers a spectacular passage to and from Cuverville as icebergs become trapped and grounded in the nearby shallows. Watching from the observation decks as our navigators weave the ship carefully between the icebergs is as exciting as being surrounded by the throngs of nesting penguins onshore.
Neko Harbour with its Gentoo penguin colony lies nestled in Andvord Bay, surrounded by the mountains and high glacier walls of the peninsula. Named after a factory whaling ship from the early 1900s, Neko is one of the rare places in this area where you may land on the Antarctic mainland.
The harbour is paradise not only in name, but in splendour and scenery as well. Protected from the winds of the nearby Gerlache Strait, Paradise Harbour offers another rare opportunity for a mainland landing and some of the finest vistas the Peninsula has to offer. Here you can find the Argentine base Almirante Brown and the Chilean base Gonzalez Videla, as well as colonies of neighbouring penguins.
This 11 kilometre long and 1.6 kilometre wide channel is one of the most beautiful passages in Antarctica. It bestows upon the traveller a glimpse into what fascinates us most about this incredibly contrasting environment; it is sublime yet imposing, delicate yet daunting, alluring yet inhospitable.
Its location in the picturesque Penola Strait makes Petermann Island a great spot for iceberg- and whale-spotting and offers spectacular views across the channel to the Antarctic Peninsula.
The British base of Port Lockroy on Goudier Island was built in 1941 and abandoned in 1962. It lay empty until 1996 when it was refurbished as a museum by the Antarctic Heritage Trust. It has since become one of the most popular sites in Antarctica and offers a unique peek into life in an Antarctic base in the 1950's.
The mountains and high glaciers around Wilhelmina Bay ensure plenty of dramatic scenery and sculpted ice from tiny floating pieces to large bergs. The bay is a choice feeding ground for whales and seals and therefore was a rich hunting ground for the whalers of the past.
The huge ice shelves of the Antarctic continent give birth to mile-long tabular icebergs. The strong currents of the Weddell Sea conspire to bring these massive flat-topped bergs north into the Antarctic Sound at the north-eastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Brown Bluff lies on the coast of the Antarctic Sound at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. As the name suggests, the landscape is dominated by an ominous 745 metre high cliff. The towering, rust-coloured bluff is volcanic in origin and the beach is peppered with lava “bombs”. Adélie penguins, Gentoo penguins, kelp gulls, and cape petrels can be found breeding here and Weddell seals are also regular visitors.
Onboard Science Programme
Our Science Programme has one goal: to increase your curiosity, knowledge and interest of the areas you are sailing to.
Our Science Programme has one goal: to increase your curiosity, knowledge and interest of the areas you are sailing to.
Our expedition ships serve as the perfect platform for scientific research; with access to remote regions of the world and onboard experts, we can provide invaluable data to the scientific community - with help from our guests!
We invite our guests to participate in science activities, developing a greater understanding of the region in which they travel, becoming true ambassadors, and returning home to champion the protection of our planet's most fragile ecosystems.
Delivery of our own lecture programme.
Interacting with guests in our Science Centers to reinforce the lecture programme with practical hands-on guest experiences.
Citizen science programme involving guests in programmes for third-party organisations.
Carrying scientific equipment for sample collection on behalf of research institutes.
Hosting scientific personnel on board to conduct collaborative science programmes.
Seabird Distribution with the Antarctic Site Inventory — Surveys throughout the Antarctic Peninsula help scientists understand how seabirds are using different habitats and provide valuable information about their life cycles.
Cloud Observations with the Globe Program — By observing and recording cloud cover timed to NASA satellite fly-overs, guests can help scientists understand how surface and air temperature are affected by cloud cover, and how clouds will respond to a changing climate.
Happywhale — We assist in tracking individual whales throughout our world’s oceans by harnessing the power of whale watching enthusiasts - our guests - expanding our scientific knowledge of their behaviour and distribution.
Sea Leopard Project — A non-profit study aimed at a better understanding of the behaviour, ecology, and population dynamics of leopard seals on the Antarctic Peninsula to promote their conservation and safe human-seal interactions.
Fjord Phyto — Study phytoplankton to better understand how they respond to water temperature changes in the polar regions, providing a key to help mitigate future environmental impacts.
Join the Expedition Team here for a range of lectures, photography workshops, and Citizen Science Projects. The area also features scientific and educational equipment, such as microscopes and interactive maps.
In-depth talks on history, climate change, sustainability, wildlife, Earth science, culture, and other topics specific to the destination you are visiting are held here. Learning more about each subject is certain to enhance your expedition experience.
Our Science Programme has one goal: To increase your curiosity, knowledge and interest of the areas you are sailing to.
What the Science Programme is about
Learning from the experts on board
Facilities, equipment and activities
Citizen Science research projects- and how you can contribute
Speaker: Verena Meraldi
Young Explorers Programme
Welcome all young explorers
Young Explorer is a complimentary, year-round programme on selected Hurtigruten ships for curious and active youth aged 6-12 years of age.
The children will learn about other cultures, the importance of nature in our daily lives, and the impact humans have on our delicate and beautiful planet. The Young Explorers’ Programme makes it easier to meet other children on board, bond over common activities and form lasting friendships.
There will be daily onboard activities related to different Young Explorers’ topics. Through the Young Explorers’ Programme, children will get a deeper understanding of nature, climate and culture. Depending on seasons and destinations, they will also be introduced to topics like wildlife, local food, environmental protection and famous explorers. This will give the children a sense of what it is like to be a real explorer in beautiful, untouched surroundings.
All children aged 6 to 12 years are welcome to participate in the Young Explorers’ Programme. At the beginning of the voyage, you will receive more practical details of the programme. Parents/guardians do not participate in Young Explorers’ activities, but depending on the size and variation of the group some parents may be asked to join on an informal basis. The Young Explorer activities will only be offered in English.
It is free of charge to join the Young Explorer Programme. To reserve, please contact our booking office at [email protected] or call +441224980439.
Learn more about what you can experience when going with us
Practical information you need to know
Your onboard guides are local experts in areas of interest specific to Antarctica
Expedition exclusive cost savings and rare opportunities.
* Certain offers may not be combinable, up to two savings opportunities except where noted otherwise
Antarctica: £800pp off Suites
Explore the Antarctic wilderness in luxury with up to £800pp. off suites on selected expedition 2022/2023 cruises.
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offer
45 days left to take advantage of our best price guarantee offer
No single supplement: Selected departures
Our expeditions are for everyone, even those who prefer their own space but like having the company of like-minded individuals.
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14 days left to take advantage of our best price guarantee offer
Antarctica
