What the trip actually is

The season runs November through March. That is it. Outside those months the ice closes in and nobody is going.

Almost everyone goes to the same place, which surprises people. About 98 percent of tourism voyages work the Antarctic Peninsula, the arm that reaches up toward South America. When you see the photographs, that is where they were taken. The rest of the continent is research stations and ice.

Just under 120,000 people visited in the last full season IAATO reported. That sounds like a lot until you are standing somewhere with one ship in sight and no other human beings, which is the normal experience. There is a reason for that.

The rule that shapes everything

IAATO, the association nearly every real operator belongs to, sets limits that quietly decide what your day looks like:

• One hundred people ashore at a time. Not one hundred per ship. One hundred, total, at that site.
• One guide per twenty guests on land.
• Ships carrying more than five hundred passengers cannot land at all. They sail past and you look at Antarctica through a window.
• Only one ship at a landing site at a time. Operators schedule around each other.

Do the arithmetic and ship size stops being a comfort question and becomes the whole trip. A ship carrying 500 or more never puts you on the continent. A ship carrying 200 gets everyone ashore in two rotations. A ship carrying 100 to 150 gets everyone ashore at once, and you are not sitting on the boat waiting your turn.

This is the single thing I most want people to understand before they book, because the brochures all look the same and the experiences are not remotely the same.

Sail the Drake, or fly it

Most voyages leave from Ushuaia at the bottom of Argentina, some from Punta Arenas in Chile. From Ushuaia you cross the Drake Passage, about two days each way. The Drake has a reputation and it earns it, though it can also be flat as a lake and they call that the Drake Lake.

The alternative is to fly it. Two hours from Punta Arenas to a gravel strip on King George Island, where you board the ship. It saves you four days of sailing, which for a lot of families is the difference between the trip being possible and not.

What you give up is real though. Those Drake days are when the lecture program happens, when you watch albatross doing the thing albatross do behind the ship, and when the group turns into a group. Some people would not skip it. Some people would pay anything to.

The ships, and who runs them

Lindblad is the name most associated with the continent and that is not marketing. Lars-Eric Lindblad ran the first tourist voyage to Antarctica in 1966. Today they sail four National Geographic ships down there carrying between 102 and 148 guests, which puts every one of them under the landing limit. Zodiacs, kayaking, photography instruction and the parka are in the fare rather than tacked on.

Ponant sail French, smaller ship feel and a different food operation. Silversea and Seabourn bring proper luxury service to expedition ships. Scenic Eclipse carry a submarine and helicopters. Atlas sit at the more approachable end of the small ship market. Viking run purpose built expedition ships with a Scandinavian restraint that suits some people exactly.

Every one of them is written up on its own page below. Start with the ship size, then worry about the wine list.

When in the season to go

The season changes character month by month. There is no single best answer, only a best answer for what you want to see.

• November. Untouched snow, the biggest ice, penguins courting and building nests. No chicks yet. Colder, windier, and some landing sites still blocked by ice.
• December. Close to twenty four hour daylight. Wildlife picking up fast by the end of the month. The trip sailings carry trip pricing.
• January. Peak. Penguin chicks everywhere, warmest temperatures, calmest water for kayaking. Also the most ships and the highest prices.
• February. The whale month. Multiple species, long golden sunsets, chicks big and scruffy rather than fluffy. More rock than snow underfoot, and more penguin mess, which nobody photographs.
• March. Fewest ships and the best pricing. Whales still around. The light goes quickly and the wildlife starts to leave.

Want chicks, go in January. Want whales, go in February. Want the place mostly to yourself and you will take the trade, go in March.

What it costs

Roughly ten thousand dollars a person is the honest middle. Under five thousand exists at the budget end on older ships. Over thirty thousand exists at the luxury end. Flying the Drake rather than sailing it does not save money the way people expect, and eight day fly in programs still start around ten thousand.

Usually in the fare: the voyage, the Zodiac landings, the expedition team, and on most of the good operators a parka you keep. Usually not: getting yourself to Buenos Aires or Santiago and onward to Ushuaia or Punta Arenas, hotels either side, and the drinks, wifi, laundry and gratuities that add several hundred to a thousand.

Build the flights and the pre nights into your number from the start. The gap between the fare and the real cost of an Antarctica trip catches more people out than any other trip I quote.

Can you take the kids

More than you would think, and this has changed recently. Several operators now take children from around six on expedition voyages, and Lindblad publish a minimum of four for Antarctica, the Arctic and Greenland. Aurora opened their whole program to six and over.

Taking a child at all is a separate question, and it depends entirely on the child. There is no kids club, no waterslide, and a lot of the day is looking at things and listening to someone explain them. For the right nine year old it is the best thing that will ever happen to them. For the wrong one it is a very expensive week of being cold.

These minimums move around and they vary by ship and by departure. Ask me before you plan around one.

The part nobody puts in the brochure

You will not land every day you hoped to. Weather cancels landings, ice closes sites, and a good expedition leader will change the plan without apologising because the alternative is unsafe. That flexibility is the product. If a fixed itinerary matters to you, this is not your trip.

You will also line for the vacuum. Every guest has their outerwear and bags vacuumed before the first landing to keep seeds and soil off the continent, and boots are washed between every site. It is tedious and it is the reason the place is still what it is.