Visiting Antarctica is for many people a once-in-a-lifetime goal, ambition or
dream. I'm about to share with you the five very best things about going on a
cruise to Antarctica. I'm Gary Bembridge and this is another of my tips
for travellers. I'm currently, as I record this, sailing
back from a phenomenal ten days visiting Antarctica. I've been cruising on Silversea
Silver Cloud Expedition ship and I want to share with you, and show you,
what's really good - and why. One of the best things about an Antarctica Cruise is the
fact that it is so unique, it's so special and you are so privileged to do
it. Only about 45,000 people go to Antarctica at the moment.
Very few people get to go to Antarctica and experience this
magical, remote and unusual place. The best thing about it is you're going somewhere
that's not overcrowded. It's still very special and it's unique. It's
unpredictable. It's different and you feel when you're there that you're part
of something absolutely magical, and you're doing something that's unique and
special. That's one of the best things for me about Antarctic cruise.
It's not like going everywhere else where everyone's been. Without a shadow
of a doubt, one of the best things about Antarctica are the landscapes and the
scenery. Every day I thought I'd seen the best scenery that I was going to see in
Antarctica, and we'd move somewhere else and it was an even bigger revelation. It was
almost as if every day was building to something bigger and better. It is
absolutely magnificent. We went to incredibly diverse places. You're going
to see huge soaring mountains, glaciers are every where you look.
There are many glaciers, and they are huge and magnificent. It is absolutely
magnificent. No matter where you go it is just remarkable, and I don't know if the
images will ever do justice to what you actually get to see. One of the best
things about Antarctica are the Penguins. There are so many penguins wherever you
go, and I learned so much about penguins. We mostly saw Chinstrap and Gentoo,
because the time of the year that I went. There are no land-based
predators in Antarctica, so the Penguins are comfortable with
people being on land. Although the regulations say you should try and stay
5 meters (15 feet) away from penguins, they didn't get the memo and they will
move right around you. What I learnt about penguins is their Rookeries and where
they live is very far and high up from the sea, and they have to walk huge
distances and climb over quite rough terrain. They create highways
which they use to go up and down. If you get in their way on the highway, or you
block the highway, they are not happy at all. One of the big things we were
told is avoid the highways and penguins have right-of-way. When they swim it is quite
remarkable. They can move very fast and Gentoo can swim up to 30 miles an hour.
Sometimes we were cruising along on the ship and they were swimming
alongside the ship, with his kind of ducking and diving that they do, and they
were keeping up with the ship at all times.
They are gorgeously cute creatures. Penguins are
everywhere and we just huge amounts of penguins, and they are absolutely
phenomenal. The third best thing about Antarctica is the other wildlife. You
see phenomenal amounts of wildlife, particularly whales. I went towards
the end of the season, which is the end of February and early March, which is a
really good time to see whales. We saw humpbacks up really close. In
the zodiacs, humpbacks were swimming around us and diving down getting food.
When we were cruising through Gerlache Channel, we saw a huge part of Orcas, also
known as killer whales. Pretty much everywhere we went once were in
Antarctica, whales were somewhere around and we could see them everywhere. The
other thing that I absolutely loved seeing was seals, and we saw a wide range
of seals. Some of which were floating on the various bits of floating ice, others
were on land. We saw the leopard seals, they're very deadly and are big
predators of penguins and they're also very popular food for the Orcas. We also saw
Weddell seals, crabeater seals which don't eat crabs and we also saw
Antarctica Fur Seals. Seeing these big amazing creatures is quite remarkable. If
you're into birds you also see a wide range of birds both on crossing
on Drake Passage but also once you get to Antarctica. The third best
thing where the whales and the seals. The thing that for
me was quite a surprise, was the diversity and range of different
expedition experiences on an Antarctic cruise. We had three buckets of
things that we did. The first was basically sail by on the ship. We
stayed on the ship and cruised by things like the massive A57A Iceberg,
which is 11 nautical miles long and five nautical miles wide. It's 30
meters above the sea and 300 meters below it.
We also cruised through one of the most scenic parts of Antarctica, the
Lermaire channel which is famous for its narrow channel that is blocked for
large parts of the year with sea ice. Absolutely beautiful place to sail
through. There's loads of leopard seals and other breeds of seals on the
various ice floes through that channel. The second set of
expedition experiences are on the zodiacs. The small zodiacs have eight to ten
people and one guide, and we headed out on various excursions
staying on the zodiacs. Sometimes it might be cruising through a
beautiful Bay, getting up close to the glaciers, or perhaps cruising past some
of the different research stations that are down in Antarctica, and of course
zodiac cruising around looking for whales, particularly humpback whales which
would come really close to the zodiacs and dive all around us. Another great
example of a zodiac excursion was in Pleneau Island. This is an area where
the currents and the winds drive and push many large icebergs and
you almost have an iceberg graveyard, or a certainly an area where there's all
these beautiful and unusual ice sculptures. Sometimes there was be the odd
surprise. For example, once they sent out a zodiac
which had hot chocolate, champagne and cookies. s
The third bucket then were
zodiac landings. You head off from the ship on the zodiacs and
step on land. There were three main types of zodiac landings that we did. The
first of those were ones that got you close up to
intermingle with wildlife. There might be penguins, there might be seals
and the wildlife were right around as you went on the various walks. The
second type were hikes, and some of these were pretty strenuous. We'd
hike up big ice-covered hills. They look like they're covered in snow, but they
are actually slippery ice. We'd hike up mountains to
get incredible views or sometimes at the top of these hills would be rookeries
with penguins, sometimes even with little fluffy baby chicks. Another great
example of a hike was on Deception Island at Telefon Bay where we hiked
right up to the crater of a volcano which had really destroyed big parts of
the island. The other type of zodiac landing, which I really enjoyed as well,
were ones where we either went and visited a research station, so
for example we went to the Kedansky Station which was a Ukranian station
since 1996 and before that it was a UK station which they sold to the
Ukrainians. The people there spend a whole year working there. Or we'd go and
visit an old historic research station. For example, there was Wordie house,
which was quite near, which was an old research
station and now is a museum. The other type of excursion, which was really
fascinating, were historic ones and this was mostly at Whaler's Bay on Deception
Island where the whaling ships would come in and on land there were
processing facilities for the whaling industry. It was deserted in the
30s when the prices collapsed of whale oil and now there are these
slightly surreal remnants left behind. The experience of an Antarctica Cruise
is phenomenal. It beat every expectation I had. Nothing that I'd read or seen
prepared me for the magnificence of Antarctica. Those are the best things and
there are a few worst things. However, the worst things are never ever going to get
in the way of making an amazing experience. I hope you found this helpful,
interesting and inspiring. If you did I'd love you to watch many more of my Tips For
Travellers videos. They are designed to help you make the most of your precious travel
time and money whether it's on land, on sea or on the rivers of the world.