Cruise Destinations in focus The South Pole

It’s astonishing to think that a hundred years ago, no human being had set foot on the South Pole, but today, cruise passengers get there in sheer luxury.

Antarctic cruises are still complex, and not common, because virtually all cruises travel there between November and March, which is the most clement season, it’s a short season but even so, there can be days when the weather conditions remind cruise passengers of those hardy, and sometimes foolhardy, explorers of a century ago – land temperatures can drop to minus forty degrees at noon! This doesn’t affect people travelling on a climate controlled cruise ship and anyway, the sea temperatures can be much warming and on certain days it’s easy to enjoy a stroll on deck in a T-shirt. This, as well as the tendency of airstrips to ice up and become unusable, is why virtually all holiday travel to the South Pole is by sea. Sailing from ports like Christchurch in New Zealand, Capetown in South Africa, Ushuaia in Argentina and or Punta Arenas in Chile, ships ranging from mega-liners to ice-breakers sail to the pole.

If you’re planning an Antarctic cruise, expect to see lots of ice and lots of sea. Wildlife tours are commonplace although as we have seen recently even purpose-built Kapitan Khlebnikov ice-breaker can get hemmed in with pack ice while trying to visit penguin colonies. And expect a certain amount of fog, which is a regular feature of tours in this area. Hurtigruten, Princess, Hapag Lloyd, NCL and Elite are just a few of the lines that travel to the region. Bear in mind that ships carrying over 500 passengers are prohibited from landing along the cost for fear of damaging the fragile ecosystem.