every hour | 11 nights | from $11,400 per person
the Antarctic Peninsula Vacation Package: Every Hour Spoken For
Eleven nights, a small ship, and roughly 11 hours of every day settled before you wake up. The Antarctic Peninsula vacation package is for people who would rather somebody else held the timetable, and who can accept losing a day to weather.
What every hour means here
- Hours already spoken for
- About 11 hours. Two outings, three fixed meal sittings and the daily talks sit inside that figure, and the ship repositions overnight while you sleep.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 6:15 am, over the cabin speaker, on seven of the eleven mornings. Which seven depends on ice, and you learn it the evening before.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- About four hours, on the homeward crossing, between lunch and the 5 pm briefing. Nothing longer than that exists anywhere in the eleven nights.
- Who chooses where you eat
- A timetable, and above the timetable the ice. The expedition team picks each landing site that morning; meals are at set hours and there is one kitchen.
- What happens if you skip a day
- You stay aboard and read. Nothing comes back, because the price is one voyage fee and a skipped landing is not a separable line inside it.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- Anyone who wants to decide at breakfast what the day looks like, or who needs a site-by-site itinerary in writing before departure. Bad seasickness is the other disqualifier: two 48-hour crossings are part of the structure, not an option.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
What the eleven hours cover
- Two crossings of the Drake Passage, near enough 48 hours each way, with the ship's schedule running straight through both.
- Up to two outings a day, roughly 90 minutes each, on foot or by small boat, worked around the 100-visitors-ashore limit that applies across the region.
- Eleven nights in a twin cabin with a window, and all meals aboard at three fixed sittings.
- Two to four talks a day, 45 minutes each, slotted between the outings and the meals.
- Loan of boots, waterproof trousers and a life jacket, plus the compulsory kit vacuuming before the first landing.
- Transfers between airport and pier at Ushuaia on the two days that bracket the sailing.
- A doctor aboard for the full voyage.
What you pay for on top
- Getting to Argentina: flights from US cities to Ushuaia, usually through Buenos Aires, run about $1,300 to $2,400 round trip and are booked on their own.
- One night in Ushuaia before you sail, from about $180 a room. The ship does not wait, and a same-day connection is a poor idea.
- Drinks outside meal service, laundry, and anything from the shop.
- Kayaking, camping ashore and diving, where the vessel runs them: $350 to $1,100 each, and places tend to go months ahead.
- Crew gratuities, customarily $15 to $20 per person per day, settled at the end.
- Travel insurance. You must hold it, medical evacuation cover of at least $200,000 is a condition of boarding, and we neither sell it nor arrange it.
What it costs
from $11,400 per person
- Covering
- 11 nights, a fully scheduled small ship voyage in ice.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
Which months hold up and which do not
Sailings on the Antarctic Peninsula vacation package run from late November to early March. Nothing goes April through October: the sea ice closes the route and the light drops away.
November is the ice month. Fast ice can shut a whole bay, so landings are fewer, but the snow is clean and the penguins are courting. December and January give you close to 20 hours of light, the mildest air, the most ships and the highest prices. February and early March are the whale weeks, and by then the shore is gray and smells of it.
Two stretches I would steer you off. The first departures in November, because a hard ice year can cost you half the landings on a trip that is otherwise scheduled hour by hour. And the final week of March, when the Passage turns and daylight is already shortening by about four minutes a day.
What gets settled when you confirm
Four things move at confirmation. Cabin grade and deck, which shifts the price more than any other choice you make. Whether you cross by sea both ways or fly one leg over the Passage, swapping two days of swell for two days of cost. Whether you take a single cabin or share with a stranger the vessel assigns. And which add-on activities you want held, since those close earliest. We book all of it with the company that operates the ship. We run nothing ourselves, and no money passes through us.