On first seeing mainland Antarctica from the Ross Sea, Robert Falcon Scott wrote with bookkeeperish precision that “the golden light on this wonderful scene of mountain and ice satisfies every claim of scenic magnificence.” We’ll have many scenically overwhelming chances to check the old fellow’s bookkeeping in this magnificent Antarctic extravaganza.

We board our splendidly outfitted, Finnish-built, helicopter equipped icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov in Stanley, capital of the Falklands (and the only town worth the name in the islands; its population is just over 2,000). We head south to the South Shetland Islands at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula (see An Explorer’s Antarctica) and then west, through the phantasmagoric pack ice of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas (called by Antarctic hands the Phantom Coast), to the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Sound for some thrilling explorations, encountering Aptenodytes forsteri, the emperor penguin, and visiting the mysterious Dry Valleys, Franklin Island, historic Terra Nova Bay, and the incredible Drygalski Ice Tongue.

Our adventure continues as we make pilgrimages to Scott’s and Shackleton’s huts at Cape Roydsand Cape Evans, helicopter onto the Ross Ice Shelf, gaze up at smoldering Mount Erebus, and visit the American and New Zealand bases at McMurdo Sound. We'll then reunite with the green world via Campbell and Enderby Islands before sailing to Hobart, Tasmania. And as always, we’ll have ample chances to Zodiac ashore to mingle with hundreds of thousands of penguins, gaze at orcas, seals, and world-circling albatrosses in the company of our on-board lecturers and naturalists who, like us, are enraptured by land-, ice-, and seascapes that pierce to the center of the soul and flood it with light and life.

For additional details on this Antarctic cruise, please call 1-800-777-8183.

• General Description
• Reading List
• Weather Information

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