Antarctica Cruise 2024

The Viking Polaris is a purpose built expedition ship rated to cruise the Arctic, Antarctic, and is small enough to also allow Viking to use her and her sister ship in the US Great Lakes. She has stabilizers and a center line ballast tank that allows for ideally smooth cruising in heavier seas than you’d normally get for a ship of her size. The amenities aboard were state of the art and we were never really at a loss for something to do. Polaris was equipped with lots of zodiacs, two special operations boats, two submarines, and 10 passenger kayaks. We visited the Spa a few times with its heated pool, sauna, and outside hot tub. It had a couple of unusual features like heated tile seats that were a little hit and miss on the heat, a “snow grotto” that literally dumped snow from the ceiling for you to rub on yourself, and a swimsuit dryer that mostly dried your suit in 8 seconds. Just aft of the spa was the Aula, a large lecture style room with a massive screen used for the daily briefings, lectures, or movies. The screen could be raised to reveal massive windows to the outside.

We were never hungry aboard with access to the World Cafe for casual dining and two restaurants that required reservations but they were free. There was also a small area that had snacks and finger foods called Mamsen’s, but we never partook. Next to it was the Living Room, where we won the daily trivia not once but twice! They also had electronic game tables with chess, checkers, poker, and several other games for up to four players.

The Explorer’s Lounge bar was where we spent most of our before and after dinner time. At first it was just talking to random people and our favorite bartender, Rio. Towards the end of the trip, we’d put together a group of regulars and looked forward to seeing them each night to talk about what we saw that day, exchange pictures on AirDrop, and trade travel stories.

Our room was the basic Nordic Balcony, but there really isn’t much basic about Viking. We had heard about the namesake of these rooms but weren’t really sure what it was going to add to our trip. The Nordic balcony is two paned windows that have controls that allows the top pane to drop down into an open position. It gets a little chilly if you leave it open, but nowhere near as cold as standing out on deck in the wind. It allowed us to comfortably hang out in the room and take unobstructed pictures. It also offered the added benefit of cooling down our room quickly when we put our gear on too early. There was an L-shaped couch in the room that provided the best seat in the house as glaciers, penguins, and the occasional whale went by. The bathroom was larger than we expected and we got other cool stuff like a stocked fridge, two pairs of binoculars, an espresso cap machine, and wireless charging nightstands; however, they didn’t work particularly well for us. Speaking of not working as well as expected, each room is equipped with a drying closet. We saw videos of these before coming down and had really high hopes but they were just closets with a small warmer and a metal drip pan at the bottom. There’s a button to turn the heater on, but you need to check back every few hours to see if it needs to restarted. It was nice to have a dedicated place for soaking wet clothes, but I think reality didn’t quite live up to our expectations on this one.

Buenos Aires

We arrived at the Buenos Aires international airport at about 10 am. Retrieving our bags was a huge load off, we had packed in a distributed way to make sure we were in good shape if a bag was lost, but it was still great to see them both make it. We breezed through customs and then located the nearest person holding a Viking sign. The Viking Jupiter was in port that day, so the Viking shore team was busy. We found our first person holding a Viking sign and were pointed in the right direction that led us to another Viking sign where we were pointed down the hall to the next Viking sign. This sounds a little silly, but if you’ve ever been lost in a large international airport, you kind of appreciate the attention to detail. The last Viking sign led us to our que area to wait for our bus to the Marriott. The drive was about 45 minutes, with a handful of tidbits about the area including exchange rate, places to see, and warnings about pickpockets. We got to the Marriott, which is where the deviation from our expectations began. First, we were told our rooms wouldn’t be ready for another three hours, which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but we were prepared and had packed accordingly. We also confirmed that we were on our own for the rest of the day, something that the YouTube videos we watched alluded to, but was never fully confirmed by Viking. We changed into our walking clothes from our carry-on backpacks and then left everything with the Viking staff. We ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, which was surprisingly inexpensive for a flatbread pizza, a burger, and a beer. Our food and travel costs were some of the most inexpensive of any trip we’d been on to date.

We were up at 2:30 am the next morning to meet down at the hotel lobby for our 6 am flight. Breakfast was a bag meal of a croissant and piece of fruit, along with juice, tea, or coffee. The ride to the airport was only a short 10 minute drive. The outside of the city airport was a little odd, with a lot of homeless folks camped out all the way up to the door. Viking utilizes at least two budget carriers for the “chartered” flight down to Ushuaia. The planes weren’t very clean, but we had stuff with us to wipe down our area. We were provided with a meal, but we were pretty selective in what we ate, knowing that certain items like produce and anything with ice cubes should be avoided.

The landing at Ushuaia’s airport was about as bumpy as expected with the high winds that are ever present in the area. We were told by one of our guides that only the most experienced pilots get that route and she shared with us a couple of pictures from landings that resulted in the plane ending up in the water. The bus first took us to the old airfield for a panoramic view of the area. Next stop was the large Ushuaia sign for some pictures, and then a stop at the post office for a passport stamp. We were finally dropped off at the Polaris around 11 am. Check-in was very simple, followed by a safety briefing, and then lunch. We were told the rooms would not be ready until 3, but we were allowed to drop off our carry-on bags in them and then departed for a self-guided walking tour. We were instructed to return no later than 4 pm for departure.

Ushuaia advertises itself as the southernmost city on Earth with a population of about 90k people and tons of amenities. If you forgot to pack something or just want some souvenirs, there are tons of apparel stores. We walked down to the Falkland War Memorial and back, but unfortunately didn’t find a brewery which is always one of our favorite destinations for some unique drinks and shirts.

The Drake Passage has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous areas on the planet for ships because it’s where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet. An estimated 800 ships and 20,000 souls have been lost in the passage since 1500. In 2007 the MV Explorer hit an iceberg and sank, with all crew and passengers making it to the lifeboats and rescued. In 2022, a passenger on our very own Viking Polaris lost her life when a rogue wave struck the ship. We woke up to 12 ft swells, which was enough to close off the outer decks to passengers. We had very different reactions to the trip, with one person sick all day and the other experiencing nearly no effects. I’ll leave you to guess who was who? The crew told us that the transit was probably a three out of ten compared to others, so we certainly felt fortunate. Most passengers were using Scopolamine patches, walking very gingerly, and holding the rails. Because the Polaris has very long hallways, it was hard not to notice an entire line of people drifting from one side to the other in unison. We had our first daily briefing and were informed that we’d be stopping at Fournier Bay the next day. We were also introduced to the variables that would be taken into consideration each day in deciding what options we’d have. An app called Windy was displayed on the large screen to help provide color-coded pictures for wind in the area. We were told wave height and precipitation would go into the decision-making about if and when the ship would deploy zodiacs, kayaks, special operations boats, and the ships’ two submarines for passenger activities. The only other requirement we had for the day was to go down to the boat bay and demonstrate that we could safely transfer from a zodiac to a kayak and back in open water if we wanted to participate in any of the kayaking.

The next morning we sailed for several hours before arriving at our first named stop, Fournier Bay. We learned during yesterday’s briefing that we’d be doing zodiac rides around the bay to see some of the icebergs and their smaller siblings, bergy bits (<5m), and growlers (<1m). We also hoped to see some wildlife in the area, but it’s always anyone’s guess. We were advised to test out our gear on the windward side of the boat and adjust accordingly. We didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the only miserable ride of the entire trip. We went down to the Embarkation room and got into the line for a zodiac. The weather was very overcast and windy with some solid wave action. Antarctica supposedly only gets two inches of snow a year and we saw at least that during our week in the area. The boat ride would have been categorized as miserable anywhere else in the world. We had 32 degree water, waves that splashed water into the boat, falling snow, and visibility that was so bad that we lost site of the ship. But this was Antarctica and we loved every minute of it. If you stood on deck and watched every zodiac leave then you’d see the routes changing over time to account for the movement of the icebergs and changing sea conditions. The bridge acted as an air traffic control for the zodiacs as they were out, reporting obstacles, things of interest, and keeping them all on schedule. After rounding the big iceberg we’d been looking at all afternoon, we headed for the coastline. We got close enough to spot a serac, basically a large chunk of ice hanging over the water that’ll fall at any minute. Once we were back aboard, we loaded our gear into the drying closet and started getting ready for dinner, day one of Antarctica was in the books!

I added a video of what it looked like here, I still hadn’t realized that I needed to regularly wipe down the case, so you’ll get the real feeling of what we saw, snowy sunglasses and all.

In the late afternoon, we got to take our first ride on the Special Ops boat. These boats can travel faster than the zodiacs and give passengers a chance to see some sights a little further from the boat. Ours took us to Port Lacroix, the southernmost post office in the world. Visitors can often visit the post office, but for us the waves were a little too much. There were a ton of penguins surrounding the post office. We could only imagine how funny that has to be when the science team comes out and has to wade through them just to get to the shore. Gentoo penguins were also on the coast and porpoising out to sea. Along the route were also glaciers at different ages.

We arrived at Chiriguano Bay after cruising through an icy channel most of the morning. At first the water was like glass with the only waves being generated by the slow rocking of the chunks of ice in the bay. As the day went on, the wind would pick up a bit. We watched ice slowly approach the ship with a good deal of interest about what would happen. The little ones mostly scooted by, but the larger ones caused the bridge to use the bow thrusters to push the ice away. For a few minutes at a time, it seems like nothing is really happening, but with a little patience it turns into a pretty fun scene. We attended one of the lectures about using our iPhone cameras and two options we knew about, but never really considered were brought to our attention. Slow-mo and time-lapse show up in the menu but we had never really thought of a good reason to use them until we saw some fun videos the crew had made on previous trips. At Chiriguano Bay we captured the movement of the ice in a time-lapse and even videoed it slowly going by the windows in the Hide, a small lounge in the lower bow of the ship. Miranda joined one of the science teams and made fish bait for the Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems (BRUVS) that would be the main attraction a few days later for us.

We spent most of the morning cruising towards Portal Point, which we were notified in the briefing would be our only continental landing. Amazingly, this wasn’t on our original itinerary, and the only reason we initially knew about it was that we went down to guest services to see if there was any activity availability for the day. This is another reason why swinging by guest services each day isn’t a bad idea. The expedition crew was able to add this stop due to the excellent weather we’d been seeing and the prediction of more. The main excitement of the morning was the frequent whale sightings. These were still pretty new to us, so you’d see whole tables get up from breakfast and rush outside.

Once we got into the bay, we found over a dozen humpback whales in groups of three or four feeding, including an apparently world famous whale that’s been tracked since 2006. The unnamed whale, whose ID is HW-MN1301140 only has half of it’s tailfin and it regularly swims from the coast of Ecuador to Antartica each year. We didn’t have a special ops boat ride today, but those that did got a great show. They were able to park the boats right next to where the whales were consistently surfacing, but we’d get our own close encounter the next day.

In the late afternoon we went ashore and nearly got taken out by a gentleman who lost his balance and landed on us while we were taking our picture of our boots on the ground of the continent. Wildlife was limited to a handful of seals lounging around and a large Skua that didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned with us. We were still able to see the whales, and even spotted a few more in the cove. We took both hiking routes, the loop towards the cove and the hill path that the expedition team had dug out to give us a better view of the area.

Our day started with breakfast being interrupted by a humpback whale. This fella was sleeping in the bay, known as logging, because the whale just looks like a rolling log on the surface. When we got within about a hundred yards of it, it woke up, then it swam alongside us for about 10 minutes. Finally we broke off and it continued on, we spotted it a few more times through the day. Sadly, it appears to have lost its mother, and if it doesn’t find a surrogate soon, it likely won’t survive.

It was another beautiful sunny day, but Danco Island had a lot of ice in it so all the boats had to be careful going out and back. Our first trip out was on the special operations boat where we got a good view of the coastline and found a lazy leopard seal snoozing on a chunk of ice. We saw several groups of gentoo penguins porpoising and a handful of birds. Our driver decided to race one of them before heading back to the ship. Once back aboard, we were immediately able to join the line for a landing and we were gone again. The trip out was long because they needed to get around the ice. Once ashore we were greeted by gentoo penguins on the beach. As we climbed higher, we started seeing them walking along their little highways. We followed our well marked route to the top and took pictures of their colony and the surrounding area. These little guys are small, but there doesn’t seem to be a hill they won’t climb. On our way down we had to continue to look both ways at the highway crossing because the penguins have the right of way. Our trip back to the boat was shorter as a lot of the ice had moved out of the area.

That evening we went to Manfredi’s for dinner to enjoy another Bistecca Fiorentina with Gnocchi. Over the loud speaker they announced that in 30 minutes we’d be meeting up with Octantis, the sister ship of Polaris. It was a really cool experience as they brought the ships bow to bow for some photo opportunities from the drone and Viking battle cries back and forth between the crews. There was a little bit of supply exchanging and then they headed out with the Polaris following a little later.

Our last landing of the trip was a more typical Antarctica day we were told. It was overcast, windy, cold, and the waves were high enough to ensure everyone got splashed on the zodiac rides. We were told the night before that we’d we passing by Deception Island at 8 am so we set our alarm. This island is a partially submerged volcano with black beaches inside that stay warmer because the volcano is still active, having last erupted back in the 1960s. We got a few pictures from our Nordic balcony and then went up to breakfast. While there, we were notified that we’d be passing close to a large chinstrap penguin colony so we rushed back down to our room for some drive-by pictures. Boy are they smelly, we could smell them 200 yards off coast.

After trivia and a bite for lunch, we were back in the room to prep one last time to go ashore. We layered up a little more than usual because of the weather and then headed down to the embarkation bay. Amazingly, we were on the first guest zodiac ashore but we only had the place to ourselves for about 2 minutes as we could see a line of zodiacs rolling in behind us. We were informed by the expedition team that there were more mature gentoo penguin chicks so we took off towards the nearest nest. Unlike previous stops, there was no snow so there weren’t easily marked penguin highways. The crew marked off a line 15 ft from the nesting areas, but other than that, we were on our own to keep an eye out for penguins walking right by us on their way back to the nests. There were three Elephant seals trying to get some sleep and providing a little entertainment as they kept rolling over and hitting each other.

Yankee Harbour has a long peninsula protecting the beaches and we were advised that we could walk it if we wanted a different view, but there would be no boats coming to get us. This made it a much less crowded spot since the 60 and up crowd weren’t going to be heading all the way out there. We saw the remains of a couple of penguins along the way. We had to stop a couple of times on our walk to let the penguins by on their shortcut from the bay to the ocean along the peninsula. I’m not sure why it was so funny to watch these guys come up out of the water and waddle across the little chunk of land just to dive back in, but it was. At the end of the walk were a few Weddell seals doing what all seals seem to do when we’re around, sleep.

Drake Passage Return

Our trip back north started the night before with a Scopolamine patch, as it should have the first time. The journey did feel a good deal smoother than on our way down with only 6 ft swells and winds at 15 knots. The fog was a little disconcerting, especially after we’d seen those large icebergs floating out to sea for the last week. As the captain had predicted, the conditions did deteriorate as we got closer to the coast with the winds getting up to 20 knots and the waves rising noticeably. We were thankful that it looked like that captain had been pouring on the speed all day and he took the precaution to get us moving a little earlier the day before. We mostly spent the day visiting with people, playing some games, participating in trivia, and beginning to ponder what to pack and wear for the next couple of days. The crew came around to retrieve gear that they were going to clean for the next cruise, while we worked on getting some of the salt and fish smell out of the clothes we were taking home. We spent most of the next day cruising through the Beagle Channel on our way to Ushuaia. It provided a great opportunity to pack, participate in one last trivia, exchange contact info with the friends we had made, and download the last few pictures the crew shared on the Viking app. We were offered the opportunity to go back ashore for the evening but we passed on that and instead spent one last night at the bar with Rio and the regulars. We weren’t ready to go, but they were going to kick us off the boat if we didn’t. The crew had only a few short hours to completely turn the Polaris over and be ready for the next journey.

Tierra del Fuego National Park

Earlier in the trip we were offered a 3 hour excursion when we returned to Ushuaia. The scenario was that we’d have to be off the boat by 9 am and our flight wasn’t until 1 pm. Viking offers a lounge with snacks and WiFi to pass the time, but we decided to jump on the offer, even if it seemed a little pricey for 3 hours on a bus. The bus took us into Tierra Del Fuego National Park on the coast of the Beagle Channel. We didn’t see much wildlife, but the views were spectacular from the stops on Highway 3, the first of which was Puerto Arias, the southernmost point of the PanAmerican Highway. Our second stop was the Alakush visitors center for a snack. Then the trip wrapped up with a stop at the Correo del fin del Mundo or end of the world post office. The bus dropped us off at the Ushuaia airport, a place I swore if I saw again it would be too soon, and it was. We weren’t ready to leave, but here we were.

Buenos Aires

Just like our flight into Buenos Aires two weeks earlier, we landed at the international airport. It sounds like this is luck of the draw because other folks on our ship were on a flight into the airport downtown that we had left from. Another 45 minute bus ride later and we were checked into our room, cleaned up, and ready for a night on the town with two fellow St. Louisans we met on the cruise. Todd and Vivian invited us to join them in visiting the Palermo district, and specifically a bar they’d heard of called The Hole Bar. This place is an Alcatraz themed speakeasy with a very non-descript black door, but at opening time, it’s easily spotted by the line of folks waiting to get in. There were no English menus but they had WiFi, so between Miranda’s Spanish and google translate, we made do. The food was good but it was also crazy to be able to get a full bottle of Argentinian Malbec for $13. Reservations are typically for two hours, but they weren’t too busy so they let us hang out a bit longer. After dinner we wandered down the street to the Gluck Brewery Tap Room for some local beers before turning in around midnight. Uber was incredibly cheap in town, with most rides being in the two to four dollar range. In fact, they are so cheap, that leaving a tip that seems reasonable by our standards is impossible because of safeguards put on the app. The next day we walked the city, visiting the Torre Monumental and the Cementerio de la Recoleta, the final resting place of many famous Argentinians, including Evita. We had a beer and enjoyed the view from Bartola Rooftop Bar, and then had lunch and a few more brews at Buller Brewing Co. before returning to the hotel to catch our shuttle to the airport.