Free to Roam Wild

Heading to Antarctica? Trying to pick a company and not even sure where to start? This blog post is for you.

Okay so before I explain how I did things let me explain why I picked this company and this trip. Firstly, if you haven’t heard this story yet, I’ve wanted to go to Antarctica since I was 7. My 2nd grade teacher had a friend who was a pilot that flew supplies between New Zealand and some of the stations on the continent. She brought him in for a couple of presentations and I immediately fell in love with this far away place. I knew one day I would go to this far away place. A few years ago I decided I wanted to spend six months to a year in South America and I knew that I needed to include a trip to Antarctica in my budget. I also knew that I needed to book specifically the trip to Antarctica at least two years in advance because of how these ships tend to sell out. At some point there was apart of me that was like “how cool would it be visit all 7 continents before I turned 30?” That’s certainly not why I did this now, it was always a trip I wanted to do. However it was probably the push towards why I booked it when I did. In April of 2021 I started looking at Antarctica trips and noticed that even in the middle of the pandemic ships were booking out. I knew I needed to make a decision quickly. 

Which brings us to how I chose G Adventures. As I was looking around on various websites I found trips of various lengths. I immediately knew that I wanted to go on the longest trip possible, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise. At that time I thought you could only go to Antarctica if you departed from Ushuaia, I realized that isn’t necessarily the case as I did more research. However most of the ships I noticed that didn’t depart from Ushuaia would depart from one location and land in another, that wasn’t something I wanted to do at the time. Deciding to depart on a trip that was a roundtrip out of Ushuaia was not limiting at all since I’d guess about 90% of the trips do this. I also knew that leaving sometime in January of 2023 was preferable but I didn’t have a hard and fast rule set as far as dates went. As I was researching, I found that G Adventures had a trip that visited Antarctica, South Georgia and The Falklands following Shackleton’s adventures in the Southern Ocean. At the time I knew nothing about Shackleton, South Georgia or The Falklands, I just knew that 20 days on a ship that was going to try to take me to some of the coolest places sounded incredible. As it turns out G Adventures only runs the Spirit of Shackleton trip once a year, generally departing in mid January. 

From that point forward I knew I wanted to go on a ship that did this journey and didn’t just stay in Antarctica. I also knew that I wanted to be able to go kayaking and camping while in Antarctica even if it was an additional cost. My last deciding factor was that I knew that IAATO (The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators) limited the number of people at a landing to 100 at any given time so I really wanted to go on the smallest ship possible which would give me the greatest chance at landings. That’s when I started comparing companies. To be fair, I didn’t look too far, the G Adventures trip had been the first trip I had stumbled on that really checked all of the boxes and it grew on me the more I thought about it. I know I compared a few other companies including Intrepid before I finally committed to G. It also certainly helped that one of my best friends had been on a G Adventures trip and vouched for how great of a company there were.

So I put a deposit down shortly after that for a triple share including the kayaking and camping add ons. The online booking system was easy to maneuver. I remember hitting a couple of snags trying to add on kayaking and camping but a call to G Adventures remedied that quickly. Once booked, this trip sort of fell to the back burner of my mind given that it wouldn’t happen for another year and a half plus I didn’t even know if it would run due to covid. 

Over the next year and a half I would pay for the trip in installments every month with the final payment being due by September of 2022. You could pay for the trip anyway you wanted as long as it was entirely paid by the due date of September 2022. As a passenger you would also need to fill out something online called Good to Go. Good to Go is found on the G Adventures website once you sign into your account. As a client you will get multiple reminder emails to fill out the 11 different sections of Good to Go before the due date of sometime in December of 2022. Basically Good to Go is where G Adventures collects all of your information like: dietary restrictions, flight information, allergies, travel insurance and everything else you might know. There was a bit of a glitch with mine and one of the sections wouldn’t complete. I gave them a call and they were able to fix it for me. Something to know is that if this isn’t completed you won’t receive the vouchers for your trip. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard anything about the trip as it became closer and it was because of the glitch on the online system. I will say my only disappoint with G Adventures was that there seemed to be a lack of communication between the company and myself on the days leading up to the trip. For instance I didn’t know that a covid test was required to board the ship. As I later figured out, most people did know so I have a feeling either an email went to my spam or the glitches with Good to Go were to be blamed. Either way it all worked itself out. I’ll talk about my actual trip in my next post, just know that I ended up absolutely loving my trip.

Some questions I think you should ask yourself before you pick a trip:

Budget or Luxury? Is this something that matters to me?

Expedition versus more of a traditional Cruise?

How long can I handle being on a ship? There’s always the chance you won’t be able to land the entire time you’re in Antarctica because of the weather. Can you handle being on a ship for 14 days? 

What wildlife am I hoping to see? Different months within the Antarctica season may involve some animals being more abundant or less so.

Accessibility? Some of the more expedition style ships don’t have elevators. If you’re someone who can’t be walking up multiple flights of stairs every day maybe a cruise style might be more suited for you or perhaps just spending a bit more to have a cabin on a floor closer to the main action.

Activities? Not all ships offer camping, kayaking, mountaineering, snorkeling or other activities. If this is something you want to do you’ll want to make sure you find a ship that offers them weather dependent of course.

Do I want to be able to land? Not all ships that go to Antarctica actually land. The smaller the ship the better the chance you have of landing. Of course all landings are weather dependent but they’re also dependent on IAATO’s rules and therefore some of the larger ships don’t land at all. 

Are you thinking of heading to Antarctica? Do you have questions I didn’t answer? Shoot me a message in the comments below and I’ll be happy to help!