Expedition Cruising Is Not a Cruise, and That Is the Whole Point

An expedition ship does not have a water slide. It has a fleet of Zodiacs and sometimes a helicopter. That tells you almost everything.

This style of cruising is built around getting off the ship, not staying on it. The vessels are small on purpose. Quark Expeditions runs the Ultramarine, a polar ship that carries two twin-engine helicopters for flightseeing and reaching places Zodiacs cannot. Lindblad Expeditions sails polar ships like National Geographic Endurance and Resolution, each carrying around a couple hundred guests. These are not floating cities. They are more like base camps that happen to move.

The point of a small ship is access. On a good Antarctica voyage you get roughly two landings a day, weather permitting, and a guide-to-guest ratio near one to twelve. You are not waiting in line for a tender behind three thousand people. You are standing on a beach with penguins while a naturalist explains what you are looking at.

Now the part nobody puts in the brochure. This is expensive. Entry-level Antarctic trips with lines like HX or Quark tend to start somewhere around eight to ten thousand dollars per person, and mid-range fares climb well past that. The Antarctic season runs roughly November through March, usually departing Ushuaia, Argentina and crossing the Drake Passage. The Drake can be flat and glassy. It can also remind you that the ocean does not care about your itinerary.

So who is this for. It is for the traveler who wants Alaska, the Galapagos, the Arctic, or Antarctica, and who counts wildlife and landings as the vacation. It is not for the person who wants a Broadway show and a midnight buffet. Both are valid. They are just not the same trip. You can tell which one you are in about five seconds. If a helicopter over a glacier sounds better than a comedy club at sea, you already have your answer.

Expedition cruising rewards curiosity and punishes anyone hoping to lie by a pool for a week. There is no pool worth mentioning. There is a continent.

If you are trying to figure out whether this style fits you, or which line matches the trip in your head, that is literally what we do. Better to sort it out before you have wired someone ten thousand dollars.

Fair winds and following seas,
Captain Steve