Antarctica from New Zealand

[saz25]

Hi

We are looking to combine a trip to New Zealand with a cruise to Antarctica on a Luxury line.

 

We are from the US. So we could do the usual South America to Antarctica but we were thinking it would be interesting to combine it with NZ.

 

We are not familiar with any of the cruise lines in that part of the world, although we came across a few online.

 

Looking for travelers with such experiences. Thanks in advance.

Steve

[kaisatsu]

The trips on the NZ side are very different from the South America trips to the peninsula.

 

First and foremost, it’s much farther south on the NZ side. You won’t reach the continent until you’re well beyond the Antarctic Circle, and it takes several days of sailing each direction. So although these trips tend to be much longer than the common peninsula trips, much of the time is spent on the way down and back.

 

There are far fewer landing sites, so even on the smallest ships you will be lucky to have one operation per day (if that). Also be aware that some sites like the Dry Valleys are typically accessible only by helicopter, and not all trips have helis.

 

However, if you’re more interested in polar history than wildlife, the NZ side is by far the better option with several historic huts from the early polar expeditions. And the aforementioned Dry Valleys are one of the world’s most unique places.

 

In general, though, I’d recommend most first-time visitors head to the peninsula, because of the easy access, the variety of scenery, and the plethora of wildlife. If you have the time and money for a longer trip, include South Georgia and the Falklands.

[2552phxcrzr]

16 hours ago, saz25 said:

Hi

We are looking to combine a trip to New Zealand with a cruise to Antarctica on a Luxury line.

 

We are from the US. So we could do the usual South America to Antarctica but we were thinking it would be interesting to combine it with NZ.

 

We are not familiar with any of the cruise lines in that part of the world, although we came across a few online.

 

Looking for travelers with such experiences. Thanks in advance.

Steve

We did this in reverse from Ushuaia to New Zealand via the Ross Sea on Oceanwide Expeditions and then 6 weeks on our own exploring New Zealand. It is not a luxury line.  I am not familiar with any Antarctic cruises from NZ by the luxury cruise lines.

 

Ours was a 1-month trip on Ortelius in January. The ship returned to Ushuaia after we disembarked. I don’t know if they still do this, and I am not sure if I would recommend it for first timers for many of the reasons mentioned by the previous poster. That said, Ortelius carries helicopters and we had the most amazing experiences visiting several of the old huts …some used by Shackleton and Scott. And we got into the Dry Valleys.

 

I don’t know if you are interested in such a long trip on a comfortable expedition vessel, but if you want to get a sense of what our experience was like … this is the first link to my blog posts … http://2totravel.blogspot.com/2015/05/welcome-to-mv-ortelius-our-floating.html.

 

I know there are companies who do expeditions R/T from New Zealand, but I am not familiar with them, and as I noted in the first paragraph, I don’t know if any are luxury lines. Perhaps @PerfectlyPerth, who did our trip in reverse and who has a lot of experience about Antarctic voyages, will chime in. You might also try the Antarctica board on Trip Advisor …a lot more information there.

[kaisatsu]

I’ve also done the reverse trip on Ortelius. In theory. In 30 scheduled days, besides the sub-Antarctic islands, we managed only two heli operations (one flight seeing trip and one landing), one zodiac landing, and one zodiac cruise. A combination of weather and ice conditions caused us to skip the peninsula entirely, and we were still racing to reach Ushuaia on time (to the extent that we couldn’t even have regular meal service, because the ship was moving too much to let go of the dish you were eating from). I was glad I’d already been to the peninsula twice, so I didn’t feel I was missing out on too much (besides the Ross ice shelf and McMurdo Station, which were two of the reasons I’d booked the trip in the first place).

 

There are definitely some more luxury lines that sail East Antarctica. Scenic Eclipse is one that also carries helicopters. Without helis, Ponant has some Ross Sea voyages. As do Aurora and a few others.