Antarctic Circle & Ross Sea

And then there are simply the bragging rights: the thrill of being among an elite group of travellers who have ventured this close to the bottom of the world – an achievement that you and your companions will no doubt celebrate with a glass of fizz as you cross the fabled line, and with not another ship in sight.

A typical Circle Cruise will journey down the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula and cross the Antarctic Circle via Crystal Sound – a spectacular stretch of sea named for the research on ice crystals conducted there. Just north of the Circle there are several possible stop-offs, including the Fish Islands, where a zodiac cruise among the ice will bring you close to large colonies of adelie penguins and blue-eyed shags. 

Once across the Circle, your stops may include Detaille Island, at 66°52’, where you can visit a British Antarctic Survey research base hurriedly abandoned in 1958, with sleeping bags still strewn across beds and bottles of HP sauce on the shelves. It’s a stark reminder of the precarious nature of life in the Antarctic. Conditions permitting, you may also explore Lallemand Fjord, where emperor penguins are occasionally seen.

Some voyages head even further south, passing east of Adelaide Island via an ice-clogged channel called ’The Gullet’ and onwards into the vast expanse of Marguerite Bay. Here, you are likely to encounter whales, including humpbacks and minkes, which gather to hoover up the vast quantities of krill found here in late summer. Hikes on Jenny Island allow fabulous views of the surrounding panorama.

The distance you travel south will depend upon the state of the ice and the length of your voyage. Some cruises may reach the vast ice shelves at Wilkins Sound or George VI Sound to the south of Marguerite Bay. Conditions will determine what’s possible, so be prepared to throw the itinerary overboard. Equally, cruises may flip the itinerary, capitalising on a good weather window to start by sailing due south to the Antarctic Circle then working their way north back up the Peninsula. This is what happened on my own trip, when I awoke on my first morning, after crossing the Drake Passage, to find myself already south of the Circle.

Far to the east of the Peninsula, and further south still, lies the Ross Sea. This offers another approach to crossing the Antarctic Circle, but on a much longer cruise that departs from New Zealand. A Ross Sea cruise is a serious adventure – a chance to sail to the edge of the vast Ross Ice Shelf at 77° south, with its great calving glaciers, and to visit Ross Island, with the historic huts of Scott and Shackleton and the smoking 3,795m-summit of Mount Erebus. Ships with helicopters even offer an opportunity to overfly McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land – the driest place on earth, where no rain has fallen for over 2 million years.

The Ross Sea’s biggest wildlife drawcard is emperor penguins. Although the inland colonies of these Antarctic icons are too remote to access, you are likely to encounter smaller groups out on the ice. You should also see Antarctica’s largest colonies of Adelie penguins, and a healthy population of orcas, sometimes seen sweeping seals off ice floes using their unique wave-wash method. En route from New Zealand, cruises will drop by at several of the sub-Antarctic Islands, including Macquarie, Enderby, Snares and Campbell Island, each home to unique fauna and flora – including several endemic penguins.