Penguins or polar bears? First choice is yours

During a recent vacation, I met a traveller from Italy who told me he desperately wanted to visit the Arctic… to see penguins. Without at all sounding patronising, as a frequent traveller to the polar regions, I nodded and suggested he’d have better opportunities to see them in Antarctica but not to expect any polar bears down there.  

It would be easy to oversimplify the polar regions as simply ice-bound, remote, and frigidly cold, with little difference between the two. After all, even the names of the two polar regions bear semblance. The word ‘Arctic’ derives from the Greek, Arktos, meaning bear, so named because of the prominent stellar constellations in the northern hemisphere - Usra major and Ursa minor. Antarctica, meanwhile, rather unimaginatively translates as ‘opposite to the Arctic’.

Yet the differences between both regions are myriad and each offers completely different experiences and reasons to travel. The first question any traveller needs to ask before choosing between the two is what do you want from your voyage? Is it solely to see wildlife, or to be dazzled by extreme landscapes, or to dig deeper into the exploits of derring-do explorers? With ice-readied small expedition cruise ships offering ever more adventurous and varied itineraries to both, your starting choice is whether to head north or south.

Antarctica’s realm is easier to define than the Arctic. It is a vast uninhabited continent (the 7th) of thick ice-caps and high-altitude mountains and plateaus, surrounded by the Southern Ocean. No nation lays claim nor has deed to it. Over 95% of travellers experience the western region, the Antarctic Peninsula, which is the most northerly point of the frozen continent – a finger of land pointing towards southernmost South America that is reachable by a two-day sailing across the Drake’s Passage. Ten or eleven-day cruises to the peninsula offer an ideal entry introduction to Antarctica and most voyages explore the peninsula’s fractured archipelago to the west in the Bellingshausen Sea above the Antarctic Circle at 66º 32’. To the east of the peninsula is the less-visited Weddell Sea, which Shackleton made famous during his epic 1914-16 expedition. Antarctic Peninsula trips can stretch out to three weeks with the addition of the remarkable South Georgia and Falkland sub-Antarctic islands – both British Overseas Territories.

Fewer travellers venture to East Antarctica, especially the Ross Sea ice shelf, which has accessible emperor penguin colonies yet more challenging conditions for ice navigation. This wild region is sailed to from either Australia or New Zealand. Trips tend to be longer, 21 to 28 days, and itineraries are more fluid.

By contrast, the Arctic is trickier to define. It’s a complex juxtaposition of continental landmass and islands above the 66º North line of the Arctic Circle that are part of sovereign territories. The landscape diversity plus inhabitation ensures a greater variety of adventures await. A huge swathe of the Arctic lies within Russia and Canada. With the former inaccessible, the quintessential Arctic journey is a ship traverse through the Northwest Passage via Northern Canada’s Nunavut region between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Yet there are so many more options, and for European travellers, much closer to home. The world’s largest island, Greenland, remains enigmatic, but west and east coast cruises have become increasingly popular, especially to encounter Inuit culture. Arctic Norway likewise offers voyages down its fjord-riven western coast or to the most northerly inhabited islands on Earth, Svalbard, which is extremely popular for wildlife. The most visited subarctic island is the remarkable Iceland – the Land of Fire and Ice.

Let me start with a similarity. Forged by the feeling you are a frontier traveller the landscapes of both regions are sure to leave you in raptures. The sense of space, remoteness, narrow passes, glorious bays, icebergs, sea ice, towering sea cliffs, and snowy mountains create an endorphin surge like no other.

The most noticeable difference could be argued vegetation. In the lower Arctic, the coniferous treeline eventually gives way to permafrost tundra, with mossy flower-rich plains while, by contrast, just a couple of plants – a hairgrass and pearlwort – survive in Antarctica. You will generally see less ice and snow in the former’s landscapes – the Arctic’s issue with rising sea temperatures is well documented. I’d describe Arctic landscapes as stark yet magnificent. I think of the towering sea cliffs down the Northwest Passage and the austere sweeping shingle beach of the legendary Beechey Island, which attained notoriety during Sir John Franklin’s expedition. My highlight is the breathtaking ice fjord at Ilulissat in Western Greenland, where icebergs disgorge into the funkily named Disko Bay and float like a frozen Mary Celeste.

In Antarctica, there are few moments when you will ever experience anything less than being wowed by your surroundings. Every minute and every angle offer frozen beauty, whether that is looking down from the rocky promontory above Neko Harbour over the glassy calm of a bay bookended by blue-veined glaciers or feeling small as your vessel squeezes through the narrow and high-walled Lemaire Channel.

This is difficult to call as I have had magnificent sightings in both regions. But on balance, I would reflect Antarctica. In the Arctic, you go looking for wildlife, while in Antarctica, it comes to you. Every day in Antarctica is like a day trip to the zoo; it is only dynamic and live. There’s a nonstop motion. I challenge anybody to go out on deck for two minutes and not see anything at all.

This could be penguins porpoising across the sea like bouncing bombs or being ripped to shreds (Antarctica is a visceral environment) by a leopard seal. You should see four penguin species during a voyage: Adelie, chinstrap, gentoo and macaroni. Look skywards, and there is always an albatross or giant petrel patrolling above your ship. At any minute, expect to see a humpback whale lunge feeding or breaching while orcas are commonplace. Carefully examine every floating piece of ice as, more than likely, a doe-eyed crabeater or Weddell seal will be hauled out and staring back at you.

For a further wildlife upgrade, especially if nature photography is your oeuvre, South Georgia offers, in my humble opinion, the greatest show on earth. Millions of fur seals, king penguins, elephant seals, and albatross colonies present a spectacle like no other. Serious birders should ensure the Falkland Islands are added to any cruise, as the avian life there is sensational.

When it comes to the Arctic, wildlife is not served up on a plate – although I was once offered frozen narwhal in a remote Inuit community. I’ve had incredible sightings in the Arctic, yet they are harder to win. I’ve seen polar bears in Arctic Canada, herds of shaggy muskox in Greenland, and big walrus tuskers basking in Svalbard sunshine. When cruising down the eastern coast of Baffin Island a few summers ago, we overtook a slow-moving pod of bowhead whales, once hunted to near extinction and now slowly recovering. Yet, for all my eagle-eyed observations on deck, I’ve never set eyes on a narwhal… or eaten one!

Given the challenging climates in both polar regions it’s remarkable to even discuss a human dimension to any voyage. Beyond huddles of scientists at scientific bases, humanity has never gained a foothold in Antarctica. Thus, for an anthropogenic input, head to the high Arctic where some 40 First Nation cultures are adapted to life in the cold: from Saami reindeer herders across Arctic Scandinavia and Finland to the Aleut people of Alaska and the Nenets of Russia. The most frequently encountered culture, however, is that of the Kalaallit-Inuit of Greenland and Canada’s Inuvialuit-Inuit.

Modern-day Inuktitut culture has moved on since the days of igloos. Inuit are no longer hunter-gatherers, although in both Greenland and Nunavut, Canada, I have observed them hunting. The further north you travel, the more rooted in traditions the Inuit remain. While Western Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, is a modern town, head further north and you will experience Inuit relying on furs and skins and not modern clothing. In Greenland’s higher latitudes, I once saw two elders serenely paddling in sealskin canoes. Well-managed tourism has helped bring revenue to these communities who will arrange the likes of dogsledding or ice-hole fishing.

My best interactions to date have been in the Northwest Passage at communities such as Gjoa Haven and Pond Inlet, or Mittimatalik, as it is known in tongue-twisting Inuktitut. The Inuit inhabitants are proud to perform customary cultural dances and recitals and are happy to discuss how Arctic life is changing for them.

If history is your thing, choosing either the Arctic or Antarctica is down to the toss of a coin. The Arctic is full of stories of frontier struggles to gain geopolitical influence and the race to the North Pole. Some of its historic monuments feel as raw as if they had been built yesterday. I am thinking of the likes of the haunting Dundas Harbour in the Northwest Passage, where a small wooden ghost town remains, a former mounted police outpost, inhabited in the 1920s and testimony to a shameful episode of forced Inuit resettlement by the Canadian government.

Invariably, the explorers create the headlines, and I have personally sailed the Northwest Passage just to follow in the footsteps of the disastrous Sir John Franklin expedition of 1845-8. All hands and two ships, the Erebus and Terror, were lost during an expedition to find the passage between oceans. There are monuments to this tragic folly along the passage—not least three sailors' graves at Beechey Island, where the howling winds could be the wailing spirits of the dead. It’s profoundly atmospheric.

Likewise in Antarctica, there is no shortage of heroic explorers. None more so than Sir Ernest Shackleton whose Trans-Antarctica expedition of 1914-16 turned desperate failure into a glorious survival story. Over the years, I have been fortunate to visit places associated with this expedition, not least Shackleton’s gravesite on South Georgia and Elephant Island at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where his crew survived under upturned boats during winter for over 4 months.

Perhaps the holy grail for lovers of exploration history is the rarely visited sites of East Antarctica. Almost preserved in aspic is Robert Falcon Scott’s hut from his fateful 1910-13 expedition at Hut Point in the Ross Sea region, while Douglas Mawson’s hut was built for an Australian expedition between 1911 and 14.

Timing is a lot more restrictive for Antarctica. Small ship cruises occur during Antarctica’s summer, running from early November to mid-April after it has emerged from winter’s total darkness. Early-season travellers will see the first flush of life, especially baby penguin chicks and seal pups. The later you travel, the penguins are more independent and comedic. By now whales are full of krill and energetic as they prepare to migrate north.

If you’ll forgive the pun, it's the polar opposite in the Arctic, which has become a year-round destination in recent years. The Northwest Passage remains fleetingly free of ice to transit for a few weeks on either side of August. However, cruises down the likes of the West Greenlandic and Fjordic Norwegian coastlines are in full swing throughout the Northern Hemisphere summer. Increasingly, winter offers cruises to see the Northern Lights and dogsledding trips after the deep snow has fallen.

An expedition cruise is the ultimate way to see both polar regions. The choice can seem daunting because so many options exist. I’d recommend travelling small. There are too many large vessels needlessly sailing (without landing) in Antarctica. I would try to choose a company that practices citizen science on board to support environmental research and, in the Arctic, supports local communities.

ExplorEarth will guide you towards finding the right adventure of a lifetime, whether to the frozen north or south.