Expedition Guide: What to Add to an Antarctica Cruise

Before booking anything, check the arrangements supplied by your expedition operator carefully.
Seeing "Ushuaia to Ushuaia" on an itinerary does not necessarily mean you should independently book a flight into Ushuaia for the morning your ship sails.

Most Antarctica programmes incorporate hotel nights, charter flights, group transfers or mandatory meeting points elsewhere in South America. Others begin operationally in Buenos Aires or Santiago even though the ship itself is waiting much further south.

Most conventional Antarctic Peninsula expeditions sail from Ushuaia, reached by domestic air from Buenos Aires. Chilean programmes may route travellers through Santiago to Punta Arenas or Puerto Williams, while fly-cruise expeditions commonly use southern Chile as the air-hub for flights across the Drake Passage to King George Island.

This matters when planning an extension.

A three-night stay in Buenos Aires immediately before an operator-organised flight to Ushuaia can fit beautifully into the journey. An independently booked trip that leaves you hundreds of kilometres away from the operator's meeting point the evening before departure may not.

The safest approach is to establish exactly when and where responsibility for your expedition begins before constructing the rest of your itinerary around it.

For travellers sailing from Ushuaia, Buenos Aires is a natural addition to an Antarctica cruise.

Argentina's capital is the principal international gateway for many travellers heading south to Tierra del Fuego, and the contrast with Antarctica could hardly be greater. Where the days ahead may involve icebergs, penguins, expedition clothing and Zodiac landings, Buenos Aires offers grand architecture, neighbourhood restaurants, late dinners, tango and some of South America's most enjoyable city life.

It also works particularly well because you don't need a week to appreciate it.

With two or three full days, you can explore historic San Telmo, walk through elegant Recoleta, discover the cafés, restaurants and bars of Palermo and visit the colourful streets of La Boca. Food is part of the experience, whether that means a traditional parrilla, empanadas, Argentine wine or discovering how seriously the city takes its ice cream.

For a first visit, there is enough variety to make three nights feel worthwhile without turning the stopover into another complicated journey.

And if you have more time, Buenos Aires becomes the gateway to another of South America's greatest natural attractions.

Few extensions provide a greater contrast to Antarctica than Iguazú.

After experiencing a continent dominated by ice, rock and ocean, you can find yourself walking through humid subtropical forest surrounded by butterflies, tropical birds and the thunder of one of the world's great waterfall systems.

The scale is difficult to appreciate until you see it. The Iguazú system consists of hundreds of individual cascades spread across the border between Argentina and Brazil, with walkways and viewpoints offering varied perspectives on the falls.

It is also surprisingly straightforward to combine with an Antarctic journey, as domestic flights connect Buenos Aires to the Iguazú region.

Several expedition companies already package the two together, sometimes combining a stay in Buenos Aires with two nights near the falls. That provides a useful indication of the amount of time required: if you can find four or five additional days, the combination becomes realistic without overwhelming the rest of the trip.

For wildlife enthusiasts, the rainforest adds another dimension. Coatis are conspicuous around some visitor areas, while toucans, monkeys, butterflies and a remarkable diversity of birds inhabit the surrounding Atlantic Forest.

Travellers heading to Antarctica through Chile frequently pass through Santiago on their way to Punta Arenas or Puerto Williams.

It is easy to regard the city as a logistical necessity. We think that undersells it.

Santiago occupies a spectacular position in Chile's Central Valley, with the Andes rising beyond the city. Its historic centre, markets, museums and increasingly interesting restaurant scene make it an easy place to spend a couple of days, while viewpoints such as Cerro San Cristóbal reveal just how extraordinary its setting can be when the mountains are clear.

But Santiago's greatest advantage is its versatility.

Stay for two or three nights, and it becomes an easy city extension. Add another couple of days, and you can explore the vineyards beyond the capital or travel to Valparaíso on the Pacific coast. With more time, Santiago is the jumping-off point for the Atacama Desert and even Rapa Nui, Easter Island. 

That makes Santiago less a single extension than a hub from which several completely different journeys can be constructed.

Not every extension needs to involve another expedition.

After ten, fourteen or twenty days of landings, wildlife encounters, early starts and rapidly changing Antarctic weather, there is something appealing about an extension whose principal challenges involve deciding where to have lunch and which wine to order with it.

Several of Chile's important wine regions are accessible from Santiago. The Maipo Valley lies close to the capital, while Casablanca sits towards the Pacific coast and is particularly associated with cool-climate varieties. Travellers prepared to venture further can build a longer stay around Colchagua.

It makes an especially good post-cruise option.

Rather than finishing an expedition and immediately beginning another physically demanding itinerary, you can spend a couple of days in Santiago and then slow the pace completely among the vineyards.

It also pairs naturally with Valparaíso, allowing city, coast, and wine country to become a four- or five-day extension without requiring another major flight.

If you are spending several days in Santiago, Valparaíso is one of the easiest ways to broaden the experience.

Chile's historic Pacific port feels very different from the capital. Steep hills rise behind the waterfront, colourful buildings cling to the slopes and historic funiculars connect neighbourhoods covered in murals and street art.
It doesn't necessarily need to become a separate holiday.

Instead, think of Valparaíso as part of a wider central Chile extension combining Santiago, the Pacific coast and wine country.

This is also reflected in operator programmes. AE Expeditions, for example, has offered Santiago and Valparaíso together as a pre- or post-voyage extension.

Few combinations demonstrate South America's extraordinary geographical variety like Antarctica and the Atacama.

Fly north from Santiago, and the ice, snow and Southern Ocean are replaced by high-altitude desert, salt flats, volcanoes, flamingo-filled lagoons and some of the clearest night skies on Earth.

San Pedro de Atacama is the usual base for exploring the region.

From here, days can be spent visiting salt flats, geothermal landscapes, high-altitude lagoons and extraordinary rock formations. After dark, the Atacama's dry air, altitude and limited light pollution have helped make northern Chile internationally famous for astronomy.

The contrast with Antarctica is enormous, yet there are curious similarities too. Both landscapes can feel vast, sparsely inhabited and almost otherworldly.

The Atacama requires another flight and deserves enough time to justify it, so we wouldn't recommend squeezing it into a two-day gap. Four or five days makes much more sense.

AE Expeditions is among the Antarctica operators offering a dedicated Atacama extension, demonstrating that the combination is entirely practical around the right itinerary.

If you have already travelled halfway around the world to reach Antarctica, there is a certain logic to asking: how much further could this journey go?

Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, provides one answer. It is one of the most remote and intriguing islands on Earth. Rising from the southeastern Pacific Ocean at the far edge of the Polynesian Triangle, this Chilean island is celebrated for its extraordinary Polynesian heritage and enigmatic moai statues. Much of its remarkable archaeological landscape is protected within Rapa Nui National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves the legacy of a culture that developed in extraordinary isolation.

Situated thousands of kilometres into the Pacific, it is not a casual side trip. Reaching it requires another flight from Santiago and enough time to make the journey worthwhile.

But for travellers with the time and budget, combining Antarctica with Rapa Nui creates an extraordinary pairing of two of the world's most isolated destinations.

The island's moai are the obvious attraction, but treating Rapa Nui simply as an archaeological checklist misses much of its appeal. The landscape, volcanic geology, Polynesian culture and sheer remoteness are integral to the experience.

It is also a genuine cruise extension option. Silversea currently lists a five-night Rapa Nui programme around selected South American and Antarctic-linked voyages.

This isn't the extension we'd recommend for everybody.

For the right traveller, however, it could turn an exceptional Antarctica holiday into one of the great journeys of a lifetime.