A yacht charter in Antarctica will feel like you have jumped straight into the pages of National Geographic as you cruise through eerie bays with calving glaciers while whales and seals swim right by the yacht.
There are few places on Earth as hard to reach as Antarctica, and the only way to visit in style is on board a charter yacht. Fly into King George Island on the Antarctic Peninsula and you will see the giant icebergs and migrating whale pods en route. But little will prepare you for the adventure that awaits in this last of the planet’s frontiers. The best time to take an Antarctica yacht charter is between October and March, when it is ‘summer’, the days are long and the weather more temperate.
"Visit volcanic Deception Island - where else in the world can one sail "into" the caldera of an active volcano?"
On the way to Antarctica from Argentina, you will come upon South Georgia. This is home to colourful king penguin colonies and thousands of jostling elephant seals performing powerful mating rituals on the beach, with a dramatic mountainous backdrop. While here you can visit the former whaling communities and the grave of epic adventurer Sir Ernest Shackleton among the many whalers who did not return home from these unforgiving shores.
Head through the soaring cliffs of the Neumayer Channel, said to be like a maze due to its lack of visible exits and inverted curved shape, until you reach the designated Historic Site of Port Lockroy. The harbour was used for whaling in the early 20th century as well as a British military base during World War II. Today it is a penguin research base and also home to the southernmost British post office in the world, from which you can send a postcard home.
Deception Island is a C-shaped volcanic landmass in the South Shetland Islands that offers one of the safest harbours in Antarctica. Like many other ‘towns’ of the region, it was once a whaling station and today it is used by the scientific community for research, and is home to colonies of chinstrap penguin. The volcanic activity continues at the island, and it is possible to dig a hole in the black-sand beaches to take a warm bath.
