Traveling to Antarctica with Antarpply Expeditions

Introduction

In November 2024, I visited Antarctica with my family on a voyage with Antarpply Expeditions. Antarctica was hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and the trip was a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience. The trip took two days of sailing each way, with four full days in Antarctica itself.

Crossing the Drake Passage was rough, as everyone warns, but the payoff for surviving the Drake was insane: towering glaciers, colonies of penguins waddling around, rolling, and falling, desktop wallpapers in every direction, and the surreal feeling of stepping onto the seventh continent for the first time.

In this post, I’ll share a comprehensive account of my experience in Antarctica and my honest thoughts on Antarpply Expeditions, including cost and what to expect on board and during the trip.

Cost & Booking Details

Cost

Antarpply Expeditions is the budget provider for Antarctica cruises. Most Antarctica cruises will run over $10,000 per person, depending on time of year and cabin type. In contrast, for our cruise, we paid roughly $5,600 per person for a basic triple cabin. This price does not include the recommended tip of $50 per person, per day, which we were made aware of after we boarded the ship.

Price factors

Provider: This is the biggest cost factor. Antarpply Expeditions is a budget provider, with the ship being a repurposed research vessel. As a result, it’s a relatively no frills experience compared to some luxury cruise providers, which can run $15,000 during certain times of year.
Time of year: Antarctica cruises run from mid-November to early April, with different months having different advantages (e.g. best time for seeing baby penguins, best time for whale spotting, etc.) We took the second cruise of the sailing season, running from late November to December 1. Late November is widely considered the “shoulder season,” with slightly less predictable weather and rougher seas, so prices are cheaper than “peak season,” which is typically late December through February.
Cabin type: Within a ship, the cabin type varies. On Antarpply, travelers can choose to book with their group in a double or triple, or as a single traveler, can choose to be booked in a double or triple with strangers. The cabins can be more or less spacious depending on how much you pay. We got a free upgrade from the basic triple (room on the lower level with only a tiny porthole window, bunk beds, a singular room) to a triple suite (room on the upper level with two full windows, three separated beds, and two rooms).
Booking time: We made our booking several months in advance to guarantee a spot, but a lot of people with flexible schedules will wait for a good deal in Ushuaia, the main port for sailing to Antarctica. Last minute bookings can be very cheap – I’ve heard anecdotally of a man who got a last minute deal for the “king suite” (best room on the boat) on a luxury cruise provider for $4,000 because the room wasn’t filled.
Extras: Wifi could be bought on board for extra, with the tiered, prepaid options based on the number of gigabytes. The wifi worked reasonably well (I saw someone taking work calls using the ship wifi). Drinks (alcoholic and soda) were also extra. Daily afternoon snacks and fruit were free.

Booking

The booking system for Antarpply Expeditions was quite outdated and manual. To make a booking, we emailed Antarpply via the email shown on their website, and they reached out to provide information and next steps a few days later.

To make the reservation, Antarpply required a three separate deposits as the trip got closer, with the trip fully paid before embarcation. They only offer one method of payment, which is to wire money via bank account each time.

The booking services / customer service provided are pretty poor, as they don’t remind you when the deposits were due (we had to reach out and remind them, which made me question the legitimacy of the company at first).

Itinerary & Schedule

We took the 10-day cruise, embarking on Friday afternoon and returning the next Sunday morning. It took two and a half days to sail to Antarctica and two and a half days back, so on a 10-day cruise, we only had four days in Antarctica.

Sailing days

During the sailing days, the schedule was relatively sparse. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served at set times every day, with a few lectures about Antarctica (animals, ecosystem, geology, etc.) and a movie to fill time.

Passengers could step onto the outside decks if the weather wasn’t too rough to look for wildlife and walk around. We were also allowed to visit the control room and talk to the crew about how the ship worked.

During the sailing days, they also strongly recommend taking seasickness meds to prevent nausea during the Drake Passage. The meds (Dramamine) have a side effect of drowsiness, so my inclination was to sleep 12 hours a day.

Antarctica days

Once the ship reaches Antarctica, the schedule became a bit more fluid, with breakfast and lunch times varying based on landing times. Antarpply targeted two landings per day, subject to weather conditions and landing availability, although some days we had just one landing and one day we had three.

Even with landings, there’s still a significant amount of time spent on the boat between activities, so the lectures and movies continue, but at a lesser frequency.

Ship & Facilities

Antarpply Expeditions uses a repurposed research vessel, so the facilities are very basic.

The ship had a dining room, a leisure room, and a movie room. The dining room was pretty small, so usually we would have to sit with strangers for lunch and dinner. The leisure room has big windows and large couches, where people frequently napped during the day.

The triple suite was also pretty basic – Three beds, a desk, and a private bathroom with a small sink and a shower.

The ship is also specially fitted to endure the Drake Passage, with handles for stability everywhere, no locks on the doors, anti-slide mats on the tables, beds with tall sides, etc.

Food & Dining

Food during the cruise was okay. There were three meals every day – A breakfast buffet (lasting about an hour) in the morning, and a three-course lunch and dinner where everyone eats at the same time.

The breakfast buffet was the same every day. There’s a selection of fruit, yogurt, deli meat, cheese, eggs, and bread, along with coffee and juice. I thought the mini croissants were pretty good and the fruit was fresh.

The lunch and dinner menus varied depending on the conditions at sea (lighter meals for rockier days) and what had already been served. Antarpply did have a good amount of variation between meals – I don’t think any dish was served more than twice. The quality of the meals varied. I thought their soups were generally excellent, but there were some mains I didn’t care for (too oily, too salty, etc.) The desserts were mostly too sweet.

The cruise also left out some fruit (bananas, apples, oranges) for the taking any time of day, and served an afternoon snack of mostly light pastries, some of which were very good.

Activities & Expeditions

On Antarpply, the expedition team targeted an average of two expeditions per day. The expeditions were based on weather conditions, distance from our current location, and the ability of the team to get a reservation (only one operator can land at a given spot during a given time of day).

We had a mix of landings (self-exploration on land) and zodiacs (small boat expeditions). Unlike some luxury Antarctica providers, there was no kayaking, camping, or hiking.

Landings would typically last for a few hours. The expedition crew would go on land with us, but once there, we were mostly left to explore by ourselves within a designated area. One benefit of having less than 100 passengers on board was that everyone got to go on land for the full time every landing.
Zodiacs would last about an hour or less. The expedition crew would provide explanations of what we were looking at and point out cool things.

Personally, I preferred the landings over the zodiacs, as there was more to interact with and see (penguins, seals up close).

Our landings and zodiacs included:

Two Hummock Island, an island in Antarctica: We had two landings here, one in the morning (Hydrurga Rocks) and one in the afternoon (Palaver Rock).
Portal Point, on the Antarctic continent: This was a surprise third landing as we were having fantastic weather that day. We got to experience golden hour and “sunset” on the continent, which felt really special.
Bancroft Bay zodiac tour, where we saw Gentoo penguins from afar for the first time.
Patagonia Bay zodiac tour, where we saw Anvers Island and the Lipen Glacier.
Jougla Point: We saw penguins performing their mating rituals.
Palmer Research Station: This was an American research station, and we were their first visitors since 2020, when the stations were shut down to tourism due to COVID. We got tours from the people who worked there, saw the facilities, and chatted with the scientists while snacking on brownies and coffee.
Foyn Harbor zodiac tour, site of an oil / whaling ship shipwreck, with lots of birds and seals.
We were originally supposed to do a polar plunge the afternoon before sailing back to Argentina, but weren’t able to due to weather conditions.

Staff

The expedition team and other staff were generally super nice people. Everyone who worked on the boat was friendly and helpful and some had a great sense of humor. It really did feel like everyone was there to make the experience as good as possible.

I also want to give a shout out to the doctor that helped me recover after I passed out from vertigo during the Drake Passage – He was super helpful and professional.

Antarpply Expeditions: Pros and Cons

Pros

Much lower cost compared to luxury cruises.
Guaranteed time on land due to a limit on the number of passengers. Antarctica requires that no more than 100 passengers from a single boat land at a time. As a result, bigger boats aren’t able to provide their passengers as much time on land as the time needs to be split between multiple groups, whereas Antarpply Expeditions limits its passengers to under 100, so everyone can disembark for the full time.
Friendly and helpful cruise staff who seem genuinely excited to be there and who want to make the experience great for you. They make an attempt to remember everyone’s name, celebrate birthdays, answer questions, etc.
Cool expeditions. There was a good variety of expeditions, and the ship’s expedition team tried their best to find cool things to do in Antarctica every day. We got to land on the Antarctica continent and visit a research station (first visitors since 2020).

Cons

They stamped passports with illegitimate stamps without passenger permission. When you board the boat, you are required to hand your passport to the ship’s staff. The expectation is that the passports are held for safekeeping and that they will not be tampered with. However, only after I got my passports returned, I found out that they had stamped my passport on the visa page a stamp of the research station we visited. This theoretically makes the passport invalid as this is not a legitimate stamp, and I thought it was unacceptable that they did this without express permission. I am now required to take on this risk of my passport being invalid whenever I travel for the next nine years.
The food is generally a bit mediocre. I know they’re working with what they have, which is that they need to cook on a very rocky ship and feed 100 passengers, and I think they did their best to vary the menu and take conditions into account (e.g. on days prone to seasickness, serving lighter foods). Breakfast was the same every day, and I didn’t love that there was no choice in what you ate for lunch or dinner (besides dietary restrictions), as there were some foods I just didn’t like.
No add-on expeditions. Higher-end providers offer ocean kayaking in Antarctica, and some offer camping and hiking on the continent as well. Antarpply doesn’t offer any of these experiences.
Booking staff was disorganized. The booking staff took a long time to respond to emails, and we had to remind the booking staff when our deposits were due. I generally didn’t like how manual the booking system was, and how few options it provided.
Annoying PA system. Just a personal pet peeve, but every morning, they would make an announcement 30 minutes before breakfast, waking everyone on the ship. I just wish they’d let people wake up on their own schedules, because not everyone needs to get there as soon as breakfast opens (it’s available for an hour) and not everyone needs 30 minutes to get ready.

Final Thoughts

Antarctica was a great, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I thought Antarpply Expeditions was overall a good way to visit on a relative budget. I’d recommend them to anyone who wants to get a taste of Antarctica and doesn’t care much about the “frills.”