Antarctica: Planning, Positioning, Paying
Everything leading up to the actual journey
Ash and I have only ever had two specific travel goals together:
Go to every Disney Park
Go to every continent
Neither of these had much of a plan behind them, but both quickly came together in just under 8 years and we’ve now marked them off and need more goals. I’m hoping to properly document and share this experience through a series of posts covering each day and what we did. Antarctica was unbelievable and I can’t recommend it enough, but it is a journey that has to be planned for (and paid for) with a little more thought than most destinations. I found it was fairly difficult to research exactly what you got for your money, what life was like on the boat for 14 days, how food was, and all the other details you would want to know before fully committing to it. Hopefully this post helps someone eventually plan out a trip of their own.
In 2023 Ashley and I started to talk more seriously about going to Antarctica, narrowing down the time we wanted to go to the 2024/2025 season. We wanted to go before Keira started Kindergarten and figured we could ask my parents to watch her for the two weeks while we were gone, but soon realized we wanted to do this trip together with them. While this slightly complicated the plan for Keira, it ended up all working out and I’m thankful I got to experience this trip with my parents.
I generally am able to plan out trips for what I consider a fairly reasonable price. I often look through the National Geographic tour offerings and love to be able to say, “Oh, we did that for 1/4 the price” or “Oh, we should do that, I bet I could plan it for way less and see more”. I wait for cheap flights, I’m flexible, I use credit card points smartly, I’m fine with an extra layover or two. Planning out future trips is a genuine hobby of mine that I put a lot of time into and consider myself good at. I generally plan with the philosophy that the more money I save on things that I truly don’t feel meaningfully alter the experience of being in a new place, the more places I can see. Things like staying in a hotel near a subway station in Tokyo or Beijing rather than a more popular area or staying with friendly hosts just outside Amsterdam and using public transit, or driving us all over foreign countries have turned into memorable experiences for far less money than an expensive hotel in the city or tour guide. I wish I could say any of that applied to this trip, but it does not. Antarctica is expensive and I don’t think there are ways around it if you want to do it right. You can’t take that budget flight because you’re not just risking missing a day or two of hotel bookings, you’re risking missing the boat leaving the southern tip of the world. The only real way you can save some money is on the itinerary and boat you go on, but you risk how a once in a lifetime experience will play out based on what you’re willing to pay. The time commitment alone makes it hard to visit Antarctica, and even the low end of expedition costs are high. Thankfully someone recommended Quark Expeditions to my dad and we stuck with them after a little investigation for this once in a lifetime trip.
Quark offered three things that most other lines don’t:
The opportunity to cross the Antarctic Circle. I didn’t want to just touch the very tip of Antarctica, I wanted to go as far south as expeditions allowed.
A new ship built for polar exploration. Looking around at some of the other ships used for this type of trip, you can tell that some are made for this and others are not. It made a difference in overall comfort on the trip.
Helicopters. I wanted to be able to really see Antarctica from high up.
We ended up being extremely happy with Quark and would go with them again. I will include more details of the boat, itinerary, room, and the actual voyage in later posts, but here is a rough overview of what we did:
Ashley and I’s booking with Quark was for an “Explorer Suite” (pretty much the base room, but still very nice) and was $15,544.85 per person. This included the 14 day cruise, meals, a chartered flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and back, one night at a hotel in Buenos Aires, a big yellow coat to handle the Antarctic cold, a helicopter ride, and all other included activities on the boat.
Beyond those costs you have to get yourself to Buenos Aires (~$1500/person from SLC), add another night on for the Buenos Aires hotel (~$200) so you have a chance if something goes wrong with your flight, and of course buy anything else you want to bring with you on the voyage like clothing, snacks, camera equipment, etc. With Quark providing the big coat I actually don’t think I bought too much I didn’t already have, but there was a lot to bring (Quark’s packing list for Antarctica is here). Beyond these costs there was also a tip at the end of the trip (~$1000?) and we also added on an additional helicopter landing for our anniversary (~$2000).
This trip was multiple times more expensive than any other trip we’ve done. The timing was right though and it was completely worth it.
All of this planning eventually led up to us flying to Buenos Aires in late February 2025 to start the trip of a lifetime. Over the last few years of traveling we’ve had multiple flight issues that have been out of our control. Lost luggage in Spain, Ashley, Keira, and my mom got delayed over a day going to London, flights in general have just seemed off. With $35,000 already spent on this trip all I wanted was to get to Buenos Aires without any delays or issues. We flew from Provo to Dallas to Buenos Aires and everything went unbelievably smooth, giving us about two days to explore the city.
I could probably write a whole post just on Buenos Aires, but it was just a short stop on the way to something much larger. We visited Casa Rosada, San Telmo Market, La Recoleta Cemetery, and ate a lot of good food. It made for a great layover and it was nice to know that from here until returning to Buenos Aires everything was in Quarks hands. We had arrived on time, had our luggage, and were ready for them to take us on the trip of a lifetime. After all the planning and preparation we were ready to head to Antarctica.
