Tourism in polar regions is nothing new. It’s been available for decades. Historically, polar travel, both in the Arctic and Antarctica, was made through cruise ships sailing along the outer edge of polar ice caps.
Travelers can choose between relatively sumptuous cruise ships that passed through the domain before returning to the port or “shipping” cruises that allowed travelers to make landfall. These last ships were exchanged for old icebreakers, usually Russians, who had changed to bring guests.
Over the past decade, Polar has drastically replaced. First, luxury cruise ships were introduced in “shipping” through various cruise operators, adding Ponant, Silversea and Viking.
In addition, shipping cruise lines have gone from icebreakers to luxury cruisers specially designed to operate in polar environments.
Quark Expeditions, for example, recently introduced the Ultramarine, a shipping shipment that offers the same aircraft and accommodation typical of luxury cruise shipments, but also comes with two helicopters on board and a small zodiac fleet.
Global warming has also been present in Arctic tourism, opening new routes in the Canadian Arctic and the Greenland coast and making it possible, albeit reliable, to transit the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Northeast Passage. across the Russian Arctic.
Russia has also opened up to tourists in the Russian Arctic. Moscow has traditionally blocked tourists from accessing the domain for military reasons. Quark now gives an address through the Russian Arctic from Murmansk to Severnaya Zemlya.
However, it is the poles that have become the travel destination par excellence. Today, it is imaginable to move to the North Pole or the South Pole. It’s not cheap. Both trips will charge you between $30,000 and $100,000 each, but it’s much less expensive than before. These trips will also put you in a very exclusive club. Only a few hundred tourists traveled to both destinations.
One of the rare facets of the poles is that the geographical position of the poles means that there are several jump points. Trips to the Arctic regions start regularly in Canada, Iceland, Norway (Tromsa) or Russia (Murmansk), while trips to Antarctica regularly. Chile (Punta Arenas), Argentina (Ushuaia), Australia (Tasmania), New Zealand (Invergordon), South Africa (Cape Town).
Recently, I spoke to an organization of foreign tour operators to communicate the ins and outs of polar travel and, in particular, the north and south poles.
According to Wendy Batchelor, vice president of Quark Expeditions:
Interest in polars has increased over the past decade for a number of reasons. For many, polar regions are the last borders to explore. These spaces are largely unexplored. The opportunity to set foot in an exotic component of the global where few humans have been, if any, fuels the passions of many experienced.
While polar has grown exponentially, consumers are finding the incredible adventures waiting for them in the Arctic and the Antártida. La fauna of polar regions (penguins, polar bears, birds, according to the pole visited) is surely magnificent to see in its herbal environment. .
Increasingly, experienced travelers are booking polar adventures due to the isolation of polar regions. On a Quark expedition trip, for example, there are no densely populated ports on Arctic or Antarctic routes, small communities of Inuit villages in the Arctic, and bases of study. in Antarctica. At a time when physical condition and protection are paramount, polar regions are among the safest places to visit.
Jamie Lynn Ensey, marketing director of Antarctica21, a Chilean-based tour operator, noted that:
There are more opportunities and routes to Antarctica than ever before. For example, Antarctica21 made it imaginable to fly to Antarctica and sign up for an expedition ship. We’ve been providing this convenient option since 2003, giving travelers the ability to skip sailing through the Drake Passage and related discomfort.
Patrick Woodhead, CEO of White Desert, an excursion operator in Cape Town, South Africa, also offers air flights to the Antarctic continent, which will take you to the South Pole, giving you the opportunity to spend the night in a luxury tent camp.
The 3 corporations claim that American tourists occupy about part of the available space, Chinese tourists occupy about a quarter and the rest is distributed among a variety of nationalities.
According to Batchelor,
In the past, polar travelers have turned to the previous generation: Americans and Western Europeans who have the resources and time for expeditions are retired, but in recent years they have replaced the profile in everything that is still typical: we have clients of all ages cultural backgrounds, devotees and very diverse professionals. A main trend that we also realize is that lone travelers book these expeditions electronically.
Visiting the North Pole and the South Pole is a mix of sea or air travel, the express mix will depend on the destination and your budget, according to Batchelor,
To succeed at the South Pole, travelers will want to book a small plane that can land on the ice near the pole, where they will be allowed to explore the study base there, weather permitting. These trips can start at up to $50,000 or more.
Patrick Woodhead’s White Desert will take you to the South Pole from Cape Town on a 12-passenger Gulfstream G550 business jet for about $90,000. Last year, they organized about 20 trips and took 250 other people to the South Pole. estimates that only a few thousand tourists have arrived at this destination.
The adventure from Cape Town to Antarctica takes five hours, and the adventure from Antarctica to the pole takes another seven hours. The south pole is part of an eight-day longer itinerary.
Polar Explorers offers a seven-day itinerary that will take you from Punta Arenas, Chile to the South Pole, to spend the night for around $50,000.
Only a handful of tour operators will offer flights to the South Pole. The International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) has a list of all active tour operators in Antarctica. Your club list is a smart position to start if you’re looking for Antarctic options.
Even if he doesn’t plan to move to the South Pole, trips to Antarctica still place him in a very elitist fraternity.
Antarctica21 does not offer trips to the South Pole, but it does offer trips to other Antarctic destinations. According to Ensey, Antarctica receives about 85,000 tourists a year. It also states that shipping cruises cannot unload more than one hundred passengers at a time on the Antarctic continent. Booking on a smaller boat is if you expect to land on the mainland.
Traveling to the North Pole is relatively more than to the South Pole. For a complete list of Arctic ocean cruise operators, see the Association of Arctic Cruise Operators (AECO) club list
Polar explorers will take you to the North Pole from Longyearbyen, on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard. The islands are located well above the Arctic Circle, halfway between the North Cape, the northern point of Europe, and the North Pole. -A half-hour flight landed at the Floating Ice Station of Barneo, approximately 80 km from the North Pole. Barneo’s latest prevention at the North Pole is a 45-minute helicopter. ArrayPolar Explorers offers three days for approximately $30,000.
The option to achieve polo is to take a cruise/icebreaker from Murmansk, Russia, for five to seven days.
Quark Expeditions is one of only two concordant that offer North Pole expeditions to tourists, and we organize two summer-tailored trips. The most productive way to succeed at the North Pole is aboard Five0 Years Of Victory, one of the best trips in the world. max hard nuclear icebreakers and cruise the icy Arctic ocean for five to 7 days until you hit 90 degrees north. Once there, travelers spend a day walking on the ice, enjoying a special fried fish arranged through gear and even take a dip in the ocean under 0 if you dare. The shipment has a capacity of 160 guests.
Quark will offer a 14-day North Pole expedition in the summer of 2021, at $31,995.
If you need to move to the poles, the most productive thing is to start making plans well in advance, preferably at two years. Space is limited. Sometimes operators offer really important discounts if you book an ebook a year or more in advance. They also offer really important discounts for last minute electronic bookings in case you have space. If your schedule is flexible and you can leave a few days in advance, this option can be very interesting.
In theory, you can make either pole in the same year, because the seasons are reflected, if your wallet can handle this, it would put you in a very rareve club, it is estimated that only a few dozen tourists visited both. poles in the same year.
There’s only one last question left. If you move on to the Poles, what drink will you celebrate with?, according to top tour operators, champagne is the first selection followed by vodka, the latter is closely related to intense environments, perhaps because vodka is related to Russia and Scandinavia.
You can even use polar ice to cool your martini. At the North Pole you’re probably only between 5 and 10 years old, however, at the South Pole, especially at the South Pole’s Amundsen-Scott station, you may find incredibly dense ice that’s several hundred years old. It would definitely be an attractive martini. Considering what it costs to get there, this would be the most expensive cocktail in the world.
Here are the world’s funds.
To your health!
I’ve been writing and talking about wines and spirits for 20 years. Along the way, I became an winemaker, Oregon Pinot Noir; a trial for internationals
I have been writing and talking about wines and spirits for 20 years. Along the way, I became a winemaker, Oregon Pinot Noir; Judge of foreign competitions, in addition to the Irish Whiskey Awards and the International Wine and Spirits Competition; I wrote an e-book on Scotch Whiskey: Its History, Production and Appreciation and worked on tequila. I also graduated with a BA in Wine and Spirits from WSET. I have tried many wines and spirits, from 200-year-old ports to centuries-old cognacs to the oldest whiskeys in the world. I also write about the dusty and forgotten rotten things of the global, the ones that smell of history and whose stories still resonate in the 21st century. An eclectic mix without a doubt, again the state of the global would push anyone to drink.