Antarctica, the Bush, and Cape Town in One Trip

I get the question a lot, usually from the same kind of client. They’ve heard me talk about expedition cruising for years. They’ve seen photos from Antarctica. And then they say some version of: “Shannon, I want that. But I get seasick just reading about the ocean.”

Fair enough. The Drake Passage has earned its reputation. Two days of open water each way, and even the smoothest crossing is still a crossing. For a few of my clients, that’s the entire trip, settled before it starts.

So, here’s the answer I’ve started giving them.

You can fly to Antarctica.

Not “fly to a port and then board a ship.” Fly. Cape Town to Antarctica, direct, on a scheduled intercontinental flight, about six hours in the air. No Drake. No days lost to weather windows in the South Atlantic. You leave Africa in the morning, and you’re standing on the seventh continent before dinner.

That flight is the centerpiece of a trip one of my supplier partners has been building out that is run with the Bear Grylls Survival Academy, and it’s the most interesting thing to land on my desk this year.

Three places, one trip, almost no overlap with anything else in my portfolio

The structure is simple to say and remarkable to actually do. Cape Town. Antarctica. Cape Town again, then the bush. Ten days, three completely different versions of the planet, and every transition handled by air.

You open in Cape Town for two nights at Cape Grace, one of the best addresses on the V&A Waterfront. There’s a full day built around an extreme activity of your choosing and a helicopter flight over the Cape Peninsula, the kind of vantage point that makes you understand why this stretch of coastline has been stopping sailors for five hundred years.

Then the flight south. Thirty-six fully outfitted hours in Antarctica, including an actual night on the ice. They issue the full cold-weather kit, so you show up in your travel clothes and leave looking like you summited something. This is the part of the trip people will ask you about for the rest of your life, and you’ll get to say “we flew” every single time.

Back to Cape Town for three more nights, another private adventure day built around whatever you choose this time, and then a short domestic hop to Port Elizabeth for three nights at a safari lodge, on a private, fully inclusive basis. This is where the trip turns from spectacle to skill, with a Rhino Notching experience built in, hands-on conservation work that puts you inside the actual mechanics of protecting one of the most endangered animals on the continent.

Why this works for my expedition cruise clients

Most of my clients who love expedition travel love it for the same reason: it puts them somewhere genuinely remote, with genuine expertise standing next to them, doing something that can’t be replicated from a resort chair. This itinerary gives you all of that without a single day spent rocking in turbulent waters.

It also solves a problem I hear constantly from multi-generational families. Everyone wants the bucket-list destination. Not everyone wants two weeks at sea to get there, and not everyone’s knees or stomach agrees to it. This itinerary compresses three trip-of-a-lifetime experiences into ten days, with private guiding throughout and a small, fixed group of twelve.

The honest numbers

This departure runs October 29 through November 7, 2026, priced at USD 28,150 per person in a double or twin room, based on twelve travelers sharing six rooms. That covers the hotels, the private touring, the flights between Cape Town and Antarctica, the full Antarctic expedition with Ultima, the cold-weather gear, the domestic flights to Port Elizabeth, and the all-inclusive lodge stay with Rhino Notching. International flights to Cape Town, insurance, gratuities, and visas are at an additional cost, and travel insurance is required, given the nature of the itinerary.

Twelve spots. Six rooms. One date. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to do something this specific, this is a narrow window, not a standing offer.

If this date doesn’t work, the idea still does

Let me be blunt: I don’t expect everyone reading this to clear their October calendar for a fixed departure. But the underlying premise, that you can experience Antarctica without committing your stomach to the Southern Ocean, is one I can build at a different timeframe. If the destination has you but the date doesn’t, tell me. I’ll find or build the version that fits your life.

Contact me – I’d love to talk you through it.