After hearing Liz's great lecture on Shackleton, experiencing all the places he had been on South Georgia, doing the hike from Fortuna Bay to Stromness, and seeing the incredible inhospitability of Elephant Island.

Great holiday

Yes

By far the best lecturers were Heather, Liz, Erin, and John. They were well-prepared, their lectures made logical sense and they used slides with mostly photos and talked. Some lecturers had slides with WALL OF TEXT, which I just stopped reading. Audiences should be expected to either listen OR read, but not do both at the same time. Those lecturers should look at Ted talks. Two favourite lectures: Liz's talk on Shackleton, and Heather's talk on differences between Arctic and Antarctic. Oh, and Lydia's dynamic, entertaining talk on climbing career - fascinating! As people, every one of the expedition team were friendly and knowledgeable.

Frankly we are a little discouraged by the number of countries laying claim to different parts of Antarctica, even though the IAATO treaty says the continent is a place for peace and research. We also were told and saw effects of climate change. We're glad we went when we did.

No

No

No

No

Within 12 months

We booked a joint Patagonia/Antarctic trip. The sales rep for the Antarctic (Otto) narrowed in a ship/trip very quickly and then was pressuring us to make a deposit before we had even worked out or spoken with a representative for the Patagonia part of the trip. He kept saying "only one cabin left". But then when we wanted to take a different rated cabin, or there's only of those left. We booked one year in advanced, but when we spoke to other passengers, some had booked 3-4 months ahead, some less than a month. So there were clearly other cabins available. We HATED the pressure tactics, and were ready to abandon the trip. The sales rep apologized the push was absolutely unnecessary and offputting. We think (he told us) that he would get a free trip to Antarctic if he made one more sale. Ugh. The sales rep for the Patagonia part (Danny) was fantastic. He gave us lots of options, kept moving things around according to dates, making suggestions that we wouldn't have thought of. He had to work a lot harder, and we did not feel pressured to make a decision. The only thing we HATED was the first day before boarding the ship in Ushuaia, they took us on a bus tour. We did it hesitatingly because we have bus tours, and know it's more driving than touring, which it was, but it was our only opportunity to see the countryside. But the WORST thing was where they sent us for lunch. It was in this room (of a hotel?) that was small, we sat at long tables like in army barracks, the low ceiling meant the noise level was unbearable (I was getting headaches), and as we were vegetarian, the food was awful. While everyone was eating their salads, they hadn't even given us a plate. When we asked for a plate, they said it's coming, but what came was a bowl of creamed corn (still no separate plate). So we had to eat all the creamed corn before we could have salad on our "dirty" plate. The remainder of the meal was meat which we didn't eat. The meal and the environment was extremely unpleasant, and we were glad it was not forshadowing what was coming on the cruise. Why didn't they just send us back to the Arakur for lunch? They had much better food, and a much more pleasant dining environment.