Antarctic Womens Expedition Spirit of Antarctica

Your Antarctic Women’s Expedition: Spirit of Antarctica Begins

You’ve made it to Ushuaia — the southernmost city on Earth, and the legendary gateway to Antarctica. Dramatic peaks, glacier-carved channels, and that unmistakable electric feeling of something big is about to begin.

On arrival, you will be transferred to your pre-voyage hotel alongside your fellow expeditioners. If you’re already in Ushuaia, simply make your way to the hotel — check-in opens at 3:00 pm.

In the afternoon, a hospitality desk will be located in the hotel lobby where you can meet your Wild Women Expeditions trip host, pick up your luggage tags, confirm your interest in the optional Lake Escondido pre-embarkation tour, and get all the details you need for embarkation day. The team is there to answer questions, point you toward the best local restaurants, and help you track down any last-minute gear.

Arriving late? A welcome pack will be waiting for you at check-in. Just stop by the hospitality desk the following morning.

The rest of your evening is yours to explore. Wander the colourful harbour, browse the local shops, or settle into a Fuegian lamb dinner — Ushuaia’s specialty. Meals today are independent.

Ushuaia sits at the tip of Tierra del Fuego in Argentine Patagonia — one of the most remote and spectacular staging grounds for any expedition on Earth.  

Included Meals

No meals are included today, but your Wild Women Expeditions host will make a group reservation at a local restaurant for those who would like to join. 

Accommodations

Hotel in Ushuaia

Set Sail for Antarctica

After breakfast, it’s time to check out and get our Antarctic Womens Expedition Spirit of Antarctica expedition officially underway!

Before you leave your room, make sure your cabin luggage is tagged with your name and cabin number, then drop it at hotel reception. It’ll be transferred directly to the port and delivered to your cabin — so you can spend the day hands-free. Keep valuables and anything you’ll need during the day with you.

Optional: Lake Escondido & Fagnano Excursion After breakfast meet in the hotel lobby for one of the most scenic drives in all of Argentine Patagonia.

Prefer a slower morning? Ushuaia is yours to explore at leisure until embarkation. Your ground team will provide transfer details at the hotel.

Either way, this is the moment everything shifts. Once on board, settle into your cabin, get oriented, and attend the mandatory safety briefings before the ship eases away from the dock. Gather on deck as Ushuaia and the jagged peaks of Tierra del Fuego shrink behind you — the Beagle Channel opening ahead, and Antarctica somewhere beyond the horizon.

This evening, raise a glass with your fellow wild women and the expedition team at the welcome dinner. Your Women’s Antarctica expedition has officially begun!

The Beagle Channel — named for the HMS Beagle that carried Charles Darwin through these waters in the 1830s — is one of the world’s most storied and spectacular departure routes for Antarctic expeditions.

Included Meals

All on-board meals 

Accommodations

Your cabin on the Sylvia Earle

Crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica

The most famous stretch of open water on Earth — and your rite of passage into Antarctica!

As the ship finds her rhythm on the Southern Ocean swells, so do you. This is prime time to settle in, find your sea legs, and let the journey ahead sink in.

Your expedition team kicks off the lecture program on these sea days — talks covering Antarctic history, wildlife, glaciology, and the ecosystems you’re about to step into. These aren’t dry slideshows. These are passionate experts who’ve spent careers in this landscape, and they’ll fundamentally change how you see what’s coming.

The wildlife starts here. Long before you reach the ice, the Drake delivers. Wander out to the deck and you’ll find wandering albatrosses — the largest flying birds on Earth, with wingspans up to three and a half metres — riding the ship’s draft effortlessly. Giant petrels, cape petrels, and storm petrels wheel alongside. For many expeditioners, the Drake birding alone is a highlight.

Between lectures and deck time, the ship is yours. Hit the gym, visit the wellness centre, or sink into a chair in one of the observation lounges with a coffee and a horizon full of open ocean.

Included Meals

All on-board meals 

Accommodations

Your cabin on the Sylvia Earle

Explore Antarctica & the Antarctic Peninsula

There are no words that fully prepare you for the moment Antarctica appears.

The first iceberg stops you mid-sentence. The air — clean and sharp in a way that feels almost impossible — fills your lungs and something settles. You are here. At the bottom of the world. And it is nothing like you imagined, and everything you hoped.

The western Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands stretch out before you — and with roughly 18 hours of daylight this far south, the days can be as full or as unhurried as you choose.

Your expedition team has made countless voyages to this region. Each morning, they read the conditions — weather, ice, wildlife movement — and design the day around what the Peninsula is offering right now. No two Antarctic voyages are ever the same, and that’s exactly the point.

Most days include two excursions: a morning and an afternoon. Expect a mix of:

Zodiac Cruises — Threading through grounded icebergs and alongside towering ice cliffs, scanning the water for whales, leopard seals, and penguins porpoising alongside the inflatable. Some of the most otherworldly hours of your life will happen here!

Shore Landings — Zodiac to the beach, then on foot. You might walk a pebbly shoreline through a penguin rookery so crowded it defies belief, or climb a snow-covered ridgeline to a viewpoint with mountains behind you and an ice-strewn ocean in every direction. Historic huts. Hidden bays. Favourite spots your guides have been returning to for years.

Ship Cruising — Some of the most dramatic scenery on the Peninsula is best seen from the deck or the bridge. Narrow straits between offshore islands and the mainland. Scenic bays where humpbacks feed in slow, unhurried loops. The deep groan of a glacier calving into the sea. These are moments to go quiet and simply be present.

The Polar Plunge

At some point during the voyage, the announcement will come over the ship’s intercom. If you’ve signed up — or even if you haven’t yet but find yourself swept up in the moment — you’ll have your chance to immerse yourself fully in Antarctic waters. Cold doesn’t cover it. Exhilarating doesn’t either. But you’ll be grinning for the rest of the day.

On Board

Antarctica has a way of making you want to stay outside, but when you come in from the cold the ship is a warm, well-designed refuge. The Glass Atrium Lounge and Observation Lounge are made for watching the world drift past. The wellness centre offers a sauna with a window looking out to sea — because yes, you can sit in a sauna and watch icebergs — plus treatments bookable at reception. There’s a gym, a library, and jacuzzis on the back deck for those who like their contrast bathing extreme.

The Women Who Inspired This Ship

As you move through the ship’s hallways, you’ll meet the women whose names and work mark each deck — conservation leaders, scientists, and activists who are actively shaping the future of our oceans and wild places. From Dr. Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue marine protected areas network, to Joanna Ruxton’s plastic-free movement championed by Sir David Attenborough, to Dr. Asha de Vos pioneering blue whale research in the Indian Ocean — these are women doing extraordinary work.

It’s fitting. You’re travelling with a company built by and for women, in one of the last truly wild places on Earth.

The Antarctic Peninsula extends northward toward South America and is one of the fastest-warming regions on the planet — making every expedition here not just an adventure, but a witness to a landscape in change.

Included Meals

All on-board meals 

Accommodations

Your cabin aboard The Sylvia Earle

Carrying Antarctica With You

One last morning in Antarctica.

Your final landing in the South Shetland Islands carries a different weight than the first. You know how to move here now — how to read a Zodiac approach, how to stand still long enough for a penguin to lose interest in you, how to just look without reaching for your camera. That ease took the whole voyage to earn, and now it’s time to carry it home.

Back on board, the ship turns north and the Drake opens up again ahead of you.

The Return Crossing

The expedition team fills these sea days well — final lectures, film presentations, and the kind of unhurried conversations that only happen when a group of people have shared something genuinely extraordinary together. There’s time to compare photographs, swap stories from different landings, and start processing what the past two weeks have actually meant.

Antarctica has a way of reordering things. Most expeditioners leave with a sharper sense of what matters — and a fierce, personal investment in protecting what they’ve just witnessed.

Your guides will talk about this too. The science of what’s changing down here. The conservation work being done. And the simple, powerful act of going home and talking about it — to your family, your colleagues, your communities. Every person who hears your Antarctica story is one step closer to caring about its future.

You are, now, an ambassador for the white continent. That’s not a small thing.

Included Meals

All on-board meals 

Accommodations

Your cabin aboard The Sylvia Earle

Your Antarctic Women’s Expedition Closes

As the voyage comes to a close, we cruise the Beagle Channel in the early morning before arriving quietly into port in Ushuaia. Disembarkation is expected at approximately 8:00 AM, when you’ll say farewell to your expedition team and fellow travellers and continue onward, likely carrying a renewed appreciation for the immense power of nature.

Guests with departing flights before 12:30 PM will be transferred directly to Ushuaia Airport. Those with flights after 12:30 PM will have time to explore Ushuaia before an afternoon airport transfer. Final transfer details will be shared onboard prior to disembarkation.

Included Meals

Breakfast on-board