READ MORE: ABOUT ANTARCTICA

Join members of the team each week for access to the free Polar Learning Channel Hub. Learn everything from the how-comes of the Northern Lights to the feeding habits of the Macaroni Penguins (no, they don’t eat macaroni).  There are also blogs, infographics and fun things for children, including kid-friendly webinars—science topics they might actually enjoy learning about. This content will refresh weekly, until you’re ready to add one or both polar regions to your bucket list. Plan now, travel later.

Having travelled with Quark Expeditions to both the Arctic and Antarctica, I can confirm their expeditions are fascinating, invigorating, challenging and life-changing.

READ MORE: ABOUT GREENLAND

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From the tiny airport of Nerlerit Inaat, a.k.a. Constable Point, we walk to a flotilla of Zodiac boats that sweeps us out to the Ocean Nova, and a Quark Expeditions East Greenland cruise.

Arctic expedition travel is the ultimate adventure, an experience more than a vacation, one you can barely believe is real at points. It has a special beauty—a scale and ruggedness to it—that is addictive.

Take to the kayak. The variety of kayaking conditions in the different bays and fjords of East Greenland and the experiences that go with them is amazing: hugging a rocky shoreline one day, digging through ice the next, paddling past glacial faces and blue icebergs, bobbing along in “bergy bits,” mist, fog, sunshine, seals swimming under the canoe, the works.

One afternoon in Flyer Fjord, a veritable iceberg graveyard, we have to kayak single file through the ice, crunching and cracking, getting stuck, getting free, getting stuck again. We stop in open water for a few minutes to take it all in, bergs calving like thunderclaps, no wind, no birds, no fog, just us. The next day hugging the shore of Little Island, the bay is chocka-block with brash ice, like we are floating in a giant cocktail.

Spot the oxen. Before an afternoon paddle in Eskimo Bay while we are still in the Zodiac, we suddenly spot two muskoxen in full gallop quite close to shore. They stop abruptly when they see us; one retreating while the other stares for several minutes before trotting off. It’s a moment that takes a while to sink in—what just happened?

Roam the ruins. Following sessions in the water, we often catch up with the rest of the passengers, taking a short hike to get the lay of the land, careful to stay behind the rifle—this is polar bear country, after all. On a few occasions, we wander through untouched ruins of Indigenous settlements, used by more than one different culture over the centuries. We find hand tools made out of bone and actual human graves. Meat caches are made evident by small piles of lichen-covered stones; decades-old wooden fox traps still sit atop hillside rocks.

Look at the lights. After midnight, the call goes out that we’re making a night landing. Our Zodiac heads right for the red light on the shoreline, to find that the perimeter of our viewing area is ringed with—glow sticks. People set up their photo gear or stake out their spots in the deep grass, barely visible despite our bright yellow parkas. And then the show starts. The Northern Lights dance across the sky in kaleidoscope of colour for more than a half hour. I almost drift off, my nose tucked into my jacket, almost forgetting to watch.

Break new ice. The Ocean Nova captain impresses even himself with an incredible sail through uncharted waters into ice-filled Goose Fjord, home of the Magga Dan Glacier. The ice cracks and calves, falling into the bay in slow motion. The crew is incredibly excited to get so close to the glacier given the amount of ice in the fjord. This is the kind of thing that turns a trip into an expedition: taking what you’re faced with, and running with it.

Keep an eye out. A polar bear is spotted on the morning of our last full day of East Greenland adventure, in Viking Bay, making everyone eager for more of the same. We kayak down the quiet coastline before landing on a small island made out of octagonal basalt columns, where we join the other passengers for a chat on the rocks and one very large group shot. My gloves are wet and my hands cold, but they warm up considerably when the Irish whisky comes out. The only bear I see is a sun-bleached bear scull, but he looks good in my pictures all the same.

When You Go. Quark Expeditions has a few different itineraries that take you into the fjords of East Greenland, with departures in August and September. Kayak groups paddle multiple times per voyage, weather permitting. Visit QuarkExpeditions.com.

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Antarctica is all about zipping through icy bays on pontoon boats, hiking up glacial hills, kayaking or just plain penguin-watching. And a Quark Expeditions cruise through the islands of the Antarctic Peninsula is the perfect bucket-list adventure for anyone—thrill-seekers, nomads, romantics.

A quick Google search of “things to do in Antarctica” turns up “survive” as one of the main activities. The explorers that started arriving in the early 1800s can attest to that. The real activity, of course, is the journey itself—and this will likely be the furthest you will likely ever get from your house. Most cruise lines will have you landing in Ushuaia the day before you set sail. It bills itself as the City at the Bottom of the World—just a few kilometres from famous Tierra del Fuego National Park. (Weirdly, it used to be a prison colony.)

Pack your summer stuff. You will spend a few days in Buenos Aires first, where it will be full-on summer. You would be remiss not to take advantage of the weather, even for a day or two. 

Pack your ski stuff. While daytime temps in Antarctica’s “summer,” from December to February, hover around -2ºC, you’ll find yourself outside a lot. As well, ship corridors in this part of the world generally aren’t exactly toasty.

Get your awe on. Nothing can prepare you for the beauty of the giant walls of ice, frosty clouds rolling in low with full sun behind them, shimmering vistas across icy bays. Some of the ice we were looking at was thousands of years old.

ARCTIC ADVENTURE: IN GREENLAND

Spot the critters. Despite being a big deep freeze, the Antarctic archipelago has its fair share of wildlife. You will see different kinds of penguins (including the Gentoo, Adélie and Chinstrap) and seals (including the Weddell, Leopard and Crabeater) and soon be able to tell them all apart. All feed on krill, an algae-eating form of crustacean. Keep an eye out for whales. You will also see birds flying alongside the ship, nesting in rocky crags or feasting on krill at the shoreline: blue-eyed shags, Antarctic terns, brown skuas, snowy sheathbills and numerous varieties of petrels. On-board experts share their knowledge of ornithology, marine biology, zoology and geology with talks during downtimes.

Say yes to camping. At an overnight camping trip at Rongé Island, those brave enough not only survived but actually slept.

Take the plunge. On Deception Island, many brave souls stripped down and ran screaming into minus-one-degree water, part of a polar plunge. From my dry spot on the shore, this all looked very invigorating.

Don’t forget anti-nausea medication. The first and last legs of the journey are the most wobbly: crossing the notorious Drake Passage. We noticed the hooks under our dining-room chairs that would allow us to attach ourselves to the floor if need be. I remember one particular dinner where servers spent more time replacing utensils that slipped off the tabletops than they did delivering plates.

Be patient. It takes about 100 hours of sailing (not including touring around the peninsula itself), 30 hours of flying and four hours of taxicabs to get to Antarctica and back—truly the trip of a lifetime.

Quark Expeditions

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