Antarctica or the Arctic: How to Choose, from People Who Plan Both

Most guests who come home from Antarctica ask us the same thing within a year: what is the Arctic like, and is it the same? It is not. The two ends of the earth share a colour and a reputation and almost nothing else. One is a continent, the other an ocean; one is empty, the other has been lived in for a thousand years; one is sailed in our summer, the other in our winter, by the same ships. This is how we explain the difference, from the pole we know best.

Geography: a continent, or an ocean

Everything else follows from this. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, fourteen million square kilometres of rock under an ice sheet that averages 2.2 kilometres thick and holds about nine-tenths of the world's ice. It sits alone inside the Southern Ocean, ringed by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which keeps its cold to itself. The Arctic is the reverse: an ocean of roughly the same size, frozen across much of its surface for part of the year, enclosed by the coasts of eight countries. You sail to Antarctica. You sail along the edges of the Arctic, and into it.

The regions: six Antarcticas, seven Arctics

Antarctica is not one voyage. The Peninsula, ten to twelve nights from Ushuaia, is where most guests begin: the Lemaire Channel, Port Lockroy, the gentoo colonies. South of 66°33' is the Antarctic Circle, with fewer ships and more ice. The Weddell Sea is tabular icebergs, Shackleton's Endurance and the emperor colony at Snow Hill, reached by Le Commandant Charcot. East lie the Falklands and South Georgia, the island with more wildlife per kilometre of shore than anywhere on earth. And from Hobart and the South Island of New Zealand, the Ross Sea voyages sail three weeks through the sub-Antarctic islands, Macquarie among them, to the Ross Ice Shelf, the size of France, and the huts of Scott and Shackleton. The Arctic has seven coasts of its own, from Svalbard to the Northwest Passage to the Pole itself, and Arctic Cruise gives each its page.

Wildlife: the colony, or the encounter

Antarctica is the surest wildlife voyage we sell, because of krill: the Southern Ocean feeds penguins by the hundred thousand, seals on every floe and humpbacks in every bay by February, and with no land predator the animals have no fear of a person who stands still. IAATO asks for five metres; the gentoos ignore it. The Arctic has fewer animals and more variety, and every one of them has lived alongside hunters for ten thousand years. Polar bear, walrus, musk ox, narwhal, beluga and bowhead are northern only; a bear on the sea ice, watched from the bow at the distance the law sets, is the moment guests describe for the rest of their lives. Penguins do not exist in the north. Bears do not exist in the south.

Light: the midnight sun, or the aurora

Both poles have the midnight sun in their summer and the aurora in their dark months; what differs is when the ships sail. Antarctic voyages run from November to March, inside the light, so the aurora australis is almost never seen from a ship. What the south gives instead is the sun circling the horizon over the Antarctic Circle in December, and the long pink evenings of March. Arctic voyages run from May to September, and by September the nights are dark enough for the northern lights while the programme is still running, over Greenland, the Northwest Passage and Iceland.

People: none, or a thousand years of them

Nobody lives in Antarctica, and nobody ever has. It is held in trust under the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, and its human story is short and strangely intact: the huts of Scott, Shackleton and Mawson with the tins still on the shelves, the whaling station at Grytviken where Shackleton is buried, the post office at Port Lockroy that stamps your card. The Arctic is home. Inuit communities in Greenland and Canada, Sami in Norway, Norse ruins from the tenth century, the whalers' graves of Svalbard, Franklin's men on Beechey Island. A day in the Arctic can hold a glacier front in the morning and a village in the afternoon. A day in Antarctica holds a continent where the only building is a hut from 1911.

The sea: the Drake, or the fjords

The Antarctic Peninsula is reached from Ushuaia across the Drake Passage, about 800 kilometres of Southern Ocean, two days each way. It has a reputation and some days it earns it; others it is the Drake Lake. The ships we recommend are stabilised for it, the expedition teams fill the crossing with lectures and briefings, and somewhere on the second day the ship crosses the Antarctic Convergence, the water temperature drops in a few hours and the first iceberg and the first wandering albatross appear. Most of our guests count it as the beginning of Antarctica. Those who prefer can fly it, Punta Arenas to King George Island in two hours, or sail from Hobart with no South America at all. The Arctic has no equivalent: Svalbard, Disko Bay and the Passage are sailed in fjords and sounds, nights at anchor or in the ice.

The ice: on the land, or in the water

Antarctic ice is born on land. The ice sheet flows into floating shelves, the Ross, the Filchner-Ronne, the Larsen, and the icebergs that calve from them are tabular: flat-topped, sheer-sided, sometimes tens of kilometres long, drifting north through the Weddell Sea like white plateaux. Arctic ice is mostly sea ice, frozen ocean a few metres thick that the ships push into, plus the sculpted glacier bergs of Greenland. The south gives you scale: ice walls and mountains straight out of the water. The north gives you proximity: the hull in the floes, the Pole under your boots. Le Commandant Charcot does both, the Weddell Sea in December and the sea ice of Greenland in May.

Getting there from Australia

Antarctica is the closer pole. Sydney to Santiago or Buenos Aires is 13 to 15 hours, Ushuaia a further three, with a night either side that we build into every booking; the Ross Sea voyages leave from Hobart or New Zealand with no long-haul flight at all. The Arctic is reached through Europe, Oslo for Svalbard, Copenhagen or Reykjavík for Greenland, or through Toronto for the Canadian Arctic: a longer journey, which is why many of our pole-to-pole guests add a week in Europe on the way north. We organise the flights, the nights and the transfers for both.

The rules

Antarctica is governed by the Antarctic Treaty and by IAATO, the operators' own association: no more than 100 people ashore at once, one guide for every 20 guests, five metres from wildlife, and ships carrying over 500 passengers may not land at all, which is why every ship we recommend carries 200 or fewer. The Arctic is eight jurisdictions with their own rules. Svalbard's, since January 2025, are the strictest: 43 landing sites, no ship over 200 passengers in the protected areas, 300 metres from a polar bear and 500 from March to June. Greenland and Canada are governed by their parks and by the Inuit communities whose land it is. The expedition teams carry all of it, at both ends of the earth.

Doing both

Because the seasons never overlap, the two poles fit inside one year without compromise: Antarctica in December or January, the Australian autumn at home, the Arctic in July or August. Many guests collect them a decade apart instead. Either way the second voyage is the easier to plan, because the first has told us how you travel: a guest who loved the Weddell Sea aboard Le Commandant Charcot is shown the spring ice of Greenland, a guest who loved the kings of South Georgia is shown the bird cliffs of Svalbard. Most of the ships we recommend sail both poles, so the suite you loved in the south exists, with the same number on the door, in the north six months later. Our pole to pole page sets out the calendar and the ships.

Questions we are asked

Is Antarctica colder than the Arctic?

Inland, by a long way: the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth, minus 89 degrees, was at Vostok Station. On a voyage, barely. The Antarctic Peninsula in January sits between minus 2 and 5 degrees, Svalbard in July between zero and 10. The Ross Sea and the Arctic spring ice are the cold voyages at either end.

Why are there no polar bears in Antarctica, or penguins in the Arctic?

Because the poles were never connected. Polar bears evolved from brown bears in the north and never had a way south across the tropics; penguins evolved in the south and never had a reason to leave a sea so full of krill. Any picture that puts them together is two voyages.

Can you see the aurora from an Antarctic ship?

Almost never. The aurora australis is real, but Antarctic voyages sail in the southern summer, when the sky does not get dark enough. For the lights, it is the September voyages in the north.

Which has the better photography?

Antarctica for scale and for animals that come to you; a wide lens. The Arctic for light, colour, people and the single animal on the ice; a long one. The best polar portfolios we have seen hold both.

Tell us which pole you have done, or neither, and we plan the next one. Start with the Antarctic destinations or the best time to go.