Oceanwide Expeditions has announced plans to offer two new itineraries in the Ross Sea in 2017.
The ice-strengthened vessel Ortelius will be accommodated with helicopters for the two Antarctica cruises, sailing from South America to the Antarctic Peninsula, crossing the Polar Circle, further west to Peter I Island, sailing in the Bellingshausen sea along the ice-edge of “deep Antarctica” into the Ross Sea. The voyage continues to the uninhabited sub-Antarctic Campbell Island and ends after 32 days in New Zealand. The second cruise offers the same itinerary, but in reverse.
Oceanwide Expeditions said that very few expeditions have ever ventured this far south to the Ross Sea. The cruise line will attempt to land passengers in such areas as the rarely visited volcanic Peter I Island, the huts of the British explorers Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott on Ross Island, McMurdo Station, the Dry Valleys – where the conditions are the closest you get to the conditions on Mars - and Campbell Island, home to the Southern Royal Albatrosses.
Passengers will experience the largest ice-formations in Antarctica and will encounter a diversity of wildlife, including minke whales, orca’s, weddell and crabeater seals, adelie and emperor penguins, petrels and skuas.
Oceanwide Expeditions is offering everybody the chance to win a free cruise passage on their ship the Ortelius with a Ross Sea contest they are currently running.
For contest details, visit oceanwide-expeditions.com