- We're on The White Continent on another of the World's Greatest Cruises.

(bell dings) I'm Lynn Elmhirst, a travel journalist with a deep passion for sailing the high seas.

Navigating timeless routes in a world that's 70% water, cruising may be the most authentic way to travel, not to mention its spectacular scenery, fascinating ships, maritime traditions, and local people and cultures.

Join me on the "World's Greatest Cruises."

"World's Greatest Cruises" is made possible in part by the JERNE community of travel advisors: local business owners with experience cruising and planning cruises.

More information at JERNE.COM/CRUISE Today on "World's Greatest Cruises," we're busting some of the biggest myths about the continent at the bottom of the world.

This is my first trip to Antarctica, and like many cruise travelers here, it allows me to check all seven continents off my travel bucket list.

Before you cruise in Antarctica, you might have an impression of how remote or cold or snowy and icy it is, and that's all true.

But as we discover, Antarctica is not just a white continent.

It's a feast for all the senses with a richness of colors, textures, sounds, (penguin chirping) and even tastes.

- Have a little taste.

- Wow.

That our expedition cruise allows us to perceive Antarctica in a whole new light.

(screen whooshes) We're sailing aboard the Scenic Eclipse.

It's one of the new breed of ships that's changing cruising at the very ends of the Earth.

Scenic Eclipse and its twin sister ship are polar-class vessels designed to handle icy waters and remain stable even in rough seas.

In Antarctica, guests are limited to 200, and no matter the conditions beyond the ship's rails and even hundreds of miles from the closest human habitation, life aboard the Scenic Eclipse feels very much like visiting any major international city, sipping at the whiskey bar in the main lounge, dining in a French restaurant, and having our pre-dinner drinks at a pink quartz champagne bar, sampling Asian and fusion cuisine, or exploring the tastes of reimagined global street food.

The 176 crew members include two dozen discovery team experts in natural sciences, history, geography, as well as outdoor adventure.

They share their knowledge of Antarctica in onboard presentations and during expeditions off the ship into the polar seas and landscapes.

We take exploration of Antarctica to another level, literally, in the Scenic Eclipse's submarine to the depths of the ocean and in two onboard helicopters enabling guests to soar to new heights, giving us a fresh perspective on the so-called White Continent.

(upbeat music) Most cruises to Antarctica embark from the very tip of South America.

All of the guests of the Scenic Eclipse fly together on a chartered flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world where we board the Scenic Eclipse in time for an evening sail-away.

We reflect on the tiny number of humans who will ever see Antarctica and our good fortune in being among them as we embark on one of the greatest marine adventures on the Earth.

- [Cruise Employee] Cheers, everybody.

(bright music) Day one of our cruises to Antarctica from Ushuaia is crossing the Drake Passage.

It's a two-day crossing covering hundreds of miles, and Antarctic cruise travelers quickly learn the two faces of the notorious body of water where currents from two oceans collide, and it's either Drake Lake or Drake Shake.

(screen whooshes) As soon as we arrive on Antarctic shores, we quickly learn that what's often thought of as a pretty sterile part of the planet has a lot of life, and it's constantly changing.

Antarctica is new every time, even for those who know it well.

You've been to Antarctica many times.

Do you still find that pull and that connection, and do you find a way to find that moment for yourself?

- Very much so, I mean, look around, you know?

But to come here today, it's different than I've ever seen it.

I've never seen it with the deep snow like today.

I've never seen this many baby elephant seals, the weaners.

You know, usually when I'm here, it's a little later in the season, and it's just a few seals molting down there as opposed to a beach full of different-age seals and everything.

So like every experience, even when you return to a place that you visited multiple times before, it's got something different to show you.

- And that's really the spirit of discovery, which I think expedition cruising is all about, right, that even if you do it multiple times, there's always a new way to discover.

- We're discovering what Antarctica has to show us.

We have experiences like the orcas that we had the other day.

No matter how many times you've seen it, it takes you right back up to the top, you know?

- And there is so much that's spontaneous.

So my advice to anyone coming on a cruise like this is always have, always be sort of ready to run outdoors.

- This is your chance to be here.

So like you say, I think you're exactly right.

You want to be in it to win it, outside as much as possible, looking outside.

But for me, as a discovery leader, I'm all about getting people outside and making sure they're out on their balconies, out on the bow, up on the bridge, watching the wild environment that goes by because it's absolutely fantastic.

(screen whooshes) - [Lynn] Two helicopters aboard the Scenic Eclipse allow five guests at a time to see a side of Antarctica so very few do from the air.

That unique perspective reveals facets of life and color in Antarctica you just have to see to believe.

- [Scott] I'm gonna be flying you out to the South Shetlands where we are and particularly the tundra mountains.

- [Lynn] It's incredible, the color of the iceberg.

You see how much bigger they are.

- [Scott] Yeah, these are bigger than the ship, easily bigger than the ship.

So this section is the Macy Glacier.

You're on the southern shores of the the South Shetland Islands.

- [Lynn] I think it's pretty great.

- [Scott] You can also see there's a bit of a horseshoe shape in there.

That's gonna give you an indication where the last calving probably happened.

And you can see, if you look kind of at the, as you follow that horseshoe to the left, you're gonna see this bunch of ice that must have sheared off of this not so long ago.

So a lot of these icebergs, you see 'em also kind of weird and wonderful shapes.

More than likely it's because those icebergs have grounded.

They've been pushed by the wind or the current into the bays here.

It's now stuck to the seabed effectively, and the wind and the current are gonna start working away at that iceberg.

So that's what's shaping the icebergs.

Now, this is what we call a soak.

It's kind of this arena of mountains around this glacier that feeds down below.

So this is the Macy Glacier they're feeding down here.

- [Lynn] Even though you do this all the time, do you ever get tired of it?

- [Scott] I love flying in Antarctica.

It is the most amazing place I've ever flown.

- [Lynn] What also strikes me is you think of Antarctica as being so white, but there's so much color.

- [Scott] Well, let's talk about the color, 'cause you can see there's a lot of different colors here.

Obviously there's the white of the ice.

A lot of people are like, "Why is your ice blue?"

So what I like to do is do physics lessons with your helicopter pilot Scott and explain to them why they're blue, or some of the ice is blue.

And the reason being from a physics point of view is that water bounces back the blue wavelength of the visible spectrum of the light that we can see.

And it's the air molecules in the lights that are actually bouncing back all of the wavelengths of light.

So water would normally absorb nearly everything and just bounce the blue back to you.

But the white is actually caused by the air molecules bouncing everything back to your eye and you see that that as white.

What happens when you squeeze the ice, you're putting it under immense amounts of pressure.

So they're being squeezed down, and they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller until they become transparent.

So then the light bounces off of the water inside or the ice inside rather than off of the air molecules, and you're suddenly seeing the natural color of the frozen water, which is blue.

But then there's other stuff happening here.

Obviously we've got different shades of the water color down here, but you see this kind of turquoisey color in the water.

That's because you've got all this almost silt with very, very fine sand that's coming out of the underside of the glacier.

We have guests ask us, "Can we fly over the South Pole?"

And I have to explain that the South Pole is over 3,000 kilometers away from where we are at the moment.

The ship is gonna start moving.

I'm gonna delay the landing until the ship is underway.

- [Lynn] So we're going to land on the ship while it's moving?

- [Scott] Yes.

- [Lynn] That's pretty exciting.

- [Scott] Yes, nothing makes you feel like a billionaire like landing on a moving ship.

- [Lynn] Thanks so much, Scott.

- [Scott] Thank you.

(upbeat music) - On an expedition cruise, you never know what adventure awaits.

One day the Scenic Eclipse's discovery team advised us that the ship had positioned itself to let guests walk right off the ship onto ice.

Here we are.

(laughs) So it looks like we're walking on the shore, but we're not.

- No, exactly.

In fact, what we're walking on right now is tens of meters of the ocean beneath us, and on top of that, a thin layer of ice is what we're actually standing on top of.

- A thin layer of ice?

They didn't tell me that.

(laughs) - It's thick enough for us, that's for sure.

- So this is what's called fast ice.

- Yes, so fast ice is actually ice that is fastened to the shore.

So if we look out this way, we see that it's actually made fast against the shore over that way, and we're walking on ice that's connected right on up to James Ross Island behind us.

- [Lynn] Oh, look, look, look!

Who's coming to see us?

- [Helen] We made a friend.

- [Lynn] And what kind of seal is that?

- [Helen] So this is a crabeater seal, which is actually the most numerous right around Antarctica.

It's tricky to know the population, but around about 30 million around the world.

- [Lynn] He looks big and healthy.

- [Helen] (laughs) Yeah, looks like a good one.

- [Lynn] And he sure doesn't look intimidated by us.

- [Helen] No.

- So fast ice, that's what we were talking about.

- Exactly.

- Fastened to the shore.

- Exactly.

- And why is it so special for us to be able to get out here?

We're saying this is probably the only time this cruise we're going to be able to do that.

- Yeah, so the fast ice forms in wintertime as the surface of the ocean freezes.

So this is actually saltwater that's frozen here.

And as the summer advances, we're at the beginning of summer now, but as it advances, all of this ice will break up.

So you could imagine everything we're standing on now being melted in two or three weeks' time.

- So really this is our only chance to be here.

- Yeah, we get to do this once, maybe twice a year.

That's pretty special.

- Wow, only once or twice a year, and we managed.

Oh, that's so special.

Thank you for calling us and letting us know we could do this.

- [Helen] You're so welcome.

(screen whooshes) - The poster child of Antarctic wildlife must be the penguin.

These comical tuxedoed birds appear to be elegantly monochromatic and always dressed for an occasion.

But our encounters with several of the 18 species of penguins during our voyage on the Scenic Eclipse showed us just how vibrant and different they can be.

Scenic's bird experts pointed out unique markings like white circles around their eyes or red beaks, allowing us to start distinguishing between them ourselves, and even at a responsible distance away from these wild creatures, it's an all-sensory experience.

I didn't expect this much noise.

(penguins squawking) And how they're huddled together on these rocky ledges nesting in stones and on this incredibly steep hill exposed to winds.

What's really been brought home to me today here is not only how beautiful, but how precarious life in Antarctica really is.

That's a lesson that's reinforced when the ship's discovery team organized a rare feat of expedition logistics, heli-tours to a whole colony of emperor penguins, the largest and rarest penguins.

(penguin squawking) Most visitors on cruise ships to Antarctica rarely even see a single one.

Emperor penguins with their great size, colorful, sunny markings and adorable fluffy gray chicks live their entire lives on sheets of ice.

They may be the only birds in the world that never touch land, making emperor penguins the most vulnerable to shrinking quantities of ice in Antarctica.

(chick chirping) (upbeat music) There's something about getting right down at water level with no engine sounds in a kayak that really helps to connect with this environment.

- [Laurie] Let our adventure begin.

Oh, do you know which ones they are?

- [Lynn] Oh, oh, red beaks, gentoo?

- [Laurie] Correct.

- Oh, yay.

- Well done.

- [Lynn] Well, I didn't realize there'd be a test.

(both laughing) - [Laurie] The gentoo penguin is the third biggest.

When they go swimming and diving, they can lower their heart rate to 12 beats per minute.

- [Lynn] Oh!

- [Laurie] Oh, something else quite funny about the gentoos, they're a lot more quiet compared to the chinstrap and the adelies.

- [Lynn] Right.

- [Laurie] That is the thing that struck me is how noisy penguins are.

- [Lynn] Yeah, and these ones are more calm.

And that's the nice thing about kayaking is that you hear that noise, you hear the sounds.

- [Laurie] You really become one with nature in the kayak, isn't it?

- Yes.

Oh, hello penguin.

- [Laurie] Little penguin, come and pop to say hi to us.

I love the look of those penguins now up on their rock with their little flippers spread out.

(calm music) - [Lynn] And I love the sound of the ice, not just when we're hitting it, but the crackling of it.

- [Laurie] The cracking is spectacular.

Sounds like, do you remember as a kid eating that popping candy?

(laughs) - [Lynn] That's right.

So fun.

It's also a pleasure being out on the water when the air is so clean and clear.

- [Laurie] So crisp.

- You feel like you've doubled your activity because the air is so fresh in your lungs.

- [Laurie] Gosh, these colors are- - [Lynn] Ooh, look at the layers in that.

- [Laurie] Whoa!

- [Lynn] Oh, that's beautiful.

- [Laurie] So many wow moments.

(laughs) Look at this on your right here.

- I know, incredible, isn't it?

Almost like an art gallery.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- Lynn, have you ever tasted the water in Antarctica?

- No, I haven't.

Am I allowed to?

- Yeah.

- Okay!

Like so, just?

- Yes, that'll do it, and just have a little taste.

- Wow.

- It's salty.

- It's very salty.

It's an ocean, isn't it?

- It's salty.

- Very salty.

- But I think you can, that's not something many people have done.

- No, almost nobody.

Thank you.

(laughs) (screen whooshes) Here's something else that almost no one has ever done, set foot on the Antarctic mainland.

The Scenic Eclipse's discovery team helps put that feat into perspective with a ceremonial flag planting.

So we've made our continental landing, as you can see, the flag of Antarctica.

We'll plant it right here symbolically.

And so we're on the continent of Antarctica.

So far we've just been on islands, and now here we are, our feet actually touching the ground of mainland Antarctica.

That's one small step ashore for a giant life achievement.

(screen whooshes) Every in day Antarctica gives us a new experience and another expedition milestone to celebrate.

One of our own team was celebrating a milestone during our sailing, and the team on the Scenic Eclipse helped us to mark it with a surprise party on the terrace of my suite.

(glasses clink) The Antarctic backdrop will make these images the standout birthday photos of a lifetime.

(upbeat music) In Antarctica, there's ice everywhere, but as we're learning, so many different kinds, textures, even colors of ice.

The Scenic Eclipse is a polar-class 6-rated cruise ship.

That means it's engineered and equipped to handle contact with first-year ice, but it takes more than a ship's hardware to safely navigate polar seas.

It also has to be in the right hands.

Let's talk about ice.

We've seen a lot of ice.

And even though the ship has an ice-class hull, it's obviously not really the best thing for ships and ice to come together too much.

- The ice navigation, I always compare to the playing, start playing arcade games.

You know, you come to level one, it's harder.

Then level one becomes easy, and you go to level two.

It's experience, and this kind of ship, which goes to the Antarctic or Arctica, you need to have at least two advanced certified officers on the bridge.

So must be a captain and must be somebody else.

- And you've worked together for a long time.

- [Maja] So we started this ship in 2018.

- [Lynn] Do you like sailing in Antarctica?

This ship goes all over the world.

Do you like to sail here?

- Everybody's joking with me that this is the place that I would like to stay, and, but yes, you really need to love to sail in Antarctica, but it's not easy.

- [Radomir] As strong as winds you have then combination with ice is quite hard.

And then it's a hard, hard, hard job to achieve what you wanna do.

- And you have so many things that you can't control.

So loving the sailing here is crucial part of being successful.

- So what do you love about it?

You just listed all the things that could go wrong.

- Yes.

(group laughing) - The challenge.

The challenge.

- The challenge, yes.

So the thing that I love the most and in my opinion is different than for the rest of the sailing in the rest of the world is you need to pay, still to this day, you need to pay attention to every single detail.

So how the cloud moves, how the ice moves, how the current moves, everything is important.

- What Maja wanted to say, I believe, this is lost in the rest, because you have pilot, for pilot, for everything you're scheduled.

Everything is timed.

Here, it's you, your team, and the nature.

- And also you clearly have a great team and you enjoy each other's company, and there's lots of laughter every time we're up here on the bridge.

- [Radomir] You must have a team.

You cannot do Antarctica yourself.

- Do you like having an open bridge policy- - Yes.

- that guests can just come in anytime?

- Everybody's a little bit shy until we start recognizing each other, and then we even laugh and joke with guests.

They ask actually how to apply.

So yeah, we do love it.

We do love it because we interact with guests, they get to know us, we get to know them, and then you have good, good, relaxed, really relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere.

Antarctica is beautiful, simple, simple.

(screen whooshes) - There is one color you might not associate with cruising in Antarctica, green.

But even after two weeks at sea, fresh food continues to appear on our plates in the Scenic Eclipse's restaurants.

It's a testament to the logistics behind the scenes, but we also discovered a little secret about how the ship's chefs get fresh greens to work with even at the ends of the Earth.

- Welcome to Epicure and our cooking classes today.

So we're gonna show you some interesting things, and we have prepared for lots of ingredients.

We're going to cook Argentinian meat.

- And can we just talk about for a moment the fact that we have herbs growing right here.

- That's our herbs.

They came from the hydroponic cabinets.

- [Lynn] So having your own hydroponic herb garden allows you to have fresh herbs every day, even on long voyages in Antarctica.

- [Alexander] Yes, you're right.

- What herbs are we putting in our chimichurri sauce?

- Chimichurri sauce normally is content of parsley and oregano, but today we kind of doing our way, so we're adding coriander, parsley, little bit of from hydroponic cabinet is a nasturtium leaf, so they're quite peppery.

- These nasturtiums came from here, came from this.

- [Alexander] Taste like a bit like wasabi.

- [Lynn] Yeah!

While I went to work with the mortar and pestle on the fresh herbs out of the hydroponic cabinets, Chef Alex worked the grill to make a dish that comes as close to local cuisine as you can get in Antarctica.

At least it comes from the country closest to it.

- And also I chose Argentinian Cabernet Franc, which has been mature in a French cask for 18 months with vanilla note.

- Oh!

- Which will complement our meat, so cheers!

- Cheers.

(glasses clink) (bright music) - Hmm, I think that's delicious.

- Amazing.

- Mm-hmm.

- The beef is tender.

You have acidity, spiciness.

Plus the wine, Argentinian wine and a steak and chimichurri, it does the trick.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Bon appetit.

(upbeat music) Maybe the biggest surprise of this cruise for me was how much color there is under the surface of the water in Antarctica.

So few people ever get the privilege of on the waters of the Antarctic.

And today we're actually going to be able to take a peek of what's under the surface, and there we go.

The Scenic Eclipse is equipped with a six-passenger submersible designed with swivel seats and bubble-shaped windows for views above your head and even below your feet, The Scenic Neptune can dive over 300 feet beneath the waves.

Just being able to see the underside of some icebergs before we dive is worth being in the submarine today.

So the good news is, even if we see nothing down there, I'm already pretty happy.

(laughs) - [Brendan] All right, we are officially underwater.

- [Lynn] And the color's changing fast.

- Yeah, yeah, as we losing that natural light, it's starting to get a bit darker.

- [Lynn] Is this your favorite place in the world to dive a submarine?

- Oh, Antarctica?

Yeah.

- Yes.

- Out of all the places I've been, this is probably still one of my favorites.

Visibility-wise and the color, it's really surprising.

- Well, already the color's pretty amazing.

- Should be able to start seeing the bottom.

Does look like, can see there?

- [Lynn] How far from the bottom are we?

Five meters-ish?

- [Brendan] Yeah, five meters.

- [Lynn] So five meters of that much visibility, that is pretty great.

- [Brendan] Yeah, I mean, look just over to your shoulder there.

- [Lynn] Oh, oh my, oh, a little star fishy thing.

- That's a brittle star we've got over there, and then we've got over there my favorite, Antarctic sun star.

- [Lynn] Oh, look at how beautiful that is.

- Yeah, almost alien-like.

- It's almost, it does look like we're on another planet, which we are in a sense.

- Yeah.

- We're certainly in a completely alien environment.

Can you see the legs up?

- [Brendan] The sun star, he just had his one leg up there, look.

- There's this a red speckled one coming up.

- [Brendan] Just over there, it's quite big.

Do you see him?

There's a fish.

See the fish?

- [Lynn] Oh, it is, too.

So he hangs out on the floor like that?

- Yeah, the icefish, they don't really swim around like you find them in the tropical waters, at least for what I've seen.

I'll slowly start going back up now.

Every dive is different, even if it's sort of the next one straight after this.

- It is very cool.

- Because just some of the creatures you see, like, I mean, the sun star.

- [Lynn] Yes.

- [Brendan] I think, I still think they're just amazing.

Like, you can't really see them anywhere else in the world.

(screen whooshes) (calm music) - It is such a full sensory experience, especially when you look at what gets people to come, brochures, and you see and you read, but the sounds, the smells, even when you get to some of those penguin colonies, and not just the sounds of the wildlife and what they're doing, but the sound of the silence sometimes I think is really cool.

- It becomes such a multi-sensory experience that when you're on the ship and sailing and when you are on land, there's just, you know, your senses are assailed.

You don't necessarily think of that, especially for Antarctica.

- It has a bit of a reputation for being sterile, I think, yeah, but you know, and it's one of the great things about coming to a place like this and removing yourself so far from our normal civilized world is that if you open your mind to it, you can really just immerse yourself in the moment, be present, and I think it's really good for the soul, you know?

- And rediscovering our connection to Earth that our ancestors had, and you know, we seem to have lost in a lot of ways.

- We've always had that inside of us, but we've gotten further and further away from it, I think we can all agree, and coming on a trip like this really helps you reconnect with that.

And that's one of the things I really love about bringing people here is that if we can help to reestablish that connection, hopefully they can take that home with them and then be a little more in tune, kinda reset themselves, you know?

(calm music) (screen whooshes) - Until next time on "World's Greatest Cruises," wishing you fair winds and following seas.

(bright music) (screen whooshes) More information about "World's Greatest Cruises" and the ship and ports of call featured in today's program on our website at www.worldsgreatestcruises.com.

"World's Greatest Cruises" is made possible in part by the JERNE community of travel advisors: local business owners with experience cruising and planning cruises.

More information at JERNE.COM/CRUISE Next time on "World's Greatest Cruises," we are living a legend, sailing a transatlantic crossing on the fabled Queen Mary 2 from New York to England, a whole week at sea with no ports of call, celebrating the line's over 180 years of British maritime heritage and traditions, including a visit to the only kennels at sea.

And we put our iconic crossing into perspective in London at the only studio in the world handmaking globes.