An Antarctic Expedition: the South Pole & Emperor Penguins Make the most of Antarctica

Your home for tonight is the Silo Hotel, an extraordinary hotel at the top of a restored grain silo. The lower half of the building contains the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. Spend the afternoon wandering through the museum or exploring the art-festooned hotel. If you’re up for it, we can organise a backstage tour of the penguin exhibit at the nearby Two Oceans Aquarium. Otherwise, you can just relax.

Antarctica runs on its own schedule, and the weather gods answer to no one. Which means you may find yourself with a bonus day or two in what we'd humbly argue is the most beautiful city on earth. Hike Lion's Head at sunrise, take the cable car up Table Mountain, swim in the icy Atlantic at Camps Bay, drive the dramatic Cape Peninsula, or do your very important due diligence at one of the Winelands' finest farms. Make the most of your down time before you hit the ice!

Still here? Excellent. Cape Town has a way of making delays feel suspiciously like rewards. If yesterday was mountains and ocean, today might be the V&A Waterfront, a long lunch in the Bo-Kaap, or simply finding a clifftop somewhere and watching the Atlantic do its thing over a bottle of Chenin. Next stop, Antarctica!

A window seat is recommended for your 5.5-hour flight from Cape Town to Antarctica – watch the Southern Ocean and icefields rippling out below, before you touch down on a blue ice runway. Welcome drinks are also out of the ordinary here, with cocktails chilled by 10,000-year-old glacial ice. Check into your camp – either the flagship Whichaway with its cluster of white pods, or Echo Base, which has more of a space travel vibe. In either case, you’ll have a snug, heated, en-suite pod with hot running water – which is pretty incredible.

We’re diving straight into things with a day trip to see the Atka Bay emperor penguin colony. It’s a 2.5-hour flight followed by a PistenBully snow groomer ride – but the reward is a colony of thousands of breeding penguins and their chicks. From December, the chicks will be ditching their fluff for sleek swimming attire and by the end of January, the colony will disperse as the youngsters head off for their first fishing excursions.

Today, your guide will lead you on a hike above the ice sheet to a viewpoint of craggy peaks. Lunch is a Champagne picnic (because why not?), before you continue to a stunning lookout over the mesmerising Antarctic landscape. Spend the rest of the day chilling out and resting before tomorrow’s showstopper.

Today’s the day. Board the Basler aircraft that’ll take you as far south as it’s possible to go. A reminder of how humongous Antarctica is: this journey entails a five-hour flight with a refuel stop at Dixie’s Camp before you continue on to the End of the World.

At the South Pole, you’ll have time to capture the moment, stand where many explorers have only dreamt of standing, and get your passport stamped. Return to Dixie’s for a night spent like a real explorer, surrounded by the stark quietness of the High Plateau.

After breakfast at Dixie’s, you’ll fly back to the main camp – from your plane seat, watch the wilderness of Antarctica sprawl out below you. Back “home”, celebrate the journey with Champagne and a special three-course dinner.

You’ll need a breather after all that excitement – a chance to absorb the sights of the past few days and the fact that you’re now one of only 500 people who make it to the South Pole every year. Listen to tales about record-breaking feats in Antarctic history, take a gentle walk, or – if you’re still raring to go – a guide can lead you abseiling or up a nunatak (an exposed mountain peak above the ice).

An experienced mountain guide will take you along a cliffside trail, with outlooks across the endless icefields. It’s a challenging hike, but you get views of Antarctica that allow you to appreciate the truly vast, wild and unique nature of this continent.

Sip one last glacial-ice cocktail at Wolf’s Fang Ice Bar – a functioning bar carved out of the ice – or watch a film while you wait for your plane to arrive. As you fly back to Cape Town, don’t forget to look out the window and take in the last few scenes of Antarctica.