Antarctica Unlocked

1,000 departures across 14 operators and 39 ships

Cruises visiting South Sandwich Islands

13 upcoming Antarctic expeditions with South Sandwich Islands on the route, from $10,700 per person.

The South Sandwich Islands are an active volcanic arc in the far Scotia Sea that almost no itinerary reaches — landing here is a genuine rarity even among expedition staff. Steaming craters rise straight from some of the wildest seas on the planet.

Zavodovski Island hosts one of Earth's largest penguin colonies: over a million chinstraps nesting on the warm flanks of a live volcano.

Wildlife you can spot here

Wildlife

Macaroni Penguin

Look for the shaggy yellow eyebrows: this stocky, crested penguin breeds in dense, noisy colonies across the Southern Ocean. It's the most numerous penguin species on Earth, though its numbers have been falling since the 1970s.

Wildlife

Antarctic Fur Seal

A small, quick-moving seal named almost by accident after the German ship that first collected it near Kerguelen, not for the continent it's rarely seen on. Despite the name, most encounters happen on subantarctic beaches, not the Antarctic mainland.

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