Watching thousands of moulting King Penguins lining the meltwater streams from Nordenschild Glacier at St Andrews Bay, South Georgia. Wow!

Life changing

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Cruises were fantastic. We were lucky to visit several sites that are not normally accessible due to weather (Point Wild at Elephant Island and King Haarkon Bay in South Georgia, for example) and cruising provided great wildlife-viewing opportunities when landings weren't feasible.

I can't say enough good things about the Oceanwide expedition team! Our EL, Pippa Low, was fantastic - we only had 1 change in the originally-planned itinerary due to weather and the Plan B was actually even more interesting (to me) than the original plan since it gave us a chance to trace the whole of Shackleton's amazing rescue route in reverse. All the team members were amazingly helpful, knowledgeable and sociable. It was very obvious that this team really knew what they were doing and got us prime landing sites each day when other following expeditions were having problems finding suitable places to take their guests (based on stories from folks on other ships).

Hondius was better than I had anticipated. It's a pretty compact ship but it's really comfortable. Our cabin was very much larger than I had expected based on photos. The lounge was spacious and comfortable with good views for days when standing on the deck wasn't preferred due to wind or spray. Food was really excellent (even though our Swoop agent suggested that it would not be gourmet-quality, it was). The hotel management folks were really helpful and all the crew were available to talk. The open bridge was fascinating and, again, offered a great warm, protected space for outdoor viewing when the deck wasn't open (which didn't happen much) or you didn't want to have to put on outdoor clothing. I would definitely choose Hondius for a future trip.

Wow - I knew this would be a spectacular trip but everything about it exceeded my (already high) expectations! Thanks, Swoop, for pointing it in the perfect direction and really making our Antarctic experience something special.

It's a lot less cold than I expected. I took too many clothes for cold weather and forgot that 2/3 of the time you are in a well-heated ship. Look at the number of guests on the ship and, if going to South Georgia, be aware of landing group size limits that may affect how much shore time you get.

The South Georgia ecosystem and the way it has bounced back from almost complete collapse in the whaling/sealing era was actually encouraging to me. I expected to be assailed by bad news regarding climate change (of which there was plenty) but was surprised that I also came away with some positive feelings about the resilience of ecosystems.

I'm very glad that I used Swoop to plan this trip. As I mentioned earlier, there were several factors involved in the choice of a particular expedition that I had no idea were important and using an experienced agent steered us in the right direction. The pre-trip adventure planner site was very helpful as was the webinar.

I was enormously excited and probably rather over-prepared :-) The splendour of the scenery in Antarctica and the enormous amount of wildlife on South Georgia was still breathtaking and even more impressive than any photo could ever convey. I left Antarctica, especially, disappointed in the quality of my photos - they completely fail to convey the scale and grandeur of the place and I'm pretty sure that's not just a reflection of my photography skills.

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