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Condé Nast Traveler picks
 Adventure Cruising
Any cruise can be an adventure. Just ask someone who met his or her future spouse aboard a Disney ship. But if your idea of adventure is to visit some of the wildest, most inaccessible places on the planet, secure in the knowledge that you will be able to end each day with a hot shower and a choice of wines, you are looking for an adventure, or expedition, cruise.
You’ll find them in just about every watery part of the world that’s not easy to visit in any other way: The fjords of Patagonian Chile, the desert coast of North Africa, the glacial bays of Greenland, the remote coral atolls of the South Pacific. But the most popular adventure destinations, primarily because of the uniqueness of their wildlife, are the Galápagos, Baja California, Alaska, the Arctic, and Antarctica, the latter appealing especially to travelers who are happy to know that onboard entertainment will be limited to such activities as a demonstration of who can most walk like a penguin. (The secret, experienced Antarctica hands will tell you, is to keep your elbows at your hips and your steps baby-sized.) Adventure cruises are often categorized as soft or hard. But they could just as easily be labeled warm and cold, as typically the only real difference is that the colder latitudes present more challenging conditions (during icy shore landings, for instance) and a willingness by passengers to accept a little more discomfort (as when the weather kicks up a bit). No matter what the degree of adventure, though, it will not extend to having to share your toothbrush holder with strangers. Practically all adventure ships have private cabins—often snug, it’s true, by cruise ship standards, but each with its own bathroom and usually air-conditioning and an in-room video system, too. The ships are of all types, most having started life as something else: a North Sea trawler, a Soviet research vessel, a government-owned icebreaker (one nuclear powered and capable of crunching its way to the North Pole). Some have specially strengthened hulls for navigating in ice; others have the graceful lines of a luxury yacht. Yet one characteristic they all share is their relatively small size. Seldom do they carry more than 200 passengers, and sometimes as few as a dozen. An adventure ship’s compactness means you won’t be able to play miniature golf on deck or stroll a glassed-in atrium that looks like the Mall of America. But it also means you’ll be able to watch the captain maneuver into snug coves and village harbors that would keep most cruise ships at a horizon’s distance. And when you settle into the ship’s lounge after dinner, with a story to tell about your day’s adventures, everybody else on board—whose names, after two or three evenings, you will know—will be able to hear it firsthand. The majority of the storytelling, however, will be done by the expedition staff, who on virtually all adventure cruises are naturalists and other experts with an intimate knowledge of the area you’re visiting, and who are on board to share their expertise with you—whether by pointing out the stars of the Southern Hemisphere or advising you on what to do if confronted by a polar bear. (Hint: Unless you’re faster than the rest of the passengers, don’t run.) Learning about the area you visit is the focus of any adventure cruise, so school will definitely be in session. But that does not mean adventure cruise passengers have less fun than passengers on the bigger ships. After all, few cruise activities are more exciting than bouncing across the waves in an inflatable rubber boat—something all expedition ships carry in order to get you up close to whatever you’re studying. It just means that if anybody asks, you can always justify yourself by going on about the educational aspects of your voyage. Another major way adventure cruising differs from a more traditional cruise is that you don’t go for the food. At dinner, you won’t choose first between leg of lamb and Chilean sea bass and then from the dessert cart. But you will have the benefit—since the cruise line does not have to ship in provisions for the multitudes—of experiencing dishes that allow you to sample local flavors and ingredients. There’s nothing like a fresh jalapeño salsa, say, to spice up a Baja California expedition. As you might expect, life aboard an adventure ship is more informal than on the bigger ships. You typically sit where you want at dinner and dress as you like. But do bring a nice outfit: More than one adventure cruise has become the setting for an unforgettable wedding, with all those aboard invited. Truth in Travel is the guiding principle for all content published in Condé Nast Traveler. Other travel publications often accept free travel and accommodations. Condé Nast Traveler does not. It is independent of the travel industry. The magazine always pays its way, and, as far as possible, its correspondents travel anonymously. By doing so, they experience the world—both the good and the bad—as other travelers do, and their reports and recommendations are fair, impartial, and authoritative.
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