Luxury & Adventure meet in Antarctica
- Type: Lodges & Villas
- Setting: Desert
“We were stuck in a little tent waiting out a storm”… this is the story of how the first and only unique Luxury Camp in Antarctica has slowly become a reality. Tours to White Desert Antarctica start with a highly exclusive private jet trip on Gulfstream aircraft from Cape Town, South Africa, to Wolf's Fang, the only private runway in Antarctica, to one of the most remote camps on earth, to another world. After a five-hour flight across the Southern, Ocean guests are transferred from the airstrip to stay at White Desert’s Whichaway Camp, a camp like no other and one and only luxury camp in Antarctica. White Desert’s Whichaway Camp, established in 2010, is the company’s luxury camp in East Antarctica’s Schirmacher Hills, a unique camp, for a carbon-neutral experience that is as luxurious as it is adventurous. The camp with seven luxurious eco-friendly pods has won the World Travel Awards five times and is designed to have a minimal environmental footprint. Besides sleeping pods, the camp includes communal shower pods, a kitchen, and three centralized pods that make up the reception, lounge, and dining room serving award-winning chef-prepared meals. Guests can choose to do as much or as little as they desire, including gentle treks to ice tunnels, visit stunning giant ice waves towards the coast, or visit the penguin colony, South Pole, or nearby science bases. Being the only company in the world to fly business jets to Antarctica, White Desert's emphasis has always been on luxury and safety. Trips to Antarctica include return flights from Cape Town on a White Desert Gulfstream private jet, accommodation, food and drinks (including all alcohol) in Antarctica, guiding fees, use of certain items of polar clothing, and payment by the White Desert of a “Carbon Tax” for offsetting emissions created by all logistics associated with Antarctic travel. Tours start at $68.500 from November till mid-February.
All inclusive luxury camp
Airport flight & 4x4 transfer
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COMMUNAL PODS:
- Separate pods with hot showers
- Reception, Lounge and Dining pod
ACTIVITIES:
- Ice tunnels; fintess rating: 2*
- Nunatak climb; fitness rating: 3*
- Mighty abseil; fitness rating: 2*
- Ice climbing; fitness rating: 4*
- Rock climbing: fitness rating: 3*
- Rope walk: fitness rating: 2*
- 4x4 excursions: fitness rating: 1*
- Adventurers picnic: fitness rating: 1*
- Science bases: fitness rating: 1*
- Zip line: fitness rating: 3*
- Polar talks: fitness rating: 1*
AVAILABLE TOURS OFFERED:
- Trip EARLY EMPERORS | from 5 days | from $68,000 per person
- Trip SOUTH POLE AND EMPERORS |from 7 days | $105,000 per person
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This was an outstanding experience - although there will not be many (if any) reviews of it on Tripadvisor since White Desert take less than 100 people a year physically to the South Pole and only one other company does anything like that that (from Union Glacier). It also costs US$84,000 before you start buying all the gear and your flights to Cape Town so the groups are a maximum of 12 people. But starting from Cape Town you fly 5-6 hours to Antarctica on a 14 seat Gulfstream 550, landing at ... This was an outstanding experience - although there will not be many (if any) reviews of it on Tripadvisor since White Desert take less than 100 people a year physically to the South Pole and only one other company does anything like that that (from Union Glacier). It also costs US$84,000 before you start buying all the gear and your flights to Cape Town so the groups are a maximum of 12 people. But starting from Cape Town you fly 5-6 hours to Antarctica on a 14 seat Gulfstream 550, landing at Wolf's Fang ice runway and changing to a Basler DC3 on skis to fly to the campsite, which is a series of 6 accommodation pods, eating and cooking pods and a shower pod set on the rocky Schoemaker Oasis near the coast of Antarctica. Perpetual daylight, excellent food, comfortable fibreglass sleeping pods (that rock if the wind gets strong) and outstandingly capable and knowledgeable guides. We flew to Atka Bay to see the Emperor Penguins, flew 8 hours to the South Pole in the DC3 (and had to airdrop supplies from the back of the plane to a group of stranded icetrucks on the way) and back again the next day. We camped for one night in small tents on the Antarctic Plateau and dined on rehydrated food (none of that is as bad as it sounds, it was challenging but an adventure). Iceclimbing, glacier walks, lunch on the ice, walking through ice caves, visiting the Amundsen-Scott research station all added to the experience as did the overnight near the South Pole itself where the nearest people (apart from the research station at the Pole) were 400 miles away. Is it for everyone? You have to have quite an adventurous spirit (it was -50C at the Pole), obviously plenty of money and an ability to plan about 15 months ahead. But it is still the most unusual and intrepid thing that we've done on the planet. There's no absolute guarantee that you'll get to the Pole - if the weather is bad at the base camp, at the refuelling station or at the South Pole itself, the plane can't fly; we heard that maybe 20% of flights can't make it but you're there for 9 days so there ought to be more than one opportunity to try unless the weather is really bad.