Shackleton Route in Luxury

Arrive and set sail down the Beagle Channel watching the mountains of Tierra del Fuego fade into the distance

Enjoy the first of your programme of informative lectures. Spend time on deck spotting albatross and other seabirds and keeping an eye out for whales.

A planned morning landing on the remote New Island, a wildlife and nature reserve. Take a walk across the island to see a rookery of eponymous rockhopper penguins, which share their nesting area on the cliff  with blue-eyed shags. After lunch, make a Zodiac landing at West Point Island and walk across the rolling moorland to see at close quarters nesting colonies of black-browed albatross and rockhopper penguins. Lots more birds to see as well including grass wrens, long-tailed meadowlarks, Falkland thrushes and striated caracaras. Enjoy tea and cakes at the homestead with the island's owners.

Take a guided city tour of this very British port town or just wander along the harbourside and back lanes. The museum is well worth a visit and there are several species of birds to be seen, including southern giant petrels.

Spend time on deck looking for birds and sea mammals, take in expert lectures or enjoy the spa and other on-board facilities.

This island really is the jewel in the crown of the Antarctic region, having a greater concentration of wildlife than anywhere else on earth. The mountain and glacier scenery is also quite spectacular. Wildlife highlights are the massive colonies of king and Macaroni penguins, nesting albatrosses, including the wandering albatross and the beautiful light-mantled sooty, and hundreds of elephant seals. Historical associations with the great explorers started with James Cook in 1774, but the island is best known as the final resting place of Ernest Shackleton, whose grave can be seen at the old whaling settlement of Grytviken.

Spend time on deck looking for birds and sea mammals, take in expert lectures or enjoy the spa and other on-board facilities.

We plan to visit Elephant Island in the South Shetlands. Named because of the large numbers of resident elephant seals, the island is famous as the place where Shackleton's crew spent 135 days, whilst the explorer himself braved the Scotia Sea in the small boat James Caird, before eventual rescue.

We spend these days sailing along the coast of the Peninsula and visiting islands and landing sites, taking in the profusion of wildlife, the magnificent scenery and some scientific settlements or bases. We hope to visit Brown Bluff, Paulet island, Cuverville Island, spectacular Paradise Bay, the British post office at Port Lockroy and volcanic Deception Island. We expect to see myriad birdlife, including snowy sheathbills, blue-eyed shags, kelp gulls, snow, cape and Wilson's storm petrels, skuas and terns, as well as lots of penguins. We will also look out for leopard and other seals as well as whales.

Cross the Drake Passage in the company of albatrosses and petrels as we make our way back to Ushuaia

Arrive and disembark. Transfer to airport.