Ponant L'Austral Cruise Reviews for Luxury to Arctic

The ship has been given a makeover and looks great! The team on board is very attentive. We were able to travel in serenity in a bubble of comfort. The food is of high quality and varied. We enjoyed ourselves from breakfast to dinner. The expedition team accompanied us very well, the guides were all very interesting. They made us discover a multitude of marine species, fabulous birds... ...

We chose the cruise to the Arctic because the ship was supposed to be small. I made a mistake and thought it was 128 passengers. It was 128 cabins. In the arctic and antarctic only 100 passengers can be on shore at any time so ships should be no more than 100 passengers to get the experience. All shore experiences except one were worthless wastes of time. More on that later. We called Ponant a ...

Fabulous trip to some of the most remote and beautiful parts of the world, teeming with wildlife and wonderful autumn colours.. Superbly organised shore trips with excellent and very helpful crew members. We were landed ashore safely in often difficult conditions. A safety perimeter was established and the guides were freely available to provide information about the plant life and animals we saw. ...

We were taken with the promotional video of the animals to be found in Siberia, Russia and Kuril Islands and booked three back to back cruises. L'Austral was the perfect ship to perform all requirements having 10 or more Zodiacs along with 11 Naturalists who were experts in various fields - whales, orcas, lichen, bears, etc. The ship was small enough to enter shallow waters and in some ...

This was almost so good. But yet it wasn't. And I doubt I would ever sail with Ponant again because of this experience. The itinerary was amazing - a 23 night cruise through the Arctic Circle, crossing from Greenland to Alaska via the North West Passage, it's the stuff of adventurous dreams. The expeditions were truly amazing, can you imagine the delight of zodiacs right up to the front ...

The expeditions on this cruise were amazing. The scenery, the wildlife and the excursions onshore in the remote arctic were the stuff of dreams and I would do it all again. But I would do it on a different ship and with a different cruise line. This was expensive (very expensive) and was billed as '5 star luxury' but it was really at the class of the Queen Victoria (Cunard) - ie a good ...

Chosen specifically for the Iceland, Greenland and Northwest Artic passage to Alaska. Excellent itinerary with great shore excursions and expedition excursions. Many great features such as the ship design, 24/7 access to bridge, zodiacs, etc. Had a suite which was great, but a regular cabin was not of sufficient size. The dining, menu, food preparation was very bad, not at all up to ...