Ponant Cruise Reviews for Luxury to South America

This is a journal of our February 27-March 12, 2024, “Exploring the Chilean Fjords” land/expedition package on the Ponant L’Austral. The package includes one night at a 5-star hotel in Buenos Aires, flights and transfers to/from Ushuaia, and 13 nights aboard the L’Austral. We had cruised from Valparaiso to Rio de Janeiro around Cape Horn in 2011 aboard the Star Princess ...

We've talked about an Antarctic cruise for years...we like Ponant, and we are Smithsonian fans, so when the combination came up this seemed a good omen. We were extremely pleased to find superb support, assistance and communications from the Ponant-Smithsonian Journeys representative. She was in touch early and often. We had a couple of glitches and in each case were helped through the ...

Cruised to Antarctica but could not go to South Georgia due to bird flu and birds dying. The alternative given were well planned. It's great to go to the bridge and watch the Captain navigate tricky channels while the passengers are cluelessly enjoying the views. Got to see a whole of feeding frenzy from the water thus attracting tons of birds above, lots of pods of ocras, different species of ...

We booked in The commandant Charcot in 2019 , for summer of 2020 to North Pole , as soon as we had heard about its Polar Class 2 Ice breaking capabilities. However the voyage to 90’N , North Pole got cancelled twice due to COVID pandemic. Finally after experiencing an exceptional Arctic trip on L’Boreal last year in 2022, we booked with Ponant on Le Commandant Charcot for November 2023 for ...

This was our 14th cruise, the second on Ponant, and we sought it out because we are tired of the large ship cruises. Ponant offers expeditionary experiences, rather than the traditional "rest, relax and party" cruise, so we approached our time with that expectation. We were incredibly impressed. The ship is graceful, beautiful and very comfortable. Appointments are sophisticated and of the ...

This cruise was a few years coming because of Covid, cancellations and non-refundable payments. However, it was well worth waiting for. Food, crew, comfort, organisation, helpfulness, friendliness, arrival and departure processes were all excellent. This was an Expedition cruise which meant we had twice-daily expeditions on zodiacs to either explore or land on Antarctica. These expeditions were ...

We are on this cruise now via a Tauck trip. Our room is spilled with sewer gas. We finally figured out that if we run the shower constantly over 24 hours, at a low rate, it keeps the trap from allowing sewer gas into the room. The concentration of sewer gas was really bad, only 2ppm can cause bronchial construction in people with asthma, 10-50ppm you get headaches. Higher concentrations you get ...

Superb Antarctic navigation aboard La Commandant Charcot leaving from Ushuaia through Drakes Passage, tracking west along Antarctica from Marguerite Bay to Cape Adare and then up to Lyttelton, NZ Captain Devorsine & Expedition Leader Kuyper went out of their way to provide an exceptional Antarctic experience including navigation along the Ross Ice Shelf, navigation through ice floes, ...

We wanted to see Maya sites and wanted to try Ponant. We have sailed on Cunard, Celebrity, Oceania, Windstar, Seabourn, Holland America and Viking - 20+ cruises in all, 6 on Seabourn. I would say 80-90 percent of the passengers spoke French as their primary language. We enjoyed that. The officers are French, the staff Indonesian or Filipino. We were rather taken aback to see the captain ...

TRIP REPORT LE BOREAL 11/21-12/7 2022 As a preface, this is exceedingly long because it aims to answer the questions that I had when I was researching this once in a lifetime trip (for most of us) in addition to providing an actual trip report. I found answers to some, but not all, of my questions leading up to this trip, but it required months of me reading literally the internet. So, ...