My husband and I took Viking Octantis’ inaugural sailing on January 24th. When we booked this cruise almost a year ago, we chose the second sailing of this brand new expedition ship, thinking that Viking can work out any kinks that may arise from the first sailing. As it turned out, our sailing became the first to go through the entire itinerary! There was a shorter version called the shakedown cruise that took place the previous week, which was like test run for the new ship. We had 252 passengers onboard, with several staying on from the shakedown cruise.

Viking Octantis’ godmother is Liv Arnesen, who was onboard with us. She was the first woman to ski solo to the South Pole in 1994. Her lecture on how she trained for the grueling 745 miles expedition was very inspiring. We were very glad that we caught the ship’s inaugural sailing after all.

As we anticipated, there were a number of hiccups on this trip (i.e. last minute flight changes, no submarines, no sailing around Cape Horn), but as is typical in life, everything worked out in the end. This is my review of our wonderful cruise to Antarctica onboard the very luxurious Viking Octantis! Read more