After three busy days in South Georgia, the Silver Endeavour sailed for Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Elephant Island is where Ernest Shackleton’s crew was stranded on a bleak and inhospitable small beach while their captain and five others made a treacherous 17-day, 800-mile journey across the dreaded Drake Passage to South Georgia for help. In the 24-ft (7.3m) open boat James Caird, the 6 men endured Force 9 winds and a near-capsize before finally making landfall at South Georgia.

Our summer trip in the reverse of their route took only three nights, with calm seas in the comfort of a large cruise ship, and it would be difficult to imagine the challenge of making that passage in such a small boat, in heavy weather, as winter neared. It is equally hard to believe that when Shackleton returned to Elephant Island 4.5 months later, all 22 of the stranded crew were alive. On the exposed beach where they had endured now stands a memorial to Chilean captain Luis Pardo, who eventually rescued the crew in the height of winter, in a tugboat ill-suited for the conditions, after several others had failed.

That afternoon we landed at Echo Bay, on the southern tip of Elephant Island. There we viewed gentoo and chinstrap penguin breeding colonies, along with fur seals and many raucous and molting elephant seals, after which the island is named.

From Elephant Island, we continued our exploration of the South Shetland Islands at Yankee Harbour on Greenwich Island, where gentoo penguins raised their chicks beneath rugged cliffs near massive glaciers.

At Portal Point, we stepped foot once again on the Antarctic continent, returning to the dramatic landscape that had so captivated us on our first trip. Snow-covered mountains soared above huge glaciers that regularly deposited large icebergs into the sea. We also sighted several humpback whales swimming in the area.

The scenery in nearby Orne Harbor on the peninsula was even more striking. Here we hiked up a ridge to a chinstrap penguin rookery high above water level. It’s amazing that the birds will nest in such a difficult-to-reach spot, requiring them to regularly trek on their short legs up and down the ridge between their nests and the sea.

Our final stop of the trip was at horseshoe-shaped Deception Island, back in the South Shetland Islands. The near land-locked harbor is entered through Neptune’s Bellows, a narrow channel where stands the distinctive sea stack Pete’s Pillar. We landed first at Pendulum Cove to view what little remains of a Chilean meteorological and volcanological research station, demolished by volcanic eruptions in 1967 and 1969. More than fifty years later, little vegetation yet grows here.

The eruption wasn’t as destructive in Whaler’s Bay, where the substantial ruins of early 20^th-century whaling stations still stand. We walked along the shore through steam forced up by the near-dormant volcano to visit the ruins and walk a small hill for dramatic cliff views to sea. We also spotted a relatively rare leopard seal sunning on the beach.

Back on board the Silver Endeavour, a light snow fell as Jennifer finished the day with her fifth polar plunge. The sheltered waters and steam fissures at Deception Island didn’t seem to improve the water temperature much—it felt as cold as any of the others she’s done.

Rather than take on the notorious “Drake Shake”, we returned to South America by air via Silversea’s “Antarctica Bridge” program where guests instead fly back to Chile. At King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, we boarded a penguin-liveried Antarctic Airways Avro RJ100 for a two-hour flight to Punta Arenes, Chile, where we spent the night before continuing on to Santiago and then home to Seattle. Punta Arenas is a gateway to Patagonia and Antarctica, and we spent a little time exploring the town before an excellent meal over a delicious Chilean red at Restaurante La Yegua Loca.

Overall, we had an excellent trip, particularly in South Georgia. The wildlife was exceptional, especially the King Penguin colony at St. Andrews Bay, and we’d finally reach Shackleton’s grave after several decades of interest. The Falkland Islands’ birdlife was also impressive, and we loved seeing more of the dramatic Antarctic scenery and its unique wildlife. We’d visited Antarctica twice before, once on the National Geographic Endurance and the second time to the geographic South Pole with White Desert, but we’d never been to the South Shetlands Islands or the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Our routes around the Antarctic Penninsula are shown on the interactive map below. Click here for a full-page map.