Antarctica · The Geographic South Pole
The most exclusive itinerary in the Martins portfolio. Eight days to the bottom of the world — and back — with total privacy and without precedent.
About This Expedition
“There are fewer than one hundred people alive at this moment who have stood at the Geographic South Pole. This is how you join that number.”
This eight-day private expedition — the most exclusive itinerary in the Martins Travel portfolio — is not travel in any conventional sense. It is the deliberate pursuit of the most extreme, the most magnificent, and the most solitary experience the planet can offer any human being.
Departing from Cape Town via private charter, landing at the Wolf's Fang blue-ice runway in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, progressing by private traverse to 90° South — the Geographic South Pole — and returning through a sky that performs colours without names. Seven thousand people have stood at 90° South in all of recorded human history. Tonight, that group is smaller than a full train carriage. Within a decade, the permits to reach the Pole by private traverse will almost certainly be reduced further.
This journey is available to a maximum of eight guests per season. Due to logistical complexity, we recommend enquiring at minimum eighteen months in advance.
What Is Included
Day by Day
Every day has been sequenced to create a natural rhythm — arriving rested, departing enriched, and never once conscious of the machinery moving beneath you.
“The best journeys are felt in the body before they are understood by the mind.”
Cape Town, South Africa
The journey's prologue is, fittingly, extraordinary in its own right. The Silo Hotel — converted from the grain silo complex of the V&A Waterfront, its rooms distinguished by six-storey-high pillow windows — is the finest hotel in Africa's most beautiful city. Arrival by private transfer from the airport. An afternoon at leisure: the V&A Waterfront, Boulders Beach and its penguin colony by private car, or simply the hotel's rooftop pool and the panorama of Table Mountain turning orange in the late light. A private sunset sail around the Cape Peninsula on a chartered 50-foot yacht, rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the precise moment the sun breaks the horizon. Dinner at La Colombe, reserved — the tasting menu that has received more international recognition than any other South African restaurant in the past decade.
The Silo Hotel, Cape TownCharter Flight to Antarctica
The private charter departs Cape Town's international terminal — from a dedicated private aviation suite — at 3am, the city lights below, the Southern Ocean ahead. The flight crosses 4,500 kilometres of open sea. No land. No signal. The polar atmosphere changes two hours out: the sky takes on a quality of light found nowhere else on earth — flatter, more absolute, as if colour itself has been slightly recalibrated. Descent into the Wolf's Fang runway in Queen Maud Land begins over mountains of black rock and white glacier. The blue-ice runway — maintained by White Desert's polar team — receives the aircraft with a sound like no other landing surface. The cold hits immediately: 25 degrees below zero, in still air that carries no sound whatsoever. Your sleeping pod is visible from the runway. The silence is extraordinary.
White Desert Echo Camp, Queen Maud LandQueen Maud Land, Antarctica
White Desert's Echo Camp is 400 kilometres from the nearest permanent human settlement. Six geodesic sleep pods arranged in a crescent on the polar ice sheet, each one heated, each one private, each one offering through its porthole window a view of absolutely nothing — ice, sky, and the occasional sweep of an aurora australis that has no rival anywhere on earth. Day 3: private snowmobile expeditions to the Fenristunga ice formations — structures of prehistoric scale, carved by polar winds over ten thousand years, blue-white and silent and entirely unpeopled. Day 4: your guide, who has wintered in Antarctica three times, leads a ski traverse to a subglacial lake entrance that appears nowhere in any travel literature. Day 5 night: a single overnight pod on the open polar plateau, with no structure visible in any direction, under the aurora — the greatest light show in the solar system, experienced by a handful of people on the planet each year.
White Desert Echo Camp, AntarcticaThe Geographic South Pole — 90°S
The traverse and aircraft transfer to 90° South takes the better part of a day, passing over a landscape that grows whiter and more featureless with every kilometre — the polar plateau at its most absolute. The South Pole Research Station — a permanent American facility operated by the National Science Foundation — appears on the horizon like a craft from another world, its silver dome rising from a landscape of perfect, unbroken white. Your party approaches the Ceremonial South Pole marker on foot in silence. A ceremony is conducted: a reading, a photograph, a private toast with Armand de Brignac champagne that has been transported specifically for this moment. Fewer than 7,000 human beings in all of recorded history have stood on this spot. Tonight you are eight of them. The following morning: sunrise from 90° South — every direction north, the sun circling overhead without setting, the shadow of your figure pointing south, then east, then north, then west, all within an hour.
South Pole Research Camp AccommodationReturn to Cape Town
The return charter crosses the polar circle at sunset — an event that, at these latitudes, takes two hours and involves a display of colour without precedent in any traveller's experience. The sky does not simply turn red; it cycles through shades that have no names in any language, the ice below reflecting each one in a continuous chromatic conversation. The aircraft returns to Cape Town in the early hours. The Silo Hotel receives you again. There is a long bath. A slow breakfast. The Test Kitchen for a final dinner, reserved — the city outside the windows exactly as you left it, but the traveller inside it entirely altered. That is, ultimately, what this journey is for.
The Silo Hotel, Cape TownWhere You Will Stay
Signature Property · Cape Town
V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
The finest hotel in Africa's most beautiful city. Twenty-eight rooms in a converted grain silo, each with pillow windows that offer unimpeded views of Table Mountain, the harbour, and the Atlantic. The rooftop pool is the finest in Cape Town.
Signature Property · Antarctica
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
The most remote luxury camp on earth. Six geodesic pods on the polar plateau, 400km from the nearest settlement. Heated, private, and positioned on one of the most extraordinary landscapes any human being will ever see. Fully staffed. Completely isolated.
Exclusive Access · 90° South
90°S, Antarctica
Not a property. A coordinate. The only point on earth where all directions are north, where the sun circles overhead without setting, and where fewer than 7,000 human beings in all of recorded history have ever stood. Martins Travel arranges access for a maximum of eight guests per season.
Private Enquiry
This itinerary is a point of departure, not a fixed schedule. We will adapt every element to your preferences, your travel party, and the season of travel. Submit your details and a Martins Travel advisor will respond personally within 24 hours.