From Ushuaia we sail the Beagle Channel in an easterly direction to the Falkland Islands, an archipelago of some 400 islands. We’ll explore West Point Island where Rockhopper penguins, Magellanic penguins and Black-browed albatross nest among tufts of tussock grass. At Volunteer Point we’ll meet brightly-coloured King penguins. History buffs will be keen to explore Port Stanley – the smallest and most isolated capital city in the world.

In the company of the great Wandering albatross we navigate eastward until the spectacular ice-crowned mountains of South Georgia appear on the horizon. Our first landfall is the abandoned whaling station at Grytviken, where we visit the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton, one of the greatest Antarctic explorers.

In the following days we thread our way through the magical fjords and bays of this South Atlantic ‘Ark’. As the only speck of land for many hundreds of miles, South Georgia is one of the planet’s most astonishing wildlife havens. A sea of 100,000 colourful King penguins crowds the beaches at Salisbury Plain against a backdrop of towering snow-covered mountains. Another 75,000 nest at the Bay of Isles. South Georgia is also home to mind-boggling numbers of Elephant and Fur seals, Macaroni penguins and important populations of albatross.

Crossing the Scotia Sea we enter a magical world of icebergs and ice-covered mountains as we reach the South Shetlands and the bays and channels of the Antarctic Peninsula. We’ll view Adelie, Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins at close range. We enter the flooded caldera of Deception Island surrounded by snow-capped peaks, where we explore an abandoned whaling station and visit Half Moon Island.

‘Growler’ icebergs, which calve from glaciers, erode into natural ice sculptures, while the sheer-sided, flat-topped ‘tabular’ bergs, which break from the thick ice shelves, are numbing in scale.

At Paradise Bay, dotted with spectacular icebergs that seem to reflect every colour of the rainbow, we observe Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins. Sailing through the narrow Errera Channel, glacial walls rise high on both sides, leading to an awesome archipelago of icy islands, harbouring penguin rookeries, Elephant seals and myriad seabirds