Let's help you plan
4.9/5 (926 reviews)

There's a beach at Salisbury Plain where you can barely see sand for penguins — several hundred thousand king penguins, to be precise, stretched out in a shuffling, trumpeting, tuxedoed mass that stretches to the mountains behind. That's before you factor in the elephant seals sprawled like giant brown boulders (they belch, they wallow, they occasionally block your path entirely), or the fur seals that reclaimed the beaches so thoroughly after near-extinction in the 1800s that guides now have to plot routes around them. Cooper Bay is the place to head if you want all four penguin species in one landing. Grytviken, the old whaling station turned museum, is where Shackleton is buried, and paying respects at his grave feels oddly fitting after a week spent battling the same Southern Ocean he did. Come November to March for peak breeding season, when the noise (a genuine, ear-filling racket) rivals anything you'll hear on an African savannah. Getting here means days at sea. Nobody said magnificent was convenient.
Get advice and suggestions to make this your perfect trip.
or call us on: +1 (646) 542 0667
Few places on Earth deliver wildlife at this volume. King penguins in their thousands, seals sprawled everywhere you look, and not a fence or ticket queue in sight.
The island is about as off the beaten track as you can get, but skip St Andrews Bay for Cooper Bay, the only landing where all four penguin species turn up at once.
This is a multi-day sea crossing before you even arrive, and landings depend entirely on weather. Pack patience along with your seasickness tablets.
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Why travel with Timbuktu?
We've been crafting one-of-a-kind journeys since 2014 — over 2,500 trips across 40+ countries, each one built from scratch around your interests and dreams.
Our team only recommends places they've slept in, eaten in, and happily keep going back to. Condé Nast Traveler named 11 of them Top Travel Specialists in 2026, and Travel+Leisure made three A-List Advisors.
Travel+Leisure's readers voted us the World's No.1 Tour Operator in 2024 and No.2 in 2025 — the travel industry's biggest readers' award, judged by people who actually travel.
$50 from every booking goes to female empowerment, tech education, and conservation projects across the countries we love. We have donated $78,000 so far – and it's going up!
Your travel specialist is with you the whole way, dreaming up the trip, building the itinerary, checking you in, and answering the 2am question from the other side of the world..
We are rated 4.9 out of 5 from 926 verified Feefo reviews. And these are the words of people who actually went, not us talking about ourselves.