Nobody winds up here by accident.
Least of all you.
Antarctica isn’t a place you wander into. It takes intent, long days of travel and a significant financial commitment.
When friends who have been there tell you it’s worth it, believe them.
The same is true of this page. Chances are you found me the way most people do, on a recommendation from someone you trust.
Since you already know you want to go to Antarctica, let’s get to the fun stuff: helping to make sure your only trip to Antarctica is the right one for you.
There are two ways I usually work, and they’re a bit different than the traditional travel agent model.
PRIVATE CONSULTATION
You book my time for a set fee. We work through the whole research and decision process together: which ship, which route, when to go, and resolving the trade-offs. We can check live availability and talk through the best method (and timing) for booking.
Then you take it from there. You’re welcome to book on your own, through the agent you already use, or with a polar specialist (I can recommend the best of the best.) I don’t earn a commission on your trip, so the only thing I'm pointing you toward is the one voyage that fits, with true objectivity.
The process can be as simple as a single focused conversation, or an extended engagement that allows you to enjoy all of the planning without the pressure. Either way, you arrive with questions and you leave with one solid answer that you won’t second-guess.
“In a world of sales peacocks, Jud was our wise owl.”
– Merryll & Dana, Boston, MA
GROUP TRAVEL
Organizing a group of 12 or more people to travel to Antarctica requires professional guidance. I work with you to find the operator whose ship, style, and price structure suit the group, hold the dates, manage the deposits and the inevitable reshuffles, and keep everyone pointed the same way across what is often a one or two year horizon. Size has its privileges, and I know how to secure complimentary berths, private tables at dinner, and other features that a self-booking will never get.
If you’re organizing something with a reason behind it: an alumni association, a photography club, or other unique group, I can also help promote it inside your organization. I work with you from crafting the first email to the final presentations that turn interest into deposits.
I take on only a couple of group projects at any given time so each one gets the attention you deserve.
“We felt like students taking Antarctica 101. Professor Jud knows his stuff and always made sure we understood the details.”
– Jim & Cheryl, Santa Fe, NM
WHY I CHOSE THIS MODEL: People sometimes ask why I choose to work this way, on a fee, when the industry runs on commission. The short version is that I believe in the value of independent advice and guidance. As someone who sold hundreds of trips on commission in the past, I know that bias, incentives and other pressures influence the commission-based approach, consciously or unconsciously, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. As a traveler, feeling confident in your choice of voyage and your path forward is a valuable assurance for a trip of this scale.
If you prefer the free advice in exchange for commission approach, please e-mail me. I’m friends with some excellent polar agents who are committed to working in their clients best interests, while still working on commission. I’ll personally connect you with the best of the best who will take great care of you.
MY STORY
Remember when I told you nobody winds up in Antarctica by accident? I may be the exception.
My career in Antarctica travel is my second act, but it wasn’t the job I was looking for. I really wanted to work in the Arctic.
The iron in my blood points north. My great-grandfather was a sailmaker in New Brunswick who cut cloth for Arctic expeditions and the Labrador coastal service. I share DNA with Newfoundland’s Captain Bob Bartlett, who walked and dog-sledded across the ice to Russia to fetch help for a stranded crew, and who captained one of Peary’s runs at the North Pole. So when I set out to break into polar travel, the Arctic was the plan.
The agency I was courting back in 2018 (the busiest and best in the polar world at the time) had a different idea. Their Antarctica business was growing quickly and they were looking to build a sales team in the US. They knew that the only way to truly sell Antarctica was to have experienced it first-hand, so their offer came with a catch I’ve never stopped being grateful for: could I be on a ship heading south in three weeks?
I had done no research. I knew almost nothing about the place I’d somehow talked my way toward. I showed up on the pier in Ushuaia with no idea of how much I didn’t yet know. Which was probably for the best. I got to experience Antarctica as traveler, not an agent, and the magic of that first voyage is something that will stay with me forever. At one particular moment, standing in the stillness above Neko Harbour surrounded by the most surreal maritime-alpine environment, I just felt like this was exactly where I was meant to be. All of the photos on this page are from that trip.
Then the hard work began. To advise well, I had to learn the whole field: the capacity and cabins and character of every ship, the itineraries, the landing sites on the Peninsula and South Georgia, the small details a client might ask about at any moment. I inspected hotels in Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, Santiago, and Punta Arenas, drove and flew across Patagonia, and got aboard as many ships as a person reasonably could (currently 18 and counting.) After sailing across the Drake Passage and feeling every mile of it, I then had the chance to fly across to meet a ship in the South Shetlands. Most people will only ever do one or the other, so it’s a privilege to be able to make a first-hand comparison. This has been an education you can’t buy at any price. I established my own travel agency, Pandrake Partners, in 2022 and I've kept paying into this education every season since, because the fleet keeps changing and so do the options.
What pulls at me now is less the place itself than the machinery behind it. I’m fascinated by the way this unique industry works. I follow the fleet the way some people follow a sport: why a ship is configured the way it is, which operator does what well, what's coming online and what it means for the people I advise. (In fact, I have a whole website devoted to this over at Antarctica Confidential.)
But the part I like best is smaller, and it has your name on it.
Everyone arrives with a different knot to untie: the dates that won’t move, the budget that has limits, the one traveler in the party who’s uneasy about the Drake, and myriad other things you don’t know to ask about.
Finding the voyage where all of it fits is the work I find most satisfying. It’s the same satisfaction I took from my first career, advising non-profit organizations. It was good work, the kind where you’re paid to help people think clearly rather than to sell them anything. It was all about solving a hard problem for someone who needed it solved.
I built that life on the simple idea that good thinking ought to be put to good use. This is the same idea, aimed at a smaller and more personal question: which trip to Antarctica is best for you, and why?
If that’s the kind of help you’re after, write to me. A line or two about what you’re planning is plenty to start.
Jud Bartlett is IATAN-accredited Antarctica travel specialist who lives in the Champlain Valley along the border of Vermont and New York. He holds a BA in Geography and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College and an MBA in Leadership from Franklin Pierce University. Before Antarctica, he founded Square Spot Design, a firm he later sold to its employees and whose motto, “Creative thinking for the greater good,” he never entirely left behind. He has served on a number of non-profit boards and currently is a trustee of the Polar Citizen Science Collective, which connects scientists with polar expedition ships to carry out research at both ends of the earth.