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| Expedition Cruising: Essentials |
 1. Time of year. Expedition cruises are often seasonal depending on weather conditions, animal migration, ice flows or similar. Bookings may need to be made up to 18 months in advance. It is important to be flexible with dates as weather or unforeseen conditions can delay or alter departure or finishing dates.
2. Single travel. To get a twin room or a cabin for sole use specify this at the time of booking. However a single supplement may be charged additional. If traveling alone do note the great thing about expedition cruising is that many of the travelers may be independent photographers, researchers or like minded people and will have similar interests making it easy to communicate.
3. Communication. The majority of expedition boats provides some form of communication via a satellite phone or may even have Internet, although connections can be unreliable. Also it is possible to make calls in reach port.
4. Credit cards and currency. Expedition ships will make port in foreign places. The ship itself might be able to provide a small amount of local currency but it’s much better to take cash to change. If it's a small port there may not be money-changing facilities. All services and products purchased onboard can usually be paid for by cash, check or credit card.
5. Entertainment. Usually expedition ships have a bar, lounge, a small library stocked with books about the destination and its natural features and frequent talks by the ship's resident experts about what to expect to see during the trip.
6. Costs. Expedition cruises are not cheap. In general they last from one to three weeks and can cost around $4000 – 5000 per person or more, especially Antarctic cruises. However the price is usually all inclusive of lectures and observations aboard, meals, shore trips and excursions and airport transfers.
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