Yeah so, happy new year!! Yay.
Welcome to the most expensive trip of my life. I know people were waiting to see how much all the shenanigans from December cost me, so here it is.
Below is a photo of the budget breakdown I keep in my Excel spreadsheet:
First we booked the cruise.
The most expensive part of this trip is the cruise itself.
We put the deposit down all the way back in March of 2024.
My boss had mentioned a company named Swoop Antarctica that only deals with Antarctica cruises, and I sent them an email inquiry about wanting to head out in December of 2025. They emailed me back SAME DAY and sent me two quotes. There are cheaper cruises, FYI.
Much cheaper.
We opted to go with a company named Seabourn. This cruise line is considered the ‘best ultra-luxury‘ cruise line. Enough said.
Who the fuck do I think I am? ROCKEFELLER?
Here are all the things included in this cruise:
Here are the things not included in the cruise:
When I write my recap, I will go into more detail regarding what we ate, the fancy hotel stay in Buenos Aires, the transport etc. We are here solely to discuss money.
We chose this specific cruise (my bestie and I) because neither of us has ever been on a cruise nor wanted to go on one. But this cruise was the exception, sailing to the one destination that a cruise WOULD be the way to go. We figured for that, the price is worth it. We did see cheaper cruises that have stops in other parts of Argentina and Chile, however, no disembarking IN Antarctica. That just wasn’t good enough for us, we refused to just do a drive-by, or ‘float-by’ I guess.
Touching land in the continent was a non-negotiable and with this cruise we saw that multiple opportunities would be there to do so. The weather in Antarctica can be super dicey and having five days of those chances was very important to us. We also liked the idea of a smaller boutique cruise, as the Seabourn Venture only has 132 rooms.
Alas, this super expensive cruise must be it for us.
The deposit for the cruise was 15% of $9673.00 USD = $1451.00 USD per person ($1957.00 CAD in March 2024)
This was to hold our spots and the remainder of the amount would be due 180 days before the cruise, meaning August 10th, 2025.
Awful part about the trip was that it is in USD and our Canadian dollar literally began going to shit after we booked the cruise. I ended up choosing to take out a line of credit to pay off my balance as soon as possible, because as our dollar dropped in comparison to USD – the more expensive an already expensive trip got.
To give you an exact amount with all the records I kept…..
If I had been able to pay the entire amount of the trip the day it was booked (lol, I wish) in March 2024 then it would have been $9673.00 USD = $13,047.00 CAD.
By the time I took out the line of credit and paid the entire sum off in April 2025 the new total was now $9673.00 USD = $13,858.27 CAD.
That is literally an extra $810.80 CAD!!! Fuckery. I wish I was smart enough to take the line of credit earlier, but I couldn’t have guessed our dollar would fall even more. Lesson learned.
Furthermore, I know the next question would be about paying it with a credit card. Yes, this was an option but if I remember properly there was a 2% extra charge if you did that versus the wire transfer. No thanks.
I have paid off the line of credit in full, duh. This expense was egregious for someone like me who is not rich. I have to emphasize that. If any of you follow me on Instagram, you see me posting my work shifts. I work between my two jobs, seven days a week and also, thankfully, began the Patreon around the time of booking this trip and that helped a lot. Grateful for that.
$13,858.27 CAD is nuts though. I know. Especially for a frugal traveler like myself. Doesn’t really fall in line with my typical travel style and budget.
In addition to the all-inclusive cost – ended up budging and paying for better internet. Now, internet IS included in the package. My best friend and I were able to use one device each, which already was going to be interesting with us both having our phones and laptops on the trip – but we were able to totally make it work for the first three days.
We would just have to log off the cell phone and log into Wi-Fi on the laptop. HOWEVER. I missed being able to watch NFL and NBA, and yes, maybe a bit of TikTok. The basic package doesn’t allow for any streaming services so all of those things were inaccessible. Decided to pay for the upgrade and end the suffering.
The cost of this on day three of the cruise was $209.00 USD which converted to $287.00 CAD, therefore about $143.50 CAD per person. WORTH THE SPORTS AND TIKTOK.
For the flight from Toronto to Buenos Aires, we booked that in February 2025. We were waiting for a decent price as flying to Argentina during their summer can be expensive alongside others also heading to their various cruises to the white continent.
The cost of that was $1623.53 CAD per person, roundtrip – initially.
We ended up having to change our flight to Buenos Aires to leave a couple of days earlier because of the damn government shutdown in USA in November 2025. We were worried that our layover in America would get us to Argentina late and we would miss the cruise. Absolutely not.
Changed our flight with American Airlines for a small price difference and the final amount was $1660.53 CAD per person, roundtrip.
We also had initially booked a totally different AirBnB booked but when the decision to change the flight was made, we needed to change the AirBnB as well.
Here is the link to the AirBnB, will give a review when I return if it was a goodie.
Cost for four nights was $273.00 CAD, so $136.50 CAD per person.
The extra days in Buenos Aires also made it possible to book some excursions.
AirBnB had (for some unknown reason) had given me a $70.00 credit for an experience and we decided to use that for a bar crawl on the eve of my birthday.
With the credit the total only came to $20.00 CAD per person. Fuck yeah.
The link to the bar crawl can be found here, and I will let you know in the recap how it went.
The second tour was naturally, food! Have to go gallivanting and eating food in Buenos Aires. We chose the ‘Local Foodie Adventure in Buenos Aires with Sherpa Food Tours‘ and the link to that can be found here.
Cost of this was $99.00 CAD per person.
For spending money I budgeted $500.00 USD, so $700.00 CAD.
Didn’t really know how much we’d spend while in Buenos Aires, so just in case I made the $ amount a little larger. Never know.
Figured I’d also include here, you MUST have travel insurance to go on the cruise. I didn’t have this in my budget breakdown as I am covered by both my workplace and my credit card. But just in case you do not have travel insurance, you would have to purchase that as well.
The total budget for this trip is $16,617.80 CAD per person.
That is a massive number for a single trip. But, this was THE trip.
Once-in-a-lifetime-never-getting-on-another-fucking-boat-ever-again-trip.
I typically write my budget breakdowns prior to going somewhere, but for this one I held off specifically because it needs to be said if the money was worth it.
It was. Zero regrets. If regrets could go into the negatives, I would have negative regrets. Most incredible experience of my life.
- Mirna
Thank you for sharing Mirna! Following this trip on social media was beautiful ❤️
Thank you for coming along!
Great budget recap. As a destination/experience, this is very high on my list and following you along just solidified that I must go there. Thank you!
Thank you so much for reading!