OUR ADVICE: CHOOSE A DIFFERENT COMPANY! Take your “inner explorer” elsewhere. We took the last cruise of the 2022 Antarctic season with Hurtigruten (Feb 28 to March 17). It turned out to be a COVID disaster for us and many others on the ship, MS Roald Amundsen, and Hurtigruten was completely disorganized, incompetent and unhelpful in its response.
After two pandemic years avoiding infection with the virus, 11 days on the ship was enough time for us to come down with COVID. We believe, upon good information, that COVID came onto the ship through the incompetence (and greed) of Hurtigruten. Thirteen passengers bound for the cruise were on the same plane from Europe to Santiago. When antigen tested before boarding in Punta Arenas, two of those passengers tested positive for COVID and were turned away. The other 11 passengers from the same airplane did not test positive and, despite exposure to COVID from the two who were positive, were allowed to board the ship without any further restrictions or period of quarantine. That we believe is how the virus arrived on the Amundsen.
Further, no efforts were made to enforce masking or social distancing on board. For example in the so-called Explorer Lounge, passengers would enter wearing masks but as soon as they were seated, usually within six feet of other non-affiliated passengers, they would remove the masks in order to consume coffee, etc. Thus an airborne disease is allowed to spread through a confined space. By day 11, both my wife and I tested positive and were sent to the so-called “Red Zone” on level four for quarantine. (I should say here that not everyone who was positive for COVID was sent to the Red Zone, since Hurtigruten soon ran out of space there and thus allowed some passengers to quarantine in their more comfortable original quarters.) Despite our many requests for information about the state of the illness on board so that we could understand what protective measures to take (e.g., remaining in our cabin), such as the number of infected passengers, Hurtigruten refused to give any information, claiming that such information was confidential which is of course absurd because we were not asking for the names of the ill passengers.
For those infected who were sent to the Red Zone, food was delivered to us cold and often inedible and by the end of our stay there, on sodden paper plates. Two times in each 24 hour period, we were allowed to go onto an outside deck of the back of the ship, filled with ship machinery, with other ill passengers for “fresh air”. I am 70 years old and my wife is in her 60s. Despite that, only once, early in our confinement in the Red Zone, did the incompetent so-called ship’s doctor knock at our door to determine if we were still alive; he appeared fully decked out in a HazMat suit, did not offer to enter our quarters and did not check our vital signs or even apply a pulse oximeter to determine if we were oxygenating appropriately.
As we arrived again in Punta Arenas, letters were distributed to the ship’s passengers. Incredibly enough, the letters conveyed the information that those passengers who did not get COVID, would be compensated by receiving either (passenger choice) a 40% reduction on a future Hurtigruten cruise or a 15% refund from the amount paid for the current cruise. Those of us who were infected with COVID on the ship were offered just one thing—-the advice to seek compensation from our travel insurance! I had several calls with members of the staff on the Amundsen about the crazy inequity of this arrangement and was told that it was a decision made by Hurtigruten corporate headquarters.
Insult followed injury. When the passengers were disembarked from the ship, the uninfected passengers went first, having been told to place their luggage outside the door of their cabin to be transferred by the staff to the buses awaiting below. Those of us who were sick/infected, having waited to leave our cabin until after the well were removed, had to carry our own bags to the first level and out to the buses. Imagine, the well were not to carry their bags but the sick had to do so. Very typical of the Hurtigruten experience. We were then taken by bus (35 COVID positive passengers—-we counted) to a “COVID quarantine hotel” (awful—-see our review on Trip Adviser). There we waited in queue for an hour in the cold outside (again, sick elderly people!) to be allowed to check in. I will not go into detail about the terrible COVID hotel experience except to say that Hurtigruten refused to pay for any part of it, and we were charged an additional 50% for early check-in at 11 am. We were told that there would be a “team” of Hurtigruten representatives at the hotel to facilitate; there was a single port agent who was not a Hurtigruten employee and did nothing whatsoever to “facilitate” anything. The final insult was that due to our need for additional quarantine time (Chile requires 7 days after a positive test), we missed the charter flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago that we had previously paid for as part of the Hurtigruten package so we had to purchase our own air tickets which of course Hurtigruten took no responsibility for, since we had made the mistake of getting COVID on their ship and thus obviously could not get on their charter flight.
DO NOT TAKE A HURTIGRUTEN CRUISE!
