🇦🇶 Port Lockroy, Antarctica — Cruise Port Guide
A tiny British base on a rock the size of a football pitch, sharing the island with several hundred gentoos. It is a museum, the world's most southerly public post office, and the one place in Antarctica where you can post a card home.
Updated September 2026
Quick facts
Getting ashore
When to visit Port Lockroy
Ships run here only in the austral summer, roughly November to March. Daytime air sits around -2 to 3°C with wind chill well below that; December and January bring 20 hours of daylight, February and March bring the whales and better ice.
Good to know
This is one of the most oversubscribed landings in Antarctica and ships have to book it in advance. If sea ice fills the harbour the visit is cancelled outright, so buy nothing and post nothing you were counting on — write the cards early, in case the window is short.
Things to do in Port Lockroy
Post a card from the bottom of the world
The postmark is the souvenir. Write your cards on the ship beforehand — time ashore is capped, the hut is cramped and the queue is real.
Tour Base A museum
The 1940s hut is preserved as it was left: tins of Heinz spaghetti on the shelves, a pin-up on the bunkroom wall, the old radio room, and the smell of coal and seal oil that has never quite gone.
Watch the gentoos on the doorstep
The colony nests right against the hut walls and along the boardwalks. This is the most photographed penguin colony in Antarctica for the simple reason that the birds are a metre away.
Zodiac to Jougla Point
Most ships pair Lockroy with a landing across the water at Jougla Point, where a reconstructed whale skeleton lies on the shingle among nesting shags.
Shop the gift hut
Profits fund the Trust's conservation work across the peninsula. Cards only, and the range sells out as the season goes on.
Weather by month
Best time to visit: Nov–Mar; Dec–Jan for penguin chicks and near-endless daylight
| Month | High | Low | Rain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 35° | 28° | 1.5" |
| Feb | 35° | 28° | 1.6" |
| Mar | 32° | 25° | 1.8" |
| Apr | 27° | 19° | 1.7" |
| May | 21° | 14° | 1.5" |
| Jun | 17° | 10° | 1.3" |
| Jul | 16° | 8° | 1.2" |
| Aug | 17° | 9° | 1.2" |
| Sep | 21° | 13° | 1.3" |
| Oct | 26° | 18° | 1.4" |
| Nov | 30° | 23° | 1.4" |
| Dec | 34° | 27° | 1.5" |
A little history
Base A was built in 1944 as part of Operation Tabarin, a wartime British mission to establish a permanent presence and watch for enemy shipping in the Southern Ocean.
The base ran science until 1962, was abandoned, and was restored in 1996. It is now a designated Historic Site and Monument run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.
Four or five staff live here each summer with no running water, counting penguins, running the shop and sorting tens of thousands of postcards. The job is advertised publicly and attracts thousands of applicants.
Half of Goudier Island is left undisturbed and half is open to visitors — a long-running experiment that found tourism, done to the rules, made no measurable difference to the gentoos breeding there.
Post takes anywhere from two weeks to several months to arrive; it travels out by ship, then via the Falklands and the UK.