Conrad Combrink looks at a photo published in the August issue of MiNDFOOD and smiles: “I was there when that photo was taken!” he says fondly. “I remember driving the Zodiac, and we just sat there watching this bear watching us, and I remember thinking, ‘My God, never could I have imagined this moment.’”
It was taken in June 2018. They had left on the Silversea expedition trip from London Tower Bridge on 8 June and went up to Longyearbyen. “It was an 18-day trip,” says Combrink, “and this was right at the end of the expedition in the Svalbard region: it was amazing. It is still a standout memory for so many reasons. We had just inaugurated a new ship, it was the first-ever luxury expedition ever taken – it was so historic in so many ways.”
Silversea announced in October 2007 they were getting into expedition cruising. That’s when Combrink joined the team as Silversea’s Head of Expeditions. “It was only nine months later we started the operation,” he says. “We went from a company that had no expedition to putting a team together, taking delivery of ship, training the crew, hiring expedition staff, putting the itineraries together, getting all the regulatory permissions done; it was remarkable that we as a company pulled it off. Before Silversea there was no luxury expedition, we pioneered it.” Combrink says they cater to curious travellers who want to push the boundaries: “They want to immerse themselves and learn something. They want to be in touch with the destination in a meaningful way.”
After studying tourism management at university, Combrink won a cruise holiday in a raffle. He loved it so much he started working for a cruise line, and 30 years later his passion has only deepened. A friend introduced him to expedition ships and he never looked back. His first expedition was to Antarctica and he remembers thinking on the first day, “What have you done! There were no uniforms, no structure. We crossed the Drake Passage and were getting into Antarctica when the ship stopped, and the captain came on and made an announcement and said, ‘We have an emperor penguin on an ice floe off the starboard side.’ I went out and right at that moment I was hooked. I was face-to-face with the reality of expedition cruising: unscheduled, unstructured and everybody excited, everybody is there with the same mindset, they are there because they are curious, they want to learn. It was an amazing experience.”
The next few days continued the same way: “The captain made things up as they sailed, taking into consideration the ice, the wildlife, the Zodiac cruising, the landings. It only took me a few days to fall completely in love with expedition cruising. I never went back to classic cruising. In fact I got onboard in January, I did the whole Antarctica season, I sailed through the South Pacific, into Russia and Southeast Alaska, without getting off the ship.”
Choose to cruise
Combrink says that “expedition cruising is the most incredible way to travel, to really experience the world. And if you can combine that true immersive experience with a luxury ship, great service and food that Silversea is known for, that combination is beautiful.”
Combrink says Silversea guests are very accomplished, and most of them are not used to relinquishing control. “It’s wonderful to see the guests go through that journey, wanting to know everything on the first day, to see them go through the journey realising that we are not in control here, we are in areas where we can’t dictate anything, like the Arctic and Antarctica, it’s impossible to predict – whatever we find, we find – and how they embrace that is wonderful.
“At the end of the journey they actually really love the fact we can pull them out of bed at 4am and show them an amazing Aurora Borealis. It’s these things that guests love.”
Constant improvements
Of course, spontaneity takes a lot of planning. “There’s always constant monitoring, revising schedules and we can easily pivot,” he says. “We have back-up plans and my team in Miami will constantly communicate with the vessel. These days it is easier than 20 years ago in terms of the tools that we have available to predict weather.” When planning new itineraries Combrink says Silversea always look for ways to improve what they deliver. “We constantly look at what we’ve done and learnt and how we can do things better. We just recently operated our first-ever expedition cruise along the coast of South Africa.
“We’ve been doing South Africa for decades, but the South African government had very clear rules that only a handful of select cities could proclaim ports and you could only go to those and they absolutely wouldn’t allow Zodiac operations at all. That meant that a lot of the communities and smaller towns along the coast that really have so much to offer would never feature on any of these itineraries.” Combrink says that over three years they worked with the government and developed a program on how they could do it safely. “We became the first company to use Zodiacs along the coast. We opened up three new ports and the communities really benefited from it because we really focus on the relationship with the community. One of those ports is on the west coast, where no other cruise ship has gone because there’s no infrastructure. That’s one of the many benefits of expedition cruising, you don’t need infrastructure.”
He adds that another benefit of expedition cruising is they can create a lot of experiences. “We went to nature reserves that only South Africans visit, and went hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding. We had a traditional barbecue on the beach. We created a tented camp inland in a semi-desert area where guests overnighted, which was amazing.”
Combrink says: “People always ask me, ‘What is an expedition?’ I think people have this misconception an expedition is when you use Zodiacs. For me, Zodiacs are a tool to get people to shore. For me, an expedition is when you leave the ship at the end of your voyage enriched, having learned something you hadn’t known before.
“We play with people’s dreams every single day and it’s a super-serious responsibility for us. We need to turn those dreams into wonderful memories, and that is ultimately what we try and do.”
