Dawn in Antarctica

I'm back to civilization!  Due to very limited internet access, I didn't manage to post anything from Antarctica.  However, I do have some things to post.  I still need to organize them, so stay tuned! It was an amazing trip! This is a self portrait from the middle of the peninsula below, looking ESE. View Larger Map

Vlog #2, filmed later on November 22, 2011:  (Filmed November 22, 2011 and posted February 20, 2012.)

I wasn't very good about writing blog entries while at Lake Untersee, so I tried some video ones.  Here's the first one, which covers a bit of getting to Novo Station and then concentrates on getting to the field and the first week there.  The flashing colors made it unwatchable until I put some still photos relevant to what I was saying in for the images.  My iSight camera doesn't like my tent and orange jacket! (Recorded on November 22, 2011 and posted on February 20, 2012!)

The banya! This morning, I woke to the sound of Ian and Dale washing dishes from the VIPs the day before.  It was an amazing number of dishes.  I helped.  Velodia, who runs the guest house, came in while we were doing dishes, and thanked us profusely.  He was overcome with gratitude and expressed it continuously for an hour.  We then ate excellent leftovers for breakfast, including beef rolled with greens and cheese and then roasted.  It was accompanies by excellent bread, specially baked for us by the Russian base cook as well as fresh fruit.  Velodia promised us an extra special evening in the banya tonight.  I’ll write more about that after it happens.  After breakfast, we looked at the clothes from Woolrich.  I snagged some nice long underwear.  The shirts and vest were too big for me. I then helped Ian with generators and a jiffy drill, and spent the rest of the morning going through freeze dried food from the expediti...

My first day at Novo, yesterday, we had to spend most of the day away from the Oasis Guest House and our gear because of the VIP visitors.  We spent a lot of time in the dining room of the Russian station.  We’ve been eating there, too.  The food is very Russian, not surprisingly.  The kaska for breakfast was good.  For lunch, there were noodles with white sauce, boiled liver in sauce, boiled chicken in sauce, and soup.  The bread was excellent.  For dinner, there were leftovers from lunch plus boiled fish steaks (some medium sized firm white fish), fried fish fillets, and heavy mashed potatoes.  The bread was excellent.  There was fruit compote for both lunch and dinner as well.  Our food was in sharp contrast to the lunch and dinner for the VIPs, which were prepared by Georgio who owns and is chef at the restaurant 95 in Cape Town.  We’ve been eating leftovers today. In addition to eating, we talked, read, and worked on compu...

We boarded our IL76 at Cape Town by expedition.  There was a group of VIPs on the flight, who paid a great deal each for one day in Antarctica.  (I’m smelling their delicious lunch right now, being prepared by an Italian chef, also brought in for the day.) The plane is mostly a cargo plane, with 78 passengers on this flight, which is about the maximum it can hold.  It has port-a-potty type bathrooms (visible in the dark corner on the left in the image below). There were no window seats, but the plane was much brighter once we flew south into continuous daylight from the two windows available.  Here, people are putting on their Antarctic clothing in preparation for landing. We walked down the stairs onto the bright ice.  We’re in Antarctica! The VIPs got whisked away, whereas we hung out on the ice for a while as they started to unload the plane.  And I admired the Basslers. Then Vladimir and I took all our car...

I'm on wireless at the International Departures Terminal in the Cape Town Airport.  We board the IL76-D2 in an hour or so, and we'll be on our way to Antarctica! Our flight is listed 4th from the top!  It's the only flight I've seen that lists a continent as the destination. Here are the team members flying with me: Valery, Vladimir, and Chris from left to right. And here is the check in line: It's a great mix of people (mostly men). When I went through passport control, the officer was more interested in learning about our flight than in my passport.  He asked how many countries were represented by my group, and I explained that there were actually quite a few different groups on the flight.  My group only represents 3 countries, and only 2 on our flight.  He was also interested in why there were so many Russians.  I explained that the company organizing the flights was mostly Russian and that we will be landing very close to the Russi...