Day 1: Antarctica

Fri 8 Jan 2010

This post chronicles the rest of yesterday...

Here are a couple pictures I took out of the plane...

                                              

Landing was pretty intense because there are no windows to look out of so you have no idea when you will make contact with the ground, and remember this is a HUGE and heavy C-17 plane, so there is a fair amount of turbulence and you can really feel the plane going down, quickly.

When we got out of the plane and walked down the stairs I saw white, a sea of red, blue-ish sky, vehicles that looked like they belonged on the moon... I guess we are kind of on the moon in a metaphorical sense. I cannot put into words how I felt inside when I stepped out of the plane. I thought my heart might beat out of my chest. I was breathing really hard and feeling like jumping, dancing, swirling, spinning, singing, and hugging everyone around me....I did a lot of hugging and high-fiving and have had a giant smile plastered to my face since.

There are a lot of different types of vehicles here, and they attempted to quickly load us up to drive us to the station.

I say they were “attempting” to herd us into the vehicles because we were all in such shock and awe at what was before us that we were nearly floating above the ground. Somehow Idan and I got asked to ride in the frond of one of the Deltas, and so avoided being jam packed into ‘Ivan the Terra Bus’ (1st picture below) or the back of a Delta (2nd picture below, That's the one Idan and I rode in the front of with Joe).

                                              

“Shuttle” Joe was our driver, and he is the oldest person at the station, 81 years old. Last year, for his 80^th birthday, the station basically declared a day-of-Joe and celebrated his birthday all day and night. He is from Illinois and has been here for 3 seasons. He once slept in a snow trench.

He told us stories and pointed out landmarks during the entire 45 min drive to the station. We saw Emperor penguins, 

                                              

the tail of the Boeing Constellation airplane that crashed in the 60's (no fatalities), Mt. Erebus, the active volcano on Ross Island that is 12,448’ tall, the mountains on Black and White Islands, Scott’s Base (the Kiwi base)…..

It was so cool to cross from the Ross Ice Shelf onto the Ross Island, onto land.

We got to McMurdo (I put this pic so you can see the lat/long)

and were immediately congregated in the Galley and were briefed on Station operations, housing, health, and recreational opportunities. We dealt with our travel plans for when we leave: Do you want to stay over in New Zealand? Do you want a stopover in Sydney? Do you want a stopover in Honolulu? By the way, these options are all free of charge and part of our return ticket. WOW! We received our temporary room assignments (McMurdo is so full right now that we are in the housing shuffle….no biggie), threw our luggage into our rooms, and set off to explore! Oh wait, we had dinner first. How could I have almost skipped that? Dinner, my loved ones, was AMAZING! Seriously. These were some of the options: Cinnamon bulgar, feta beets, Pesto broccoli pasta, Cashew quinoa, and Pumpkin! Walnut! Raisin! Oat! Chocolate Chip! COOKIES (OMG, the BEST part….I have been stowing them away in every pocket to enjoy at times between meals…..YUM!

We first went to the recreation center to find out about yoga classes and the climbing wall, and Idan and Damien rented shoes….brand new Sportivas, no less. The climbing gym turned out to be a little less than we had hoped for, but we were still pretty happy to have anything at all. Then we cruised up to Discovery Point to the site of Robert Falcon Scott’s hut from 1910. This picture, to me, represents the past (Scott’s hut from 100 years ago) and the present and future, McMurdo Station seen in the background of the picture. McMurdo Station was constructed in 1955-56 as part of the United State’s “Deep Freeze Operation” series of Antarctic expeditions. 

Antarctica is the only continent where we can say for certain “people first stood HERE.” Pretty wild to stand in that spot and consider the significance. McMurdo Station is the closest a ship can get to the South Pole, which is still 800 miles away, so it has been and is an important portal to the middle of this 13 million km² continent.

This is the view out towards the edge of the Ross Sea from Discovery Point.

This is the opposite view back towards the Ross Ice Shelf and the glacier (the helo just took off from McMurdo heading towards the Dry Valleys.

                                              

We then decided to check out one of the 4 “bars” at McMurdo so headed to the Coffee House. The building is shaped like ½ of a cylinder.

We played Rummikub and this silly French game that Damien taught us where a person thinks of someone (that everyone in the group will know), and the other players have to ask questions (“If this person were a country, which country? If this person were a song, which song? If this person were a capital city, which city? Etc.) until you can guess the identity of the mystery person. Beside us was a table of the BBC film crew and, you guessed it, David Attenborough. I tried hard all evening not to gawk.

At about 11:00 pm we were exhausted so stepped outside, wearing sunglasses, into the bright and sunny night, and headed to our dorms for bed.