Laura On Ice

Hi everyone!

 I’m here at McMurdo, made it safe and sound, and I managed to arrive on one of the coldest days they’ve had here! I’m still trying to figure out a way to get some pictures on here, but til then, I’ll just give you a long post about my trip down.

So once we arrived in Christchurch on Thursday morning, I went to my hotel, the Windsor, which is a very cute B&B near the Botanic Gardens and the Art Museum. They have a great dachshund named Winnie, and they feed you well! Gotta love those English Breakfasts. I won’t go into too much detail on Christchurch, because I mostly just wandered around there and didn’t really do much except look at the gardens, eat and shop. When I get back I’ll do it up right!

On Friday, we tried on all our cold weather gear, which was kinda funny. Among other things, we got a big red parka, wind pants, gloves, mittens, a variety of hats and neck gaiters, socks, long underwear of several kinds, and these big, white, rubber boots called bunny boots. We tried all these things on in a big room and traded out what didn’t fit, and decided which to put in our checked luggage and which to wear on the plane. Since we have to wear certain items on the military flight, we wanted to make sure we had them in the right bags. Everyone who had been before told us that the plane was heated and usually you just take everything off when you’re flying anyway, so I didn’t get too excited and I just packed the bare minimums I needed for the flight.

The next morning, you have to get up very early to get to the military flight. The people at the Windsor also packed us a little snacky bag so we’d have some breakfast. They are so nice! You go to the Antarctic Centre at the airport, which is a funny combination of the Antarctic operations for the US and for New Zealand, and also includes a really nice museum type thing as well.

When we got to the Antarctic Centre, we picked up our bags and got dressed in our cold weather gear. I was wearing wool socks, bunny boots, wind pants, a shirt, a fleece, my big red coat, a balaclava, a hat and goggles. Mind you, it was about 65 degrees in Christchurch, so we were pretty hot for a while. You have to go through security, and so we lugged everything through, and got on this bus to go out to the plane.

 And WOW, the plane was really impressive! It was a C-17, which was HUGE! When we got in, the plane was almost entirely full of cargo, so we had to sit in jump seats along the side, which actually weren’t too bad. It was a five hour flight, and it was LOUD! You don’t realize how much they insulate the cabins of commercial jets until you ride in the cargo hold of a big military plane like that. Since we couldn’t really talk, I read a book and ate my lunch. There was only one window on the plane, so every once in a while I’d get up to look out.

For a long time there was only ocean, but finally, one time when I looked, the water was all frozen, and it was just great sheets of ice as far as you could see! It was pretty amazing, but the best part was when the loadmaster of the plane started letting people go up onto the flight deck! When I got my turn, we were very close to McMurdo, so when I looked out, we were flying over the Transantarctic Mountains, which are between 8,000 and 10,000 feet! At that moment it really hit that I was going to the Ice! It was a really amazing moment.

So shortly after that, our plane landed, and it was really strange, because you can’t see anything, it’s sometimes hard to tell if you are down. Also, it was a bit of a rough ride coming in. We put on all our gear and got ready to go out. We noticed that the plane’s cabin started to get a LOT colder so we were glad for our gear.

Finally, we all got up and were ready to step out onto the sea ice runway. (Amazing to think that the ice was strong enough to hold such a huge plane!) And when we stepped out, it was amazing! The wind was blowing SO hard and it was SOOOOOOO cold! There was NO doubt, I was in Antarctica!

 It turns out it was the coldest day since Winfly in August, and the wind was blowing so hard they almost turned the plane around. With windchill, it was -51 degrees.

We made it, and I am very glad to be here!