WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR (and me too!)
Ok, so I’ve been down here a month and a little bit, and so far I have been having a great time. However, for me, the special things that make Antarctica so amazing have thus far been pretty limited to good companionship, interesting work, and the sights I can see around the station, such as they are.
Yesterday, my horizons expanded.
My department got the opportunity to take a trip out to Cape Evans in a Delta, which looks like this:
This is Betsy and Jean (who also works in Rec) in front of the Delta. Jean drove!
If you look on the Ross Island map in one of my previous posts, you can see Cape Evans a little bit northwest of McMurdo. It is much closer to Mt Erebus. It took us about an hour and a half to drive there over the sea ice. In the picture above, we are standing in a place that in about a month will be ocean! Scary!
On the way, we noticed some other commuters going in the opposite direction:
You got it - they’re small, they’re cute, they know how to get down. Yes, that’s right, I got my first look at PENGUINS! These little dudes are Adelies, and I seriously don’t think it’s possible for them to be more adorable. They did all sorts of cute things - scooting along on their bellies, cleaning themselves, and flapping their little flippers. It was really amazing! They just ignored us and went on their way. I couldn’t get much closer for a better picture, but they were really fun to watch.
Once we got to Cape Evans, we got to check out Scott’s Hut, which is a historic building where the men of Scott’s ill-fated expedition lived. It’s maintained much in the way it would have been when the men left. It’s almost 100 years old, and there are still cans and cans of food lying around and all sorts of goods on the shelves, and there’s even blubber from that time sitting out and you can smell it rotting. Altogether it is an extremely eerie and amazing place - you can almost feel the presence of the men who once resided there. Here are some pictures of the hut:
The hut from the outside, with Erebus in the background.
A table with scientific equipment on it.
This table had a penguin corpse on it. It was located in the officers’ berth area.
The kitchen area with all the bottles and cans still remaining.
Well, that’s all I can write for now - Burger Bar and Bingo are starting soon and I can’t wait for a slab of ground beef with some mushrooms and extra cheese on it. Next post I’ll put up some more stuff from the Cape Evans trip!
