Happy Fun Times in Punta Arenas

Hey so I’ve been here for nearly a week now.  I had a minor snafu in Miami- our plane was delayed 7 hours- but it resulted in me getting my own room in one of the nicer hotels in Punta Arenas (with a bathtub, which is all I ever ask of a hotel).  A further water snafu at the hotel resulted in me getting their super sweet hot tub deluxe room for the last two nights, which upped the awesomeness ante quite a bit.

We’ve spent the past 5 days prepping gear- ECW (extreme cold weather gear), food, fresh food, frozen food, cots (!!), tents (really really big tents), sleds, shovels, cooking equipment, fuel, generator etc.  Camping in Antarctica is a completely different ball game.  A lot of our time is spent waiting for other things to happen- this is the first trip south for the R/V Point Sur, it’s normal stomping grounds are out of California- so we’re all figuring it out together.  We got to tour the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a true ice-going Antarctic research vessel and it was really, really impressive!!  You can compare the sizes and see that our boat would fit on the back of the Palmer!

The leader of our expedition is Ben, he’s a grad student at the University of South Carolina and this is his project.  He’s assisted by John E., an Antarctic veteran who is in charge of logistics.  Also from South Carolina is Marissa, an undergrad doing a thesis and John P., a Ph.D student doing his thesis in Morocco.  Malka is an expert in sedimentary geology, she did her thesis at Columbia. 

Today we’ll move onto the Point Sur and we’ll leave tomorrow.  It’s been super fun packing all the gear, everything for Antarctica is so big and hardy, the tent stakes are 1” diameter pipes cut to size!!  Or plans are up in the air- our primary field site in the Larsen basin is iced in and our secondary site on Joinville island isn’t looking much better.  We’ll first cruise down to Joinville and see if we can set up a camp, then go down the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula and look at granitoids (good for me, this is my area of expertise!).  IF we can get into Joinville, we’ll then return and set up a 5 week field camp there.  If we can’t, we’ll work our way down to Palmer station and figure out something to do there.

So no matter what we do, it’s going to be awesome.   Not sure how much blogging I’ll be able to do, but there will be one set up by David Barbeau at U south Carolina, so google that if this isn’t updated.

Adios!