McMurdo, revisited

Well, wow. A day later than scheduled, but early enough not to mess up any onward plans, and just before the weather closed in and caused flight cancellations the next day, a Herc made it to Pole and I found myself running in circles tying up the loose ends of my life at South Pole, and getting on a plane, and suddenly I was gone. (This is actually the plane with me on it; got this picture from a Polie left behind.)

It was incredible to land back in McMurdo more than a year after I last transited through and to see mountains on the horizon rather than endless flat.

I had one overnight there--just barely enough time to say hello to most of the people I wanted to say hello to, and to achieve my one other goal, of visiting the "Ob Tube." I can't quite believe we're allowed to do this, but so glad we are. They sink this watertight tunnel about 20 feet down under the sea ice. Here's me outside the tunnel about to climb down...

...and then a shot of my lovely friend, C, looking down from above once I'm all the way down.

Inside the tunnel, it's absolutely magical. The color of the ice is amazing, and we saw some mollusk-type creatures and some small jellyfish and heard seals calling. It felt like being hypnotized, or somehow outside of time.

So quickly, it was time to transport back to the airfield and say goodbye to Antarctica for real, as we waited in the passenger building, watching the plane from New Zealand (which we would soon be boarding) land on-continent...

...and waved goodbye to Mount Erebus one more time before heading to board the plane.

And then, the most extraordinary thing happened. We were just a couple hundred yards from the plane, walking across the ice to go board, and one of the air field workers said all casually, "Oh, there's a penguin." And I looked over where he was pointing and THERE WAS A PENGUIN.

Even after 16 months in Antarctica, I had never seen a penguin in Antarctica, since almost all of my time was at South Pole and there is no water for hundreds of miles and therefore no life. But darned if, in my last 30 minutes there before leaving, this Adelie penguin didn't appear out of nowhere and waddle right up to us.

It stood there posing for pictures until we had to leave, maybe just as enthralled with us as we were with it...

...and no doubt marveling at all those creatures in red who were filming it to no end.

So my actual goodbye to Antarctica was a salute to Erebus with Adelie friend in foreground.

Too freakin' perfect, leaving me feeling absolutely charmed.