Goin' home

Exactly one week after we'd boarded the NBP and left Palmer, most of us got off the vessel...

...and climbed into minivans that took us directly to the Punta Arenas airport to begin the series of flights that took us home.

Punta Arenas to Santiago (where the check-in area was essentially empty, which would have felt incredibly eerie but for the cheerful pop music playing over terminal speakers)...

...and where nearly every flight except ours to Miami was cancelled.

Things were not any better in Miami, of course...

...and my domestic flights to Charlotte and then Milwaukee were both almost completely empty.

Given that and the deepening disruption, illness, stress, and hardship going on in the world, it felt so lucky and amazing to even be getting home.

Which I did, about 9 days after leaving Palmer. I am now happily snugged into my parents' house in Wisconsin (while they are hunkered down in Arizona) doing my two week quarantine and looking forward to spending quality time with my sister and her kids. Hopefully, sooner than later, I'll be able to widen that circle to seeing and spending time with more friends and family. But of course it remains to be seen how long it will be until that is possible. In the meantime, I am well and content and have everything I need (and more). Who knows when I'll next be able to travel outside the U.S. But whenever I do, I'll see you here! Stay safe and healthy, everyone!

South from Chile

Holy moly, the past two weeks have been quite a ride. There is so much to catch you up on. I will just start to do that little by little, post by post. I am all settled into Palmer Station now, but when last we spoke I was just leaving Punta Arenas, Chile. So let's back up and take a step toward getting you caught up....

For our last night in Punta Arenas, we slept aboard the LMG. (Oh, and a correction from the last post: I've since learned that the US Antarctic program does not actually own the two icebreakers it operates on the peninsula--just leases them.) This was handy for me since I am working in Cargo at Palmer this season. At McMurdo and South Pole cargo is transported mostly by plane, but Palmer is a marine station, so I began my ongoing crash-course in marine cargo operations. At first this just consisted of observing the movement of a RHIB that had been transported north for the winter back onto the ship for its return to Palmer for the summer.

Speaking of my job...I was hired in August by the Peninsula Logistics Coordinator (a full-time position with the program) as Palmer's Cargoperson for the summer, to be working under an on-site Cargo Senior. A couple of weeks after I signed the Cargoperson contract, I heard through the grapevine that the woman who hired me had quit the program. So--I was assured by the station manager when I reached out--things were going to be a little chaotic but manageable. Then, as we were starting the flights south to Punta Arenas, the guy who was supposed to be Cargo Senior apparently decided he was too overwhelmed by the chaos side of things and he decided at the last minute not to get on the plane. Long story short, the station manager ended up convincing me that under the circumstances, the best option would be for me to step into the Cargo Senior role, be able to complete turn-over with the winter Cargo Senior to start learning the job, the winter Cargoperson would stay an extra few weeks, and the program would fast-track the hiring of a summer Cargoperson to take over the job I was supposed to do. So I got on the boat with a 3-inch stack of operating documents to read to learn about the much more desk-, paperwork-, and computer-system-heavy job I am now going to be doing. Eek!

But I wasn't about to bail as well, so when the time came, on a day too windy for the LMG to leave the pier unassisted, a tugboat came along to drag us out to sea...

...we watched Punta Arenas fade off into the distance...

...we did a life boat drill in case of having to evacuate the ship (and by the way, for those of you who know him, doesn't the guy second from right look EXACTLY like my brother, in this picture?)...

...and off we sailed into the Southern Ocean.

Well, to be more accurate, we weren't in the open ocean to start with. The trip from Punta Arenas to Palmer Station generally takes four days: one day navigating the straights and islands of Tierra del Fuego; two days for the crossing of the mighty Drake Passage, aka the "Roaring Forties" and the "Furious Fifties" (those numbers referring to latitude) between South America and Antarctica, famously the most consistently tumultuous seas on the planet; and the fourth day on calmer waters again, navigating the rest of the way south along the Antarctic Peninsula.

While we were protected from the open ocean those first 30 or so along Tierra del Fuego, we were lucky to see a whole bunch of Commerson's dolphins!

But we knew the calm waters wouldn't last, as the weather forecast did not look fantastic. While we could, we visited the outside decks of the LMG, appreciating the epic sunsets.

That's probably enough for now...
Next post I'll talk about the ship itself before it makes its voyage across the Drake!

Punta Arenas

Less than 12 hours after my mom and I got home from Europe, I was back at the airport starting my fourth journey to Antarctica--but my first journey through South America, to Palmer Station (on the Antarctic Peninsula).

It was a gorgeous flight from Santiago down to Punta Arenas, on the southern point of the South American continent, the Andes soaring out the window to our west.

And a relief to end another 24 hours of air travel and be able to take a little break in Punta Arenas. This fancy new town sign was recently built in anticipation of 2020 being the 500th anniversary of the explorer Magellan discovering the straits that are named for him, the first time a European, at least, had been able to sail around the Americas from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Though the town of Punta Arenas itself is only about 150 years old, it is known primarily for being the gateway to the Straits of Magellan, so this anniversary will be a big deal here.

And we had some atypically clear weather to enjoy this sweet town.

Snow crab empanadas...yum...

And of course, the frothing seas clapping up against the edge of town, relentlessly...

I appreciate how lazy Chilean dogs seem to be, even on a day where the temps are slightly below "crisp."

Fittingly, the main plaza of Punta Arenas is centered around a statue of Magellan.

And on one side of that statue column is a human depiction of Tierra del Fuego. It's said if you rub his toe, it will bring you good luck for a safe passage across the Drake. I rubbed that toe like no one's business. And we'll talk more about the Drake in a future post.

Lots of my first day in Punta Arenas was spent aboard the Lawrence M. Gould (hereafter, the LMG), an icebreaker that sails regularly for Palmer with passengers, and otherwise hosts science experiments in the Antarctic seas. Tomorrow we will all board the LMG, sleep aboard for the night, and--if everything goes according to plan--set sail first thing Wednesday morning for Antarctica.

Behind the LMG, you can see the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the second icebreaker owned by the U.S. Antarctic Program, and an even larger ship that never comes to Palmer because the Palmer dock cannot support it. I don't know how rare it is for both vessels to be docked at Punta Arenas simultaneously, but it was cool to see.

So, this is my last evening with good wifi. On the ship starting tomorrow, I'll really only be able to text a bit, so you won't hear from me here until after I've arrived at Palmer at least five days from now (tomorrow in port, one day making our way through the Straights of Magellan, two days across the Drake Passage, and a fourth day traveling down the Antarctic peninsula to Palmer Station). Then I will spend several posts, I'm sure, catching you up on the voyage before we start covering life in Palmer.

In any case, don't worry if you don't hear from me for a week or so; I'll be back with news from the 7th continent once we get there!