We made it! Greetings from the pier at Palmer Station, Antarctica.
The last few days have consisted mostly of sitting around in the ship’s lounge (my eyeballs are going to explode if I watch another movie) punctuated by one action-packed morning at Copacabana. Copa is a tiny two-room beachfront hut, whose only neighbors are several hundreds of penguins. Arctowski, the Polish Antarctic station, is a few miles away by boat. Talk about social paradise, eh? We dropped off the four researchers who will be staying at Copa until February, spent several hours hauling their food, equipment, and propane up the beach by sled, rewarded ourselves with a beer, and headed back to Mother Gould in our Zodiacs (small, inflatable motor boats). Check out this wacky cloud that blew over us at the beach:
In the foreground is a crew with one of the Zodiacs. The Gould is that dark spot on the horizon underneath the wacky cloud.
Our last night at sea was about the stormiest we’ve seen — gusting 50 with heavy snow and ice — until 0800 the next morning, when we arrived at my home for the next four months. My day yesterday was full of orientations and training meetings, but I really can’t complain because there are icebergs and penguins in my back yard!
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