First email from our travels down
south. After much flying and transferring I've made it to New Zealand,
the launching point for our trip to the Antarctic
continent. We arrived late in the day and made our way to the hotel
after getting visas issued and screened for foreign biological
contaminants. This morning we were outfitted with our ECW (Extreme Cold
Weather; one of many TLAs, or Three Letter Acronyms) gear. We also were
subject to IT security awareness training, various videos about
procedure, responsibilities, and rules that come with Federal
bureaucracy.
The world famous "Bunny Boots"
Later in the day we did a walking tour around
Christchurch. A few years ago Christchurch was hit by a major
earthquake, with the epicenter right below the downtown area. It was
quite devastating, not only were the majority of buildings destroyed
beyond repair, but many people died and a quarter of the population left
the city to never return.
I
was happy to see that reconstruction efforts had made the city much
more populated and sections of the city that were fenced off were now at
least open to the public, with several new businesses open. There's
still plenty of the city with high rises that have been abandoned and
shuttered restaurants that still have menus and "open" signs from the
day of the quake, but significantly less of these were present.
The sounds of construction rang throughout the city center and an
order of magnitude more people were around compared to last year. We
also took a walk through the botanical gardens, which was very pleasant.
Likely the last plants we'll see for about a month! All in all, a nice
summer day.
Tomorrow morning we're scheduled to take an
AC-130 Hercules to the Ross Sea, an 8 hour flight, but the possibility
of weather forcing us to turn back to Christchurch is stronger than we'd
hope. This is typically called the "bounce" or the "boomerang,"
needless to say we all hope that won't happen.
Photo credit to one of my colleagues Jill took
earlier today, had to borrow them since I didn't have my camera on me.
Next time I send an email, I hope it's from McMurdo about a day from
now!
No comments:
Post a Comment