As you might have guessed from the title of this email, we haven't yet made it to the deep south yet.
Our first attempt saw us back at the Antarctic
Center, the place where we first loaded up on gear. We repacked our
bags into checked luggage, carry on, and a boomerang bag. The checked
luggage is "palletized," which means we can't access those bags until
they are unloaded from the plane in Antarctica. The boomerang bag is packed just in case the plane can't land in Antarctica, and contains clothes and other items needed to stay in NZ until we can try to get to the ice again.
In any case, we filled out our departure card, donned our ECW gear, and boarded our plane.
...but we we're boomeranged. Strong headwinds
meant our plane was consuming fuel too fast to be able to safely land at
Pegasus Field, an ice runaway in the Ross Sea. In what took four and a
half hours to fly toward Antarctica, took two and half to get back to Christchurch.
The next day, our flight was cancelled due to bad
weather on station. While each day stuck in NZ is a minor setback, we
were still able to go and visit the beach.
There was affordable beachfront housing available as well
All in all it was a nice day at the beach. And it was nice to get out of the city.
Today our flight was cancelled again due to fog, so we're going to try again tomorrow. Hopefully we make it out this time!
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