Day Eight: Thursday 8 December

Back to NZ

Today we were due to fly back to New Zealand - probably! 

You can never tell for certain until the flight leaves, and even then there are sometimes boomerang flights going back to NZ, as well as coming down to the ice. But we kept our fingers crossed that we wouldn't get one.

Leaving Scott Base involves a whole new set of procedures. First is bag drop, which means packing everything up into your two Antarctica NZ bags, the large black one which gets checked in, and the smaller green one which you keep as carry-on luggage. If the flight boomerangs, or is delayed, you might have to go a day or so without your large bag, so you need to think carefully what to put in which one. 

The night before departure, you bring both bags to be weighed (and you get weighed too) and the black bag is taken away. Then you keep an eye on the noticeboard to see what time you need to be ready the next morning.

Our meeting time was 6.30am - that meant 6.30am in the locker room, all packed and dressed in cold weather gear, and hopefully with nothing left behind, including lunch in a brown paper bag, put together the night before from sandwich fillings and other treats that Mike the chef left out for us.

Four of us were leaving this morning, and Ash drove us out to the airfield - not Pegasus Field,which we flew into, because that's now closed for the season, but Williams Field which is closer. The American bus was coming over the hill from McMurdo with their passengers for the flight, but Ash managed to sneak in front of it.

Ivan the Terra Bus from McMurdo
(this is what picked us up the first day when we landed at Pegasus)  

I didn't really take in Pegasus Field at all when we arrived, but Williams is pretty scenic. No passport control or any formalities -you just wait for the call over the radio that they have finished refuelling and are ready to take "Scott pax". Ash zoomed over as soon as we got the call, so we could beat Ivan again and get good seats on board!

Control tower!

This was another seven-hour flight in a Hercules, but it all went very smoothly. I guess we knew what to expect! There were more people, but it wasn't as hot, and this time I even had some leg room. All the green bags got stacked in a pile down the middle of the plane, but this time I brought a smaller day pack as well, so didn't have stuff falling off my knee. The windows were harder to get at  - you had to climb over and stand on things (in fact I nearly stood on a person, not realising that the US Air Force guy two seats along had unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor and gone to sleep in it), but most people looked really tired and slept a lot of the way (although not on the floor)!

That's another thing about being down on the ice in summer. The constant light outside makes it easy to think that you'll stay up for a  bit longer, and a bit longer again, and people who have come down with work to do are focused on getting that work done, which is another reason why Scott Base has a big focus on set work hours and the importance of recreation and having time off.  

Woody was waiting to pick us up at Christchurch airport, and then it was back to the Antarctica NZ offices to de-kit and hand the gear back. her we were back in the same place we'd been a week ago, but what a lot has happened in that week!

Proving I was actually there (under all the hats and hoods) 

Day One: Thursday 1 December

Flying to Antarctica!

11pm and sitting in my top bunk and it’s still light outside!

So I’m actually here at Scott Base feeling slightly discombulated (partly because it’s 11pm and still sunny) but also very glad that we didn’t have to experience either a cancelled flight from Christchurch, or a boomerang one, which is when you get halfway there and the pilots decide it won’t be safe to land and turn back.



Christchurch airport - that's our Hercules.

Things I did expect about the flight:

It was so noisy! You couldn’t talk to anyone without getting right up beside them and yelling in their ear, or passing a written message along the rows. Most people had earplugs or headphones and watched movies or played games on their phones or read or did crosswords (you can guess which I did).

It was so cramped! And that was with only about 15 of us on board - 6 Kiwis and the rest Americans - when there can be up to 60. I knew that you sat along the outside of the walls, and another row of people sat in the middle, but I didn’t realise the two rows would be so close together that our knees were almost touching, and whenever you wanted to get up for a stretch you had to squeeze between everyone’s big boots. I reckon the 8 of us in our section (2 facing rows of 4 each) were crammed into a total area not much bigger than a big double bed. There aren’t any armrests and it took me some minutes of practising and a bit of help from the American guy opposite to get the hang of the strange seatbelts.

Inside the Hercules - pretty much the only place to stand and stretch your legs.

Yes, we did get a paper bag lunch and a big 1.5 litre bottle of water which was lucky as it was so hot (see below). Inflight entertainment consisted of burrowing about inside the paper bag to see what treats were there: sandwiches, crisps, a muffin, a muesli bar, a mars bar, a packet of cookies, a packet of crisps and an apple. Someone passed a written message down the row: anyone want to swap for a vegetarian option? (yes, please!)

Yes, the toilet really is a bucket down the back, hidden behind a curtain.

Yes, that's it!

 Things I didn’t expect:

It was so hot! We’d been told to wear our extreme cold weather gear in case of an emergency - possible emergencies were described at length in the safety briefing - and once in the cramped conditions inside (see above), it was pretty hard to get changed into anything else.

The lighting was quite dim, and the windows are very small (more like portholes) so it’s hard to see to read. One person had brought a mini book torch attached to her book. I’ve got one too but it was packed away and no use!

Because it’s so cramped (see above), you have to stow away your stuff and sit down as quickly as possible, so other people can sit down. But once your bag has been squashed into a spare space, you can’t get at it again. So all those 32 pockets were no use, because I had put stuff in my bag instead, that I couldn’t get at. Like a mini torch for reading with! And once you sit down, there’s nowhere to put any of your stuff, so I spent most of the flight trying to balance books, drink bottle, lunch and camera on my lap.

It takes a lot of taxiing to take off and land. When we landed we seemed to be taxiing along for about 10 minutes.

I thought we would see a lot of ocean and then we’d be at Scott Base. We did see ocean – lots of it - and then a lot of clouds -

but then we saw floating sea ice, exciting! This was about 5 hours out from Christchurch.

And then we flew over Antarctica itself – even more exciting!

And when we landed, and climbed into an American truck, it took another 40 mins of driving to get to Scott base, while the Americans on board kept going to McMurdo).

It was sunny and not too cold at all, and all the ice was glittering in the sunshine!

Things I didn’t know but could have guessed:

It is very hard to do up the zip of a bulky jacket when wearing two pairs of gloves and a balaclava. Obviously didn’t get the order of that quite right.

Then we arrived at Scott Base, climbed out of the truck and got welcomed and ushered inside, and now here we are! This is my bunk room, shared with three room mates.