So, after a 27 hour set of flights, I got to Punta Arenas last night. I actually ran into David going through customs in Santiago - his flight from Miami got in about the same time - but then we separated to catch different planes to PA. Punta Arenas is located on the Straits of Magellan, facing Tierra del Fuego across the water. It is steeped in Antarctic history - at one point, pretty much all of the great Southern explorers stopped here to prepare or recover: Amundsen, Scott, D'Urville, Byrd, Shackleton, the list goes on... It is also the furthest South that you can drive in the Americas. From here, aside from a brief ferry ride to get around the Darien gap in Panama, you can drive a continuous strip of highways all the way to Barrow, Alaska. (Maybe next summer with the boys?)
We are staying at the Dreams of the Straits Hotel (and casino), a modern, streamlined glass and steel tower on the water. Our room has a great view, but the hotel has no air conditioning, only a very powerful furnace, and the window only opens a token sliver. After two days of involuntary slow
roasting at 80 degrees inside the room, we are (almost) looking forward to having to put on parkas tomorrow to keep from shivering.
We had a gear check yesterday with the logistics company. Unfortunately, the super-insulated (rated to 100 below!) boots they ordered for us run much smaller than standard. Wearing a liner and a thick wool sock, David and I both actually need a size 14... See the photo. (Note the full-sized champagne bottle for comparison.) Fortunately, they had a couple of pairs in that size also on hand. Afterwards, we had a really nice dinner at a local restaurant (local lamb, crab, and Chilean red wine), then reorganized the gear.
Our next flight is to a natural blue ice runway on the Union glacier, near Mt. Vinson. We will get there aboard an Ilyushin IL-76, an ex-Russian military cargo jet designed for Polar operations and rough field landings. Our crew has made 152 Antarctic landings. Even so, there is little margin for error, and the weather windows are narrow. Our main gear bags are already loaded on board now. We will get a call tomorrow morning at 0700. If the weather is a go, we need to leave 20 minutes later, carrying our polar clothes and Parkas. If not, the IL-76 captain, also ex-Russian military, like his plane, will re-check conditions with the meteorologist in Antarctica every hour - we may need to stay on that 20 minute alert all day.
This afternoon we had a briefing at ALE, complete with yummy empanadas and pisco sours. There are a number of other expeditions flying over with us tomorrow. Many are climbing Mt. Vinson, the highest point in Antarctica. It is a very interesting and international group. For example, one person is about to complete a vegan-only fueled climb of all Seven Summits (the highest on each continent). Another parachute jumped out of a different IL-76 over the North Pole while serving as a liaison to the Russian special forces (Spetsnaz). I feel like such an under-achiever...
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