Delays, bad weather and a grand tour

This has been an epic journey.  I started out on 6^th November, flying from Terminal 5 at Heathrow, arriving at Cape Town on the Sunday morning.  Three days of briefings, polar clothing issues and sightseeing later, I took off from Cape Town International on board a Russian cargo plane.  This was the start of the real adventure, Table Mountain and the V&A waterfront were a great experience but the ride in the cargo plane was a whole new level.

The flight from Cape Town to the Russian airhead at Novo, Antarctica, was around five hours.  During the last hour we all had to get into our polar gear for the landing, and that was where the fun began.  The plane was extremely well heated, and with around eighty five people on board, plus all their gear, we could only change by standing on our seats.  Unfortunately I have no pictures of the utter chaos, getting into several layers of clothing, hats, gloves, socks and thick boots is no easy task when you have plenty of room but standing on a small airline seat – well, it is something that will stick in my memory forever.

We disembarked onto a blue ice runway at Novo, into temperatures of -13 and wind speeds of around fifteen knots.  This was a shock after the heat of Cape Town in summer, and five hours on an overheated plane.  Collecting our gear together we went to the mess tent and had a welcome cup of coffee and breakfast.  It was only then I discovered that the toilet facilities were a short, slippery walk away through the wind and ice. 

Wrap up to get there, slip on the metal steps, unwrap to go, wrap up to get back, not slipping on the steps this time, making it safely back to the tent, deciding not to have another coffee just yet.

The weather at Halley, our final destination, was not good so we were transferred to the visitor centre at the main Novo base, a twenty minute bone shaking ride across the glacier.  The main base is built on rock at the edge of the glacier, which hangs over all the buildings in a perpetual frozen wave of ice.  The rocks are shattered and broken, huge, large, medium, small and dust, and it looks like the surface of Mars.  Water is taken from a frozen lake and the sea ice is a short walk away up and over the Mars like landscape.  Facilities were comfortable and we were made very welcome by Nadia and her father Vladimir.

After two days at Novo we went back across the glacier to the airhead (I was lucky enough to be driven in a Toyota Hi Lux with massive tires, bouncing and sliding across the ice) and boarded a Basler to fly to Halley.  Unfortunately the weather again deteriorated while we were in the air and the plane had to divert to the South African base at Sanae.  Here we were made very welcome by the guys, who fed and watered us to within an inch of our lives.  After a comfortable night at Sanae we waved goodbye and set off once again for Halley.

This time we arrived. We had been travelling for a week.

Once I have settled in and got my head around my new job, I will give you some details on life on the ice.  It’s been fun so far.