Travellin’ South

Yes, I know it’s been a month…

…since the last update and it’s been a busy one honest! The way I write these is basically to look back on the pictures I’ve taken to remind me what’s happened and there don’t seem to be too many to choose from this month so I must have been flat out! As it is we’ve all but completed the field season for BAS and we only have two BAS field parties remaining out on the ice although we are currently supporting two teams for NSF out of Rothera. Since the last update we’ve seen three visits from the American icebreakers Nathaniel B. Palmer and Laurence M. Gould and there seems to have been a constant stream of unfamiliar faces wandering around station which is perhaps good training for my impending return to the ‘real world’ in about 9 weeks…!

All that activity on base has kept me pretty busy between shifts in the tower and time spent fixing things that break at the most inopportune times. We’ve had relatively good weather this month including a few days that seemed unbearably hot (up to +4°C and no ozone layer to shield us from the unrelenting sunshine!) and plenty of whale sightings out in the bay. In fact I’ve managed to get my first photo of Orcas that shows them larger than 2 pixels wide.

So it’s February now and I leave Rothera at the end of March. That’s next month. Like actually NEXT MONTH! Thoughts of home and what to do next are becoming more and more the topic of conversation amongst the outgoing winterers. We’ve already had a couple of us leave station for other locations but Celine and James are the first two of us to be properly leaving to go home on Monday when they fly north. Scary stuff – the next time we meet will be in the real world with trees and grass and different clothes and beer that isn’t in tins and all sorts of wondrous things!