I’m at McMurdo station in Antarctica right now, waiting on my flight out to the Pole. I’m working on a big long post that describes getting here and life in Mactown, but for now I’ll just put up a quick photo I took from the porch outside my dorm:
After 8 hours of wandering around in airports, and 20 hours of total flight, here I am in Christchurch. I’m entirely new to the southern and eastern hemispheres, the continent I’m on, and international flight in general, although New Zealand seems like a decent place to make a start. It’s startling to see your shuttle driver turn into what should be oncoming traffic at an intersection, or wander around with $100 US in your wallet and suddenly remember that you don’t have any cash that’s legal tender.
I picked the Hotel SO on my accommodations worksheet months ago, and it looks like the majority of USAP people did as well; hanging out in the lobby, I’m guaranteed to run into someone I know every five minutes or so. The hotel itself is designed to fill a specific niche – the rooms are high-tech and very modern, but incredibly small. The twin bed takes up nearly a half of the total space, and the combination toilet and shower (to call the glassed-off area a bathroom would be generous) is half of the remaining space. I’m not complaining though, because I think I feel more comfortable with this than a giant suite. All I have to do to make a mess is open my luggage and pull a few things out, which instantly makes things more like home.
After getting in around 8am and sprawling across the hotel room, I grabbed a much-needed shower and changed into comfortable pants and a t-shirt, a relief from wearing two sweatshirts and long underwear on the flights in order to save space in my bags. It’s spring in New Zealand, and weather is just like at home – warm enough for summer clothes when it’s sunny, but a long-sleeve shirt is better suited when it’s cloudy.
Downtown Christchurch could easily pass for downtown Minneapolis, or maybe a slightly smaller city, with the exception of the occasional odd term, and the cars coming at you from the wrong direction. It’s clean and relaxed, and since it’s currently crawling with people headed to the Ice, you almost feel like it’s your hometown; any time I wander outside, I see some familiar faces.
I grabbed coffee (or a flat white, as a latte is called here) with Eric, who is headed down to Pole as a prep cook for his second season on the Ice. The coffeeshop was built in a rezoned two-story house, like what you’d see in Uptown. After we finished up, we took a quick walking tour of the area, since Eric had spent plenty of time there after last season. He broke off in Cathedral Square to meet a friend who was just returning from a winter season on the Ice, and I met up with some others to get food.
We ended up at a Japanese restaurant, which is the New Zealand equivalent of Mexican restaurants in the US, i.e. ubiquitous, and with varying degrees of authenticity. I had teriyaki eel on rice, which seemed more eel-like than I was expecting, and we talked about traveling in between seasons. As far as I can tell, I’m the lone exception having never done any serious traveling outside of the US. In fact, it seems rare to find someone in the program who has a place they actually consider home, although everybody has designated a place that they’re “from”, usually where they grew up or recently lived.
After eating our group moved on to Bailie’s for drinks, which attracts nearly everybody in the program by the end of the evening. Christchurch in general seems proud of its extensive heritage as the jumping-off point for many historic expeditions to the Antarctic, but Bailie’s actively courts USAP participants with a discount on drinks, and Antarctic paraphernalia on the walls. We had a few drinks (which are lighter in NZ by standard, a 12oz 4.0% ABV beer being the average here) and then headed back to the hotel early in the night to get some sleep before our early morning the next day.
We’ve finished our first day of training in Denver today, which was surprisingly short for anybody who wasn’t a supervisor (they got stuck with another couple of hours at RPSC HQ learning how to, well, supervise I suppose). After the flight in to Denver, I wandered out to the ground transport area to meet up with my shuttle, which was prepaid by RPSC and would take me straight to my hotel.
I was a little confused by the airport employees when I asked them where I should go, because they implied that it was “not right” in very disapproving tones that my shuttle wasn’t already there waiting for me. I didn’t feel like a 5 minute wait for the shuttle was all that bad, since the shuttle was supposed to come around at 10 minute intervals; after getting on and chatting with the other passengers (who were also heading to training and then the Ice) I was informed that the shuttle driver had actually been circling the airport at 10 minute intervals for the last couple of hours, with some of them having arrived much earlier than me. Lucky me that I had a later flight I guess.
Last night, I headed out to a local bar with Eli, a fellow future “Polie” who will be growing fresh food in our greenhouse this summer, plus working in the station store and a few other random jobs. He’d been to Palmer as a grantee for a few years, as well as a stint on the Laurence M. Gould, a research/resupply ship for the USAP (a job he didn’t recommend, as working hours on a ship are incredibly long even by Antarctic standards).
We had a few beers on a second-floor patio, and then managed to almost trap ourselves upstairs when the staircase turned into a balcony overlooking either a fashion show or something a little more scandalous later in the night; we pushed, squeezed, and excused our way down the stairs, and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before our 7:15 shuttle the next morning.
Our shuttle from the airport was almost half people headed to Pole, which surprised me a little considering the difference in station populations. The training seemed to have more soon-to-be McMurdo (or Mactown, as it’s called) residents, but I suppose since their season starts earlier they’ve probably already deployed many of them. At one point we raised our hands to show who was new to the program, and I think it must have been over half.
The split between men and women was probably 60/40 or so, and there was definitely a noticeable difference between what one person described to me as the two types of people who head to the Ice: ex-military, and granola. We’re all there for the same reason though, so everybody seemed to get along pretty well. Everybody will have jobs to do during their shifts, and fun to have when they’re off, and food to eat and sleep to have in between.
Tomorrow is just breakfast, a presentation on safety, and then we’re off to Denver International to head out to Christchurch!