Hello (at last) From Antarctica

Well, here I am at Rothera.

Firstly, many apologies for not posting sooner. I have been extremely busy with work since I first got off the plane, and also, the internet connection here is extremely slow and a little bit variable. Yesterday, for instance, we had no internet at all for most of the day; then when it came back on line the beakers (scientists) use up all the bandwidth uploading data.

So, you may ask, what's it like here?

Well I'm afraid that words fail me. This barren wilderness is beautiful beyond words. Photographs, no matter how good, could ever convey the reality of what the eye can actually see.

Antarctica is a land of extremes and contradictions.

Everything is whiter than white (obviously!!), and extremely, but not intolerably, cold. We don't get a flutter of snow here, we get snow howling horizontally past the window; in fact, I'm looking out of the window now at a horizontal blow.

Every morning I get up, put on the warm clothes (that's a mission in itself!) and head across to

New Bransfield House, where we eat our meals and socialise.

When I walk out the door of Admirals House (our accomodation block) and look south towards the Bonner Lab my jaw just drops! It is breathtaking!

Also, it doesn't get dark at night...yet!. Very bizzarre!!! Evening starts at about 10 o'clock when the sun dips below the horizon. It stays bright twilight until about 4am when it starts to get light again! As we get nearer to christmas the twilight time will decrease.

The strange thing about 24hr daylight is that you don't seem to feel as tired as you would at home. It's almost as if your brain is saying..."It's still daylight, so you don't need to go to bed."

Summer is well on it's way here. The rock and gravel that Rothera is built on is showing through everywhere as the winter snow and ice thaws. However, most of the buildings here are still buried. We have to cut steps in the snow to get down to the doorways; doorways that usually have steps leading up to them!!!

I saw my first penguin on Sunday. I have named it Pony at Jessica, my daughter's request.

It was an Adelie penguin. He was a very inquisitive little fella, but tended to shout at us a lot. He wandered around the base for a while, then left, still shouting at us.

There are some Weddell seals camping on the ice floes around the north end of the base. We can see them out the window as we eat our meals. They tend to shout a bit, too.

We also had some minke whales in the south bay, but unfortunately I didn't get to see them. Hopefully they'll come back soon. I've been told that we also get visits from killer whales and humpback whales.

I've also been working, too, and pottering around in my little snow-buggy. There was quite a backlog of essential works to attend to, after my extended holiday in Punta Arenas.

Working in these conditions is physically demanding, time consuming, and very tiring. You have to wear bulky clothes, a hat (essential), and you never go outside without sunglasses or goggles, because of the risk of snow blindness.

It's a tough life here, but BAS do their utmost to make us comfortable.

I've got some more training tomorrow, and hopefully, I'll be camping up the mountain at the weekend. That should be a lot of fun. I will, of course, let you know how I get on.

I feel very lucky and extremely privileged to be able to experience this unique continent.