"Wherever you go, there you are"

3 weeks into the journey.

Blogging was a bit difficult the last few weeks, so I guess the rather small audience might have shrunk further, but for the few die hards I will try and give a update of what I have experienced since I left.

The journey on the SA Agulhas was very comfortable and rather special in a way.  She is visibly an older ship but she has the charm and silent reserve of someone who has served her crew faithfully for her whole life.  As you might also know it is the last ice journey of the SA Agulhas I since SA Agulhas II will be delivered in 2012 and the voyages to Antarctica will be handled by the newcomer.  I shared a small cabin with two of my team mates and it worked surprisingly well.  I guess it is a good sign for people that signed up to work together in Antarctica for a year.  The journey lasted for two weeks.  We managed our way through the roaring forties and furious fifties with ease, I think the biggest swell we encountered was maybe 4 meters so we could feel we were not on solid ground but I expected the 40's and 50's to live up to their reputation.  The wind was quite strong and cold but for a 100 meter power boat that caused little trouble.  It was only when we ventured onto the deck to view the ocean that we realised that the climate was changing.  As we started to encounter ice bergs and pack ice the sea calmed down further and it felt like we were sailing on a lake.  Life on the Agulhas consists of eating, sleeping, socialising, watching movies and attending the occasional briefing.

When we eventually made landfall (or in this case icefall), me and one other team mate needed to get ready to help the drivers to receive our cargo on the ice and to get ready to haul it 300 km to the SANAE IV base.  To put it into perspective the 300 km relates to 36 hours driving in good weather.  Our journey evolved into a nearly 72 hour slog.  On Christmas morning we woke up to stormy conditions but it was decided that we will start the journey in any case, the driver team leader probably anticipated that the weather will improve over the next day, it didn't.  The vehicles we use are designed for agricultural purposes and with load you can look at maybe 12 km/h top speed, the problem is some are older than others and have less towing capacity.  So when we started off on our journey these lessons of which vehicles will not be able to tow their loads still needed to be learned.  So when the first vehicle got stuck and when the weather worsened we probably should have guessed that we were in for quite a ride.  At some point I got very frustrated with the whole process.  The old hands, however, always kept their cool and taught me that things are always more difficult that you expect in Antarctica.  Some even say that there is no such thing as time in Antarctica, only weather.  The weather eventually cleared and we reached the base on an immaculate day.  The surroundings and base completely blew me away.  The mountain ranges are absolutely beautiful.  Everything is so white and so pristine that it is in a way quite sad and ironic that we can only truly experience it by being here; and us humans despite our best intentions, by default, tend to pollute where ever we go.  When everything is so clean and white the smallest drop of oil feels like sacrilege, we obviously try and pick up whatever we drop but we can also miss.

After arrival at the base we needed to start getting cargo into the base.  This is hard work, no matter how you look at it, and we are still not done.  I am also trying to learn as much as possible of the systems on base from the old year team members, so there is a lot to digest and I sometimes feel a bit daunted by the tasks at hand.

In my mind I have probably not accepted where I am yet, everything I experience still feels a bit dreamy, but I hope today, which is a Sunday will allow some rest and reflection and the past experiences and on the brand new year ahead of me.