At 5.45 on the morning of November 13th, I hauled my newly repacked luggage to the Antarctic passenger terminal to check in. Once ticked off the list, I had to find my two orange ECW bags from the other day and put on the parka, overalls, and bunny boots which were required to be worn on the flight. The rest of my stuff was sorted into four categories:
Carry-on – the items to keep with you at your seat on the plane. These can come in as many pieces as you want, but they all have to fit at once in a prescribed volume, measured by a plywood box at the CDC. Anything that doesn't fit in that box has to be checked.
Checked – Just like on a commercial flight, checked luggage gets stowed with the cargo and you are reunited with it at your destination. Unlike a commercial flight, even if your flight is cancelled or turned around in midair, you still won't see it until you arrive in Antarctica, because one it's been palletized it's a right old pain to get it out again. This is why you have a . . .
Boomerang Bag – Weather in Antarctica is extremely unpredictable, and as we have learned this year, aircraft maintenance can be, too. Sometimes you can be well on your way when a blizzard swoops onto the airfield and the flight has to turn around back to New Zealand. This is called a 'boomerang.' As your checked luggage will stay checked until you arrive in Antarctica, it is therefore wise to pack a few days' worth of clothes and toiletries in a separate bag which will be checked but not palletized, in case you end up with a prolonged holiday in Christchurch.
Leave in Chch – It's summer in New Zealand and also summer in Antarctica, but the former can be quite warm while the latter is well below freezing. Therefore there are probably clothes you won't be needing until you get back to New Zealand, and these are kept for you at the CDC until you return. I left my two skirts, a light cotton shirt, sandals, and antihistamine.
Once everyone was dressed and all our bags were appropriately tagged and checked, we were given our boarding passes and released to have breakfast at the strip mall around the corner. It was a rather quiet and rugged-looking bunch who poured into the trim café that morning; I wonder what the more casual visitors must have thought.
The flags of Antarctic Treaty signatories hang in the Passenger Terminal
Then we were back to watch another video – I have seen so many of these now I forget what this one was about – probably the Antarctic Treaty, which is an agreement between all the nations that operate in Antarctica to preserve it for peaceful science and not to claim sovereignty over it. This makes it one of the few things that North and South Korea agree on.
My highly technological boarding pass
The equally technological boarding check
After the video, we queued for security, which was much like any security queue at any small airport, with the exception of the refreshingly low-tech boarding pass check. Once through the metal detectors and hand luggage scan, we boarded a school bus which was old enough I might have taken it on a field trip as a kid, to be taken out to the waiting C-17.
We passed the lame C-17 on the way to our shiny new Hawaiian one.
Had I been quicker into the queue, I might have got onto this very special private-hire city bus:
On the way into the plane we were each given a bagged lunch and some earplugs. The C-17 is not designed for passenger comfort, and we would be flown south in close proximity to four enormous jet engines. The hearing protection was appreciated.
There were about ten rows of forward-facing seats in the plane, but I wanted the proper C-17 experience so I made my way to the line of lengthways seats behind them. We shared the fuselage with the cargo, and it became apparent why, once bags were checked, they weren't coming out again.
Just like on a commercial flight, we got the standard flight safety briefing, only our cabin crew were a pair of Guardsmen straight from central casting. Turns out, even on a C-17, the life vests are under the seats and are inflated by pulling on the toggle, but as there are no overhead lockers, the oxygen masks are in a compartment in the wall behind your head. Now you know.
There were quite a few first timers on my flight, but it was obvious who the experienced polar travellers were, because they knew the most comfortable way to get some shuteye and got right to it. More sleepless ones had books or e-readers. The man next to me was reading quite an interesting history of the leadup to WWI from a naval perspective, but the book that most caught my interest (by which I mean, it made me laugh out loud when I saw the title) was a few seats up from me.
That’s Friedrich Nietzsche’s bestseller ‘Why I Am So Clever’, if the image is too small to read.
It was a strange thing to take off on a plane with no windows. We evidently turned a few corners, and we seemed to taxi the entire length of the runway before turning around to take off, but when they hit the gas, WOW did we ever go!
I had noble intentions of polishing off a good chunk of Worst Journey during the five-hour trip down, but the suspense of the last few days and the early morning soon caught up with me, and I joined the sleepers instead. When I woke up, I noticed a cluster of people around the porthole aft of my seat. Had we reached Antarctica?
YES.
In my expert opinion, we are somewhere over Victoria Land.
Not long after this, we got the announcement that we were beginning our descent, so it was back to seats and on with ECW and seatbelts. For such an enormous bird, the landing was admirably smooth, and once all post-landing checks had been completed, the hatch was opened. Long before we felt the cold, we could see our breath in the air, as the moisture levels in the cabin met the declining temperature. I had read about how stepping off the plane was like walking into a wall of cold, so I'd put on my balaclava and goggles, but when my turn came to start down the gangway, I realised it was actually quite mild. Not what one would expect for being . . .
IN ANTARCTICA!
If the cloud was higher, you’d see Mt Discovery behind me.
A low ceiling of cloud obscured the tops of the mountains, but all the same I had much the same experience as I had when I first came out of the tunnel into Lyttelton, as suddenly all my reading and reference photos slammed into place. There was Observation Hill, and up along the Hut Point Peninsula a surprisingly large square promontory – that's why they call it Castle Rock! Windless Bight, White Island (it's white!) and Black Island (it's black!) and though I couldn't see its stripey dome, what was obviously the foot of Mt Discovery. And my feet, standing on the snow of the Barrier! I barely had time to be surprised how close everything was before our gaggle of shuffling scarlet penguins was ushered onto an enormous red people mover and we started our ride to McMurdo.
It’s called a Kress, and is more commonly employed at logging sites in Canada.
The windows were above eye level but if I stretched up I could see out. It turned out this was not a an effective strategy, as within a few minutes they had fogged up and I could only see through a narrow strip at the bottom. That may have been the more exciting way to come in to town, as the teasing glimpses of turquoise pressure ridges and the piebald slopes of the Gap suggested more than they revealed.
We pulled up outside big blue Building 155, the hub of activity in McMurdo, and as I stepped out into the light flurry of snow, there was Observation Hill with the Polar Party's memorial cross positively looming over everything. My coordinator, who had worked tirelessly all through the summer to line up resources for my visit and calm me down every time there was a hiccup with my medical, met me with an enormous hug, and I had a little cry on her shoulder. Here I was at last.
