Danger! Adventure! Penguins!

Emperor penguins! But let's start from the beginning:

Two nights ago I signed up to go on a tour of some ice caves. There is a volcano here called Mt. Erebus (southernmost active volcano in the world) and it has what is called an "ice tongue" at it's base. The "ice tongue" is a fast moving glacier that slides off the side of the volcano into the sea. The waves go up under the glacier and, when they freeze in the winter, form caves.

The caves themselves are really beautiful. The glacier is this deep and bright icy blue color, and the stalactites and stalagmites normally found in caves are icicles with these tiny, really delicate ice crystals all along them and the walls. The floor of the caves is the frozen ocean.

To get out to these caves we had to drive what is called a "Delta" (read: huge truck with monster wheels) out onto the frozen bay for about an hour. We were trucking along, everything was fine, and then the Delta just stopped running. We tried to start her back up, to no avail. The driver couldn't get a good signal on his radio to call for help and ended up going off on a snowmobile. The driver came back after a bit, and an hour after that we got the Delta running again, only to stick in the snow and have to be shoveled out every 200 feet. We got a tow eventually and now our 3 hour trip had turned into about 4. We thought we were just going to turn home, but no! The tractor towed us out to a spot where there were 5 (count 'em, 5!) emperor penguins! Just hanging out!

We got about 10 feet away from them, and they weren't even scared. They were just waddling along, flapping their wings, sliding on their bellies when they were sick of waddling and looking like a mix between adorable toddlers and old school gangsters. Then! We thought we were going home, but again, no! We stopped at the ice caves and noticed some big lumps out on the ice in the distance. What were they? They were seals! GIANT seals! (I thought they were giant, but apparently they weren't that impressive by Antarctic standards). We got even closer to them, and while most of them simply basked in the sun, one of them was doing little waves with his flippers, rolling his body around, opening his mouth at us and posing for the camera like he was made for it.

It was awesome. Apparently a lot of people don't see any wildlife down here, but I've seen animals every time I've left town. I think I must have been some sort of animal witch doctor in a past life. Not sure if I liked the penguins and seals best, or the ice caves. But, fortunately, I don't have to make that decision. We ended up back at McMurdo at about 2am. Still broad daylight out.

In other news: work is going well. The long hours actually aren't too bad. After you count up all the breaks, stretch breaks and other miscellanious downtime, we only work about 8 hours and 45 minutes. Wimpy, I say. But there is certainly a lot to occupy my time. So much, in fact, that I haven't been able to get online very often. Hence my lack of blogging and also my delayed responses to emails (for which I apologize).

Our Thanksgiving meal is happening tomorrow (Saturday down here). They changed the day because 1) people have the weekend off, and 2) this is Antarctica and we don't play by the rules :) The kitchen is a frenzy of acitivity, with something ridiculous like 1300 lbs. of turkey being roasted, with many more lbs. of all the fixin's being prepared. Speaking of food, the food here is surprisingly good. I was expecting canned beans and dehydrated veggies, but we get freshies delivered every few days, and always have at least 3 choices for each meal, including a usually delicious vegetarian option (the head chef is vegan). Tomorrow should be a fun day; I still have to work, but not as much as usual, and who doesn't love being in the kitchen on Thanksgiving?? And I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday yourselves!

And lastly, a note about an earlier post: McMurdo Station is not actually on the coast of Antarctica. It is on Ross Island, which is just off the coast of Antarctica.