10/17/2022 - 10/25/2022
Getting to Antarctica is not easy. I was told that it would be the hardest part of deployment, and so far, I don’t think they were wrong. I left Champaign at 8 AM on Monday the 17th and 48 hours later I got to my hotel in Christchurch, NZ at 2 AM October 20th. I had a seven-hour layover in LAX, a 15-hour flight to Sydney for which we were on the plane an extra hour before and after take-off and landing, then another 8 hours in Sydney until our 3-hour flight to CHC.
I don’t know how people regularly handle long-haul flights. It seemed like the only way to survive it was to sleep as much as possible, watch hour long TV shows to make the hours pass, eat snacks, and to try not to think about anything at all.
I met up with my friends and coworkers, Joseph and Corwin, in the Los Angeles airport and was with them for the rest of the journey. The rest of our 18-person team is coming down in waves after us.
Four hours at Sydney Harbor
Bleary eyed and with the sorest of legs we trudged out of our economy seats seventeen hours after we boarded, took the walk of shame, (walk of jealousy?) through the empty first-class sleeping pods, and stumbled out into the Sydney airport terminal.
Initially we were scheduled to have about twelve hours on our layover, but our flight delays cut into that by about three hours. Even so, we still had plenty of time to leave the airport and explore Sydney for the afternoon. We would not have gotten to do this a year ago with all the quarantine requirements, so I was grateful we were able to get out of the airport.
I was a surreal experience to arrive in Sydney seemingly 33 hours after we boarded. I kept saying, “I can’t believe we are in Australia, and today is tomorrow.” We had to laugh at ourselves because we kept forgetting to walk on the left side of the sidewalks and pathways.
During our afternoon we explored around The Rocks area near Sydney Harbor, had sushi, stopped at Sticky, a candy making shop I follow on TikTok. I was very excited. Then we walked out across the Harbor bridge where we had a great view of the bay and the opera house. We then made our way back around the harbor and went out to the opera house where we had a great view of the bridge!
From far away the opera house shells look like larger panels but once we got closer we could see the shells are made up of much smaller tiles. The seashell pattern is more prominent and is pretty. I especially loved one of the lounges we could see inside. I thought the picture I took turned out to look like a vintage postcard.
Waiting in Christchurch
We were scheduled to fly to the Ice, (Antarctica), Friday the 21st but delays from CHC are normal because of variable weather at McMurdo and mechanical issues that arise with the planes. We didn’t end up flying until Wednesday the 26th, so we had a lot of extra time to explore Christchurch.
We had our Extreme Cold Weather clothing issue the morning after we arrived, and knew ahead of time our flights were already delayed, so we did some sightseeing around town. We went and saw kiwi birds at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve. I don't actually have pictures of the kiwis because they are nocturnal and their habitat is dark. We were thoroughly terrorized by the kea that spend 5 minutes on Corwin's back opening his backpack and trying to pull things out. And also terrorized by the duckling eating eels. :/ Otherwise I enjoyed watching Corwin and Joseph be the pied pipers of the baby ducks.
Saturday was my birthday, and people back home kept celebrating for 18 extra hours, so I enjoyed my super long spring birthday. We walked around Christchurch Botanic Gardens and ate at Riverside Market. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous with all the flowers in bloom.
Port Hills Hike
More teammates arrived on Saturday night and the weather was great on Sunday so we went on a hike in the Port Hills south of the city. The views were incredible. We hiked up Rapaki Track across the Crater Rim Walkway and back down the Bridle Path Walk, about 8 miles and hiked uphill the equivalent of 149 flights of stairs according to my fitbit. The trails were alongside sheep pastures and so the sights were accompanied by the sheep bleating. At the crater rim we could see pretty much 360 views across CHC to the north and the snowcapped mountains, and CHC waterfront, and then to the south over Lyttleton and the Banks Penninsula.
Thanks to Jared for capturing these pictures of me on Castle Rock.
コメント