As Sid wrote, we spent yesterday mazing our way through the ice of the Le Maire Channel. Its quite other worldly – grey hues, bright white specs of ice surrounding the boat, seals every once and a while lounging on a ice berg – some barely bigger than the seal. Zig zagging our way through, surrounded by glacier that wowed even our glacier / climate scientist onboard! <br><br>
However Antarctica also brings out the best in people – everyone down here is sacrificing something to be here. For many tourists it taking time – at least 2 weeks to be down here, plus the inconvenience of not having connection to the outside world. For those at a base its being away for months at a time. These small and large sacrifices bring everyone together and everyone is that much more helpful and giving of their time while down here. Last night we visited the Ukrainian base and as always the team there was wonderfully welcoming. 12 of them spend an entire year – dropped off in late march and picked up again they following year. They also carry out an incredibly large amount of science – continuing observations started by the british (and originally used to discover the ozone hole) as well as starting research of their own. They gave us a wonderful tour of their offices, their machines, and then one of their prized living areas – the Faraday bar – probably one of the coziest places in Antarctica (of course another prized living area at this base in the sauna – the first building the ukrainians built after taking over the base). The welcomed us, we exchanged stamps, postcards, swapped argentine wine for home made moonshine and had a lovely evening exchanging tales. A HUGE thanks to our friends at Vernadsky. Today we make our way back up the Le Maire starting our way north again.<br><br>
Laura
