I thought I was supposed to dress warmly?

I thought I'd start writing this as an experiment and possibly a good way to keep all interested parties up to date with happenings. It might even continue past this wee trip south. Who knows.

So as a bit of a catch-up I am currently making my way south for a rather brief trip to the Antarctic. It feels like quite a while to be away from P, F & C, but relative to a few I have met so far my trip is the briefest of blinks of the eye. Over two years in the Antarctic must feel like the start of an never ending dream. However, it is my first time - so it is all equally fascinating and exciting.

A number of us started in the UK just over a week ago and flew via Washington and Buenos Aires to Montevideo. Odd city - better steaks. The local Meat Market is a random collection of grills (paradillas) in an old, but never used, railway terminal. Not for the vegetarian, or indeed anyone without an appetite, I sampled the best steak ever without exception, grilled chorizo (Fergus - fo fee fo) and sweetmeats. Lovely. So lovely in fact we almost overstayed our shore leave and had to rush in a taxi to the port before sailing. But we made it back on board the Ernest Shackleton with a moment to spare and settled in very quickly.














More Uruguayan carne than you could shake a cow at.

So that was it. No more planes, big red and white ship, out of Montevideo, turn right and head south. Next stop Falkland Islands. This little cruise lasted from Monday afternoon until early on Friday morning. Several days filled with some work (honest), some reading, a little fretting about sea sickness, eating, admiring the view and sitting in the sunshine. I did spend a little while looking for some wildlife and now consider myself spoilt. In one hour on the top (monkey) deck, I saw sea lions diving out of the water, a little group of Magellanic penguins, albatross', skuas, terns and the briefest of glimpses of two whales. Quite unbelievable. All of this in bright sunshine - not really very polar yet.














ES in beautiful weather, South Atlantic.

Sea sickness is an odd thing. Some are completely unaffected and some are rendered utterly useless and stay in their cabin all day. As for myself, I was fine on the relatively calm trip from Montevideo to the Falklands. The only time it did pick up a bit I developed a raging appetite which seemed to help everything except my waistline. Let's hope that continues across the Drake Passage. However I am hopeful that having been able to continue writing emails on my laptop in a reasonably heavy sea while my cabin mate proceeded to retch his guts up not 2 feet away, I hope to be OK.

Arrival at Mare Harbour was mid morning on Friday. Immediately the ship began unloading a huge volume of cargo for transfer to the James Clarke Ross (BAS' other ship). This continued for the entire weekend and we were left to enjoy as much of the Falkland Islands as possible. Being a very different place than I expected, I will leave a description of it and our antics for a later posting.














The Ernest Shackleton in the Falkland Islands.