Antarctic Adventures: Christmas and New Year

Being so busy and very much in the Antarctic bubble it was hard to remember that Christmas was just a couple of days away. However, the base got into the festive spirit after Friday scrubout (mid-afternoon on a Friday, everyone gets assigned to a building where there’s an hour of cleaning) all of us at the Bonner lab sat out on the snow beside the runway eating cheese and biscuits washed down with bevvies. Being Christmas Eve Eve everyone got together in the bar to compete in a pub quiz. Our team was pretty successful and won the mystery prize as well as coming in 2^nd.

On Christmas Eve a group of us set out on a hike along the top of Reptile, which was spectacular. In the evening our energy was restored with a delicious buffet spread up in the bar (where had the chefs been hiding whole salmon?). The evening’s entertainment was Christmas karaoke, some people had better singing voices than others (ha-hem Browny).

Chefs Rob, Trev and Lewis with their Christmas Eve Buffet (photo Kate Stanton)

Christmas morning was nice and relaxed after opening some presents from home (thank you very much to all who sent me off with a gift!) I wondered across to NBH to help JenDoc with her tradition of completing a jigsaw puzzle on Christmas day (as a suggestion for next year maybe pick something easier than where’s wally) the chefs provided a hearty brunch to see us through until dinner time. Dinner was everything you could hope for on Christmas day, with soup to start, turkey with all the trimmings followed by Christmas pudding, cake and cheese for afters (which was an incredible achievement as the JCR had yet to show up with our new supplies for the coming season).

Christmas Dinner! (Photo Kate Stanton)

After dinner a group of us went up to the ops tower (more commonly known as the Eye of Sauron) to sing some Christmas carols to the teams out in the field we think it was appreciated although our tuneful singing may have become distorted over the radio…

Christmas Carols in the ops tower: Saz, Jen, Ali, Kirsten, Em, JenDoc, Me and Emma (Photo Kate Stanton)

On boxing day, I had a go at skiing for the first time. JenDoc and Julie took me along the traverse to the caboose on cross country skis it was great fun. By the time we were heading back I was getting the hang of it, or at least until Julie said as much, at which point I instantly landed head first in the snow. The following day was my first day at work, but I will talk about that at another time as the following weekend was New Year’s Eve. Due to a medical complaint the American RV Nathaniel B. Palmer had to call in on NYE, which made for a not so relaxed start to the bank holiday weekend. It was my first experience of mooring a ship but thankfully everything went smoothly and we got the chance to look round her once she was alongside.

Saz with the Palmer

Successful first mooring!

The arrival of the Palmer was not going to get in the way of tradition so as soon as we had finished mooring and donned our running gear we were ready to take part in the traditional Rothera New year’s eve 10k, I’m pleased to say that we were joined by some of the crew from the Palmer. Although I was aware that the run was happening I wasn’t intending to take part. But when people said they were just going to do 5k I thought that may be doable so I decided to give it a go. 5k later I still felt reasonably good and after being egged on by people at the finish line I continued to complete the full 10k so can someone please, please, remind me to train next year as it was painful at the end! Although I somehow managed to finish in 1h06m?!? After Saz had picked me up off the finish line we had to rush to get warm clothes on so that we could cast off the Palmer and continue celebrating the new year.