Antarctica Part 1

We made it! Well, we've actually already been there and left, but I'm just now getting the time to write this post so, oh well. We arrived at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on the evening of January 26. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at, we did not have to travel through any ice to get to the station. As a result, the passage through the Ross Sea and to McMurdo was very uneventful, but we did get to see some cool stuff. As would be expected for this area of the world, we did get to see icebergs on our trip down.

We were even fortunate enough to see penguins on a few of these icebergs!

We also some awesome mountains and some pretty cool birds on the way into McMurdo too.

As we neared McMurdo, we were joined by our icebreaker escort, the USCG Polar Star, though we didn't really need her because there was no ice.

Soon, we arrived at the destination we had all been waiting for so long, McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

When we arrived, there were groups of volunteers there to help us tie the ship up at the ice pier. There were also two penguins there to greet us!

So, upon arrival in McMurdo, we were told that we would be departing Antarctica on the afternoon of January 29th. This meant that we had roughly 3 days to see everything that McMurdo had to offer. As such, the engine cadets made a command decision that sleep was not really important and that we would get going as soon as possible. We were the first ones to step foot in Antarctica when the gangway was lowered, and we immediately took a walk through the town to reach Observation Hill.

As you can see, Observation hill is a pretty good hike, but it was totally worth it because the view from the top is incredible.

From Observation Hill, we went back to the town and just walked around for a while to try and learn our way around. Afterwards we went back to the ship to get a snack, get something to drink, and use the bathroom. We then decided that we would wake a walk out to Hut Point and up to see the Caged Mary on the hill.

We got back to the ship around 3AM and decided we would try and catch a few hours of sleep so that we were ready to go tomorrow. I think that's enough for one post. I will keep working on it and hopefully I'll have another post ready to go for tomorrow. That's all for now!