Christchurch, NZ

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I'm Down Under! We left Denver at 4:30PM on Friday and- after about 17 hours of flying- arrived here in beautiful Christchurch, New Zealand at 5:00AM on Sunday morning. Yeah, do the math. As grueling as travel can be, Quantas Airlines is pretty great and the 900 or so of us on board the 747 only tasted our stomach contents once or twice as we hit some awful turbulence around the equator and the plane took a nasty elevation drop that even made the flight attendants cringe. Anyway, we hit the ground running on Sunday and after checking into our hotels we soaked up the beautiful sunshine around town. Christchurch is located on the South Island's east coast with beautiful, glacial-capped mountains looming to the west and the beach just to the east. I'm staying at the YMCA right across the street from a former boys college that has been converted into an artist colony/shopping area so the mix of grand architecture and talent-for-sale is inspirational. Right nearby are the notorious botanical gardens with hours of wondering pleasure through acres of tropical plants and trees with the craziest trunks and bark varieties. Of course, since it's springtime here, the birds provided a deafening backdrop as soon as I tried to take a nap along the riverbanks. Oh, and we saw a few eels swim by too... They say that Christchurch is the most British city outside of England but I think it might be tied with Gibraltar for such a title. Regardless, the lovely ring of New Zealand accents and pervailing eco-friendly culture here constantly make me smile!
Another thing that makes me smile is the fact that I'm done with clothing-issue at the CDC (clothing distribution center) at the Antarctic Center! We had to report there at 1:00 today and were met by a slew of clothing reminders, requirements and regulations. We each got two full orange bags of ECW extreme cold weather gear) that we then proceeded to try on in various arrangements (including three types of long underwear, windbibs, wool socks, a full suit of carhartt bibs and jacket, about 8 pairs of mittens and gloves plus gloveliners, a fleece outfit, the giant red parka ubiquitous in Antarctica, and really funny white "bunny boots" that have valves for compressed air and made me want to bounce around like I was on the moon). It was quite a hassle but the whole thing made my impending reality that much more real. We had to repack everything and label it accordingly: checked baggage (totaling less than 75lbs), a "boomerang bag" in case we fly part way and have to turn around due to bad weather and need a change of normal clothes, and a carry-on bag that is (ironically) subject to American TSA regulations regarding the ban on liquids and the like (unlike domestic NZ flights). We will have to wear a plethora of the ECW gear on the 5 hour flight tomorrow- no one mentions it but I'm assuming that it's preparation for worst-case scenario survival- so I'm hoping that air force planes have strong air conditioning or at least unlimited slushies...
Speaking of tomorrow, our scheduled 6AM flight is now in question and we might HAVE TO get paid to hang out in Christchurch a little longer. Plus get an extra $230NZ compensation per diem. Boohoo. The people scheduled to fly out today sat in the airplane for an hour or so before their flight was canceled due to bad weather in McMurdo and a baggage handler said that it's not looking good for tomorrow either. I don't want to get caught up in the rumor-mill of when the flights will take off or not but I'm hoping to get a yah/nah before I leave my hotel tomorrow morning...

Random fact about New Zealand: I have yet to confirm the concept that toilets flush in the opposite direction. I asked an interesting Ice-bound scientist who I was sitting next to on the airplane and he gave me a long, complicated explaination about controlled laboratory settings and centrifugal force which made me more eager to test it out for myself. Unfortunately (or fortunately) all of the toilets I have come across here are water-savers and the small amount of water they use goes straight down in an efficient, no-nonsense manner. So I guess the saying should be that if Americans built toilets in the Southern Hemisphere they would swirl in the opposite direction...

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Comments

[Judith Parker]

Washington Univ. going to the ice too
Betty, I wonder if you'll get to the outposts where these researchers are going... good to read about Antarctica in today's Yahoo news: A group of Washington University researchers will head to Antarctica later this month to learn more about the continent's geologic origins. The group will install 10 seismographs that will provide data to help other scientists build better climate change models, Douglas Wiens, a Washington University professor and team leader said."We have no idea what's beneath the ice," Wiens told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "No one has even taken any rock samples. It's thought that when the Earth's climate started to cool millions of years ago, the first glaciers in the world formed in these mountains."The team's base camp will be built 250 miles north of the South Pole, in a region of Antarctica that has only been explored by a Russian team 50 years ago and last year by a Chinese group.The seismographs will help researchers understand the motion of the continent's ice streams, giant rivers of ice that can be up to 80 miles wide.The flow of the ice streams are expected to provide clues about the rocks beneath.