Worth the Wait

Wow, I am dragging today. I finally made it out to Cape Evans and the ice caves. The funny thing is that the Rec Directory suggested that I sign up as Last Name, First Name instead of First Name Last Name to try and trick Mother Nature. I guess that kind of crafty thinking is how you get the job done. Anyways, I have to say that the trip was definitely worth the wait. There was a lot of digging and backing up and going forward, but we ran into a curious pack of penguins. There are a bunch of videos and pictures of them in my Picasa album. I had to upgrade my Google storage in order to do that, but Google reduced the cost of 20GB to $5/year. I can deal with that.

Anyhoo, those penguins came up to about a foot from us. My camera doesn't seem to preserve the scale of things, so you can't really tell from the videos. There were originally a group of seven penguins that buzzed by us. They stopped for a moment and then deemed us uninteresting and started on. Two of the original seven broke ranks and came back to check us out. They even spoke to us for a bit.

The ice caves were also very interesting. Of course, at first, I dropped down into the cave and was not very impressed. Someone was standing in front of the opening, and my photochromic lenses were still clearing up from being outside. I couldn't see all that much. On my way out, I got some sunlight through my lenses, and I caught sight of some formations just above the cave entrance. They were rather fantastic. We were short on time in the caves, since we spent so much time hanging out with the penguins; so I didn't take any pictures in the caves. It was also 1:45am, so I was pretty beat.

Oh, I almost forgot about Scott's Hut. No undigestive biscuits there, either. A few nights ago, a historian gave a presentation on the race to the pole and some history of the area. Unfortunately, I missed it, but I lucked out. He was in the Delta with us and chatted along the ride. When we made it to the Hut, we saw the Kiwis that were staying out at Cape Evans (they tend Scott's Hut). They were flying a kite, which was a little surreal to me. It was kinda neat, though. The kite is not very easy to see, but you can see the orange and black ECW issue-gear of the Kiwis in the picture, at least.

We observe Turkey Day on Saturday, so I'll have two days off. I'm looking forward to that. I hope that it is a low-key kinda quiet weekend.