Tough decision...

This might surprise some people, but I have cancelled all my flights and booking to Chile and Peru today... I am now travelling back from Uruguay to the UK right after the cruise, with the rest of the people.

It was a very difficult decision, but one that brought a lot of relief. We are leaving in little more than a week and I was so stressed (because of still not knowing what's going on) that I realized I wasn't even looking forward to the cruise anymore, which is sad!

Now I can just focus on preparing for the cruise, it's so exciting! I am helping Andy with the cruise website, we have many nice ideas for it. There will be a blog like diary with photos, and we are also doing some outreach activities with different schools in Norwich who are following our cruise.

I also have a group of kids following me, I visited them in early January. It was so much fun! They are about 10-11 years old and so enthusiastic, they couldn't stop asking me questions. They had prepared a list of questions for "the scientist". Some examples: What is the meaning of life? (the little boy was so disappointed I didn't know the answer - he thought scientists know everything!!), Are you like a normal person? Do you watch tv? Do you blow things up? Have you ever been electrocuted? Hehe... I really enjoyed the visit, and will go back to the school when I'm back from the cruise to show them some photos. In fact, it's a longer term partnership, I will be helping the teacher (Samantha) with science experiments.

Ok this is all for now, take care!
Hanneke

Endless changes....

Only 11 days to go!!

It's been a crazy time though, we have had so many changes in the cruise itinerary... A few weeks ago, they delayed the cruise by 4 days, so we are now leaving on the 4th of February instead of the 31st of January (which used to be the 30th of January but that was a minor change). No problem, but it ment we had to change our trip as we would probably miss our flight from the Falklands. We didn't want to risk this, and postponed the flight to a week later (there is only one flight a week from the Falklands to Chile!) It took a lot of time and effort to change all our flights and bookings, and last Friday it finally looked like it was going to work out.

But then... we had a major change in the cruise itinerary again! (Only 2 weeks before departure...) We are not stopping in the Falklands anymore, we will disembark in Montevideo, Uruguay a few days later. This ment changing our trip again (poor travel agency, we must be driving them insane!) but for Patama (who is from Thailand) it also ment a lot of hassle trying to get a visa for Uruguay in time. She has an appointment at the embassy in London tomorrow morning, so hopefully everything will work out now. We have decided to skip Patagonia and spend most of our time in Peru. I have updated the travel dates post (see below), that post will always reflect the latest situation. I have placed a link to that post on the right, so you can always look up where we are.

Other than that, we had a cruise meeting on Friday, and I am really looking forward to go! Check out this website about our cruise, there will be a diary with photos while we are away.

We will work in shifts, we do 4 hours on, 8 hours off. If they don't change their mind, I will be working from 8:00-12:00 and from 20:00-24:00 every day. Sounds good to me, better than the 24:00-04:00 or 04:00-08:00 shift!! We all have certain instruments we are responsible for or have to work with. I am responsible for the bathymetry instruments, but I will also help out with other measurements.

We are also going to deploy 40 drifters. These are basically buoys you throw into the sea that have GPS to register their location, and also measure temperature and salinity. They give information about ocean currents, as you can follow where they go for up to 2 years. In Antarctica they usually get stuck in the sea ice after a few months though.

It's all quite fascinating, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot of new things on the cruise, I'm looking forward to it!

Hanneke

Travel dates

These are the dates of my trip south:

4 February
Flight London-Madrid-Santiago-Punta Arenas, arriving on the 5th of February. We will spend the night there.

6 February
Flight Punta Arenas - Rothera with this very cool plane!

The flight will take 4 hrs. If everything goes according to plan, we will board the ship James Clark Ross immediately.




6 February - 19 February.
Research cruise on the James Clark Ross. Here's a photo of the ship:


We will sail around the peninsula to the Weddell Sea - Sea this map for locations. On the 19th we will disembark in Montevideo (Uruguay).


20 February
I am flying back from Montevideo to London with the rest of the people from the cruise, we will be back in the UK on the 21st.