Next was an overnight flight to Christchurch. We received our polar kit on arrival at the hotel, which definitely made the goal of the trip suddenly feel more tangible! We also had some training at the Antarctic Centre on how to survive in Antarctica should our plane crash, learning the essential survival skills such as building an igloo, using a snow saw or lighting a small stove. That felt surreal, especially in the relative heat of the New Zealand spring! Everything then followed quickly as the departure of our flight to Antarctica was anticipated to that evening because of forecasts of storms on the Antarctic coast.
The excitement definitely grew as we waited in the lounge of the Antarctic Passenger Terminal of Christchurch International Airport, waiting to board the Hercules aircraft from SAFAIR. There were about 30 of us, of whom more than half were Italians going to the Mario Zucchelli (MZS) coastal station, and a few Koreans (the Jang Bogo station is a few kilometres away from MZS, in Terra Nova Bay). We finally boarded the military style freight plane, and quickly understood that this would be a third sleepless night in a row… We could barely move once in our seats, and the roar of the engines was deafening. A single thick curtain closed off the toilet, and it was located in front of all the seats… Unable to sleep after a few hours, I decided to go to the pilot’s cabin. I found a tiny spot on the side, and was lucky to bask in the sight of the stunning continent appearing in the distance. The last 2 hours of the flight felt like an awake dream. I had never seen such bare and rugged landscapes as these, waves upon waves of millennial ice that filled the horizon, without any signs of human footprints. I was completely awestruck.
Landing on the ice pack runway with the Erebus volcano in the distance was also quite an experience. Multiple trucks awaited us and personnel quickly helped to unload the plane. We had about one hour to gulf an Expresso and taste the world-renowned MZS soft ice cream, and then were off again! We boarded a Basler plane to be off to Concordia. The plane is not pressurised, but luckily, I did not notice anything or suffer from hypoxaemia as once we passed the coastal mountain ridges, I finally gave in to slumber. I woke up half an hour before we arrived at Concordia. It is difficult to express the feelings that submerged me as I finally saw the tiny speck of Concordia, lost in the immense snowy landscape, and understood that that is where I would be spending the next few months. It seemed like such an infinitesimal and fragile place, lost in the immensity of a white and cold continent… But soon I would discover that it was in fact bustling with activity!
75 Degrees South 