November 25, 2006

Antarctica Day 7: Antarctic Hangover on the Rocks

Port Lockroy, AntarcticaToday was pretty much a write off. After last nights party we never made it for breakfast, or even the mornings excursion, which was an hours zodiac cruise around more icebergs and islands. Lunch time came and went and we missed that as well, still in bed nursing our hangovers. At 2pm passengers began disembarking for Port Lockroy, which is a British Antarctic Survey base, we somehow managed to drag ourselves out of bed and onto a zodiac.

British Antarctic Territory Port Lockroy’s main building is Bransfield house, and there’s a team of scientists here doing studies on penguins etc, they have no heating in the building as it’s made of wood, and surprisingly there’s a really high risk of fire in Antarctica because the air is so dry. We wandered about the building which even has a small post box, and the Union Jack flying high above nesting penguins. There was lots of old tins of food in the kitchen area, a really old oven and in the lounge area a few newspapers, the first one I noticed was the Daily Mirror, oh cool, maybe a chance to catch up on news from home, until I noticed the date…. 24th August 1958.

Mind the date on those tinned peaches. After only managing an hour at Port Lockroy we jumped back on a Zodiac and head for the ship and more time in bed nursing our hangovers. The rest of the passengers went to a local penguin colony while we slept. 7pm and dinner was served, we missed it. And by 3am the next morning we were feeling slightly better. Click here for Day 8

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