We have spent the past two days in Punta Arenas organizing our cargo and samples for shipment back to the U.S.
When we landed in the Herc, all of our boxes were sent to the INACH warehouse by the docks. (INACH is the acronym for Instituto Antartico Chileno, or the Chilean Antarctic Institute).
The next morning, we went to the warehouse to pick up our boxes and move them to the U.S. Antarctic Program’s warehouse, which luckily is only a few doors down from INACH’s.
There, we packaged our samples to keep them frozen at the correct temperature until they get to my lab in Arizona. They will travel on a ship, which means I won’t see them again for a few months! We have to complete a LOT of paperwork to get them safely to the U.S. and make sure they have all of the appropriate labels and permits. We were very busy, so I didn’t take any pictures of us doing that.
We also had to return our cold-weather outdoor gear to the appropriate warehouses and hand-deliver some samples to labs here in Punta Arenas. We couldn’t carry it all at once, so we were coming back-and-forth to the hotel all day. I think we walked the entire city three times!
We finished all of that work in good time, and we had a bit of spare time for a hike in the national reserve above Punta Arenas!
It was nice to walk through a forest, and to stretch our legs before a very long flight back home to the U.S. later today!
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