Welcome to INACH

The research project we are working on is a collaboration between the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) and the Chilean Antarctic Institute (or Instituto Antártico Chileno, INACH). There are both American and Chilean scientists working together on our research. This season, Hannah and I get to work with our Chilean collaborator, Angelica, seen here being a penguin in the INACH headquarters:

We will be living and working at a Chilean research station in Antarctica. Today, we worked with INACH to gather the rest of our gear and cargo. We like to blend in with our Chilean friends, so we happily wear both American and Chilean clothes! Here, Hannah models the INACH fashion we will use in Antarctica:

We also attended the required trainings to prepare for living and working in Antarctica. We cover safety while living at the research station and environmental protection of the Antarctic ecosystem. There are many rules we have to follow while we live and work in Antarctica!

The meeting room at INACH headquarters. On the left, you see 3 flags: the INACH flag for Antarctica, the Chilean flag, and the flag for the Magallanes Region of Chile. How good is your Spanish to read the PowerPoint slides?

We are supposed to fly to Antarctica tomorrow morning. However, the weather is not looking very good... The plane will only fly if the weather is good, not only here in Punta Arenas to take off, but also all the way across the Drake Passage and in Antarctica where we will be landing. They do not take off if they don't think we can fly and land safely! So frequently the weather doesn't cooperate, and we get delayed. If we do not get to fly tomorrow as planned, then we get an extra day in Punta Arenas and will try again on Saturday!

Gearing up

Today we spent some time in the warehouse collecting our gear to stay warm and dry while in Antarctica. The U.S. Antarctic Program stocked us up on what we call “extreme cold weather” gear, or ECW. This includes everything from warm hats and waterproof gloves to the full-body “immersion suits” hanging on the back wall, which can keep you afloat and stave off hypothermia if you fall in the water.

Hannah contemplates her ECW fashion choices. Does she want her snow pants in black, or black? Is orange the “in color” this season?

After we packed our ECW, we had some time to enjoy Punta Arenas. One of the items on the dinner menu was  guanaco. Guanacos (pronounced hwa-NA-kos) are large herbivores related to llamas and alpacas. However, guanacos are wild animals, whereas llamas and alpacas only exist in domestication. (In fact, guanacos are possibly the wild ancestor of the domesticated llama.) Guanacos are native to South America and are common down here in Patagonia. 

There are traditional dishes that use guanaco meat, and it can be found on menus at some restaurants. When you are visiting a new country, it is fun to try those unique dishes… like guanaco stew! (Don’t worry, guanacos are not endangered, so there are not concerns about over-hunting them for food.) The verdict after trying it: it tastes like tender stewed red meat.

Punta Arenas, Chile

After a long set of flights, we arrived this afternoon in Punta Arenas, Chile!

Punta Arenas is in the southern end of Chile, on the Strait of Magellan. The Strait of Magellan is a natural channel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It runs in between mainland South America (where Punta Arenas is located) and Tierra del Fuego to the south. It has a very important role in global shipping and trade for hundreds of years! If ships had to go all the way around Tierra del Fuego to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific, they have to navigate the much more dangerous rough seas of the Drake Passage. The Straits of Magellan are calmer, making it safer for ships (and all of the trade goods they carry) to get from one side of the planet to the other. 

You can see South America at the top of the map, showing Punta Arenas on mainland Chile, with the Strait of Magellan separating Tierra del Fuego to the south. Below Tierra del Fuego is the Drake Passage, the tumultuous waters in between South America and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula at the bottom of the map.

The Straits of Magellan are named for the explorer Ferdinand Magellan who led the first European expedition that mapped the area. (Of course, native South Americans were well aware that it existed long before Europeans showed up!) Ferdinand Magellan is celebrated in Punta Arenas. In fact, Punta Arenas is in the Chilean province called Magallanes, and there are statues, museums, and streets named after him and other naval explorers who visited the region. There is a statue of Magellan atop this monument in one of the parks. Below Magellan on the monument are native Patagonians. It is considered good luck to rub the foot of the Patagonian before crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica. (Well, technically it's good luck to kiss the foot, but Hannah decided to be more sanitary and rub it.)

Tonight, we ate an early dinner and are heading to bed. We have a lot of sleep to catch up on! Tomorrow, we begin sorting gear and getting ready for our journey down to Antarctica.

And we're off!

Today, we begin our trip down to Antarctica for our next field season! We will continue our work on glacial succession sites, to better understand what happens after glaciers recede in Antarctica.

This year, we will be a team of three. I'm traveling down with Hannah, who is also from Arizona State University. In Chile, we will meet up with Angelica, who will complete the team.

We are in the airport heading down to Punta Arenas, Chile. It is a long journey! We will arrive there tomorrow morning. We will meet up with Angelica, our favorite Chilean Antarctic researcher! We will be in Punta Arenas for a few days to gather gear, receive our safety trainings, and get organized for our field work. Then, later in the week, we will take off for Antarctica!

Home Sweet Home

After a very long journey, we are finally back home in the U.S. 

I spent about 25 hours in airports and airplanes to get home. I left Punta Arenas around lunch time on February 9. From there, I flew to Santiago, then on to the U.S. I landed in Texas in the early morning of Feb 10. Then, I just had one short flight left to get from Texas to my home in Arizona! I got home just in time for lunch on the 10th.

I slept a lot for the first couple of days after getting home. After 6 weeks of working with no days off, and then 25 hours without sleep to travel home, I was very tired! Now that we've settled back in at home, it's time to get back to work! Our samples will be shipped to us, but they won't arrive for a couple more months. In the meantime, we still have last year's samples to continue working on!

Cargo and samples

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!

A surprise exit

It’s a good thing we packed all of our gear yesterday!

We were scheduled to return to Chile on Tuesday on an Air Force plane. However, Chile’s Air Force is busy fighting a very large, dangerous fire in Chile right now. We weren’t sure they’d be able to stop to come get us from Antarctica. 

Today, a plane from the Peruvian Air Force landed, and they agreed to take us back to Chile… right now! We had 45 minutes warning to finish packing our suitcases, move our cargo to the hangar, and clean up. It was frantic, but we did it!

So instead of eating lunch, we flew as cargo in a Hercules LC-130 with Peru’s Air Force back to Chile.

Now we are in Punta Arenas. We have enjoyed a refreshing shower and have clean clothes on. And we were all very hungry by 8 pm when we could finally eat dinner!

Tomorrow we will have a busy day tracking down our cargo and preparing it for shipping back to the US. But first, a good night’s sleep is in order!