Return to Chile

On Thursday, we packed up the rest of our research at Escudero Base and began the journey home.

Our flight back to Chile was on a chinstrap penguin.

In English we call them "chinstrap" penguins. In Spanish, they are "barbijo" because a "barba" is a beard.

Before we left, we left our mark on Escudero! At the Navy station nextdoor, there is a sign post telling the distances to everyone's home towns. Dr. Hannah and I added our homes to the tower of signs!

We are 11,634 km from ASU and 13,201 km from PSU. Algarrobo is the home of our friend Ricardo who helped us make the signs.

We are now back in Punta Arenas, Chile. We have spent the past two days packing our cargo and samples to ship home. We do that by working in the US Antarctic Program's warehouse in Punta Arenas. Here we are on the US research ship where we did a lot of our sample packing:

Dr. Becky and Dr. Hannah on the ends, with our Chilean collaborators Luis, Catalina, and Angelica in between us. We had a great team this year!

Later today, we begin the flight back to the U.S. We will soon be home!