Out of ice

Almost three months in the ice are over. The trip towards home begun last wednesday, when a bandwagon showed up at the horizon with two people working at the Troll station logistics. By then we had packed almost everything and piled most of our equipment outside the container. The next morning we dismounted the camp (including various tasks as taking down a flagpole, covering windows with metal lids, taking down tents, digging electricity cables out of snow...) and by evening we had reached Troll. (120 km in a heavily charged bandwagon takes about 6 hours).

Three days at Troll went quickly, organising equipment, listing equipment, returning equipment and socializing. As two field parties had retruned, the japanese leader of the glaciology group organised a sushi party. Me and Geraldine (the girl I spent last month with studying petrels) were happy to socialise until the morning. Three days provided enough time to get to know better some of the logistic-guys, some of them proving to be much closer my way of seeing the world than what I had expected. Working with big machines does not apparently have to mean that bird researchers are seen as weird hippies ;) Positive experience, and healthy to talk to non-academic people! Last evening all work was done and I managed to get myself out for a small walk to the closest mountaintop of the station. Sunshine, wonderful light over huge glacier-landscape, no wind and a feeling of complete freedom being alone in on top of the mountain. A good goodbye to the Antarctic!

On monday we flew back to Cape Town, via the Russian Novolazarevskaya station. Nicely, we had a day-flight and were able to sleep in a hotel bed instead of the big windowless transport-aircraft Ilyushin. Quite a difference in the quality of sleep! In Cape Town we have had a "jenter paa bytur" day with Geraldine (what they do not have in Tromso but do have here is a smoothie and juice bar, mm.... and even more mm..... after some months without fresh fruits or vegetables), enjoyed the sun, plants and birds, eaten well, and packed to be ready to leave today towards the cold, northwards this time.