Happy New Years!
It's Dec. 31 and I'm in Punta Arenas, Chile. The internet onboard the ship is painfully slow (basically nonexistent) so I snuck out for a coffee and some free wifi at a local cafe. The trip so far has been great. We flew for something like 24 hours, getting on an off planes as we skipped down to the end of the South American continent. Once in Chile we were whisked through customs by a local official who had the power to waive his hand and open up a new line for the Antarctic science party immediately. Our numbers have swelled to about 30 people, scientists and students from all around the world, lots of interesting people excited to embark on the research expedition.

Yesterday, we were all given big black duffel bags full of gore-tex jackets, thermals, socks, hats gloves and some other random cold weather gear, it's called ECW or Extreme Cold Weather gear. It took several hours to make sure everyone had the right sizes. After the gear issues were resolved we headed to the ship, had some safety briefings and started to locate all the scientific gear we shipped down months ago. As of today, we located everything except one small cardboard box, there are a lot of places to continue checking. I'm going to hit the local grocery store for some last minute provisions and then get on the boat for our departure. I will try to get some more posts our while we are at sea. Cheers!
Hank