Antarctica - November 2019
The alarm clock rings. It is 4.30 a.m. on the morning of 6 November 2019 and I am in a hotel room in Christchurch, New Zealand, and about ten kilometres from the Antarctic Centre from where military flights to Antarctica depart. We should have left a few days ago, but an hour before take-off, during the last inspection of the plane, a mechanical failure was found. We therefore had to stay on the ground for a few days waiting for the fault to be repaired or for another plane to be sent to us.
Last night when I returned to my room I found a paper under the door. They told us that the plane had been repaired and that we were ready to leave. A shuttle will pick us up this morning at 5 o'clock.
I get up, quickly close my bags and leave the room. The shuttle is ready. I get in and sit on the front seat. It is my first mission to the South Pole and I do not know what to expect, but to say that I am excited is an understatement.
We arrive at the Antarctic centre and wait for the plane to be inspected for the last time. We arrive at the South Pole from New Zealand in two flights. The first from Christchurch to McMurdo station on Ross Island. The second from McMurdo to South Pole Station, which is right at the geographical South Pole, in the middle of the world's largest desert: the Antarctic plateau.
After two hours we are told that everything is ready. The plane has passed the last control and the weather is good to fly. We are ready to board the plane.
The plane is an LC-130. A U.S. Air Force military cargo plane. There is not much room for passengers. There aren't even any real seats. Just fabric seats between metal tubes installed on the side walls of the plane.
For the trip we are forced to wear all our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear for safety reasons. With a huge jacket and pressurised boots, it is even more difficult to sit on those ‘seats’.
The plane finally starts its engines, and the noise is deafening. I put my earplugs, offered by the military, under my noise-cancelling headphones. It's not really enough to cover the noise, but it's much better. We finally take off.
The flight lasts about eight and a half hours. I am sitting, leaning against the wall of the plane. There are very few windows, and it is not possible to look out while sitting. The view is of the plane's cargo and two servicemen who start walking back and forth every half hour with a torch in their hands and minutes to inspect the pipes inside the plane and make sure there are no leaks or faults.
I don't want to eat or drink. The bathroom in the plane is a metal funnel attached to the wall, with a curtain to close behind. It is not an environment designed for women. I put on my hood to cover my face and try to sleep.
After eight hours of flying, one of the two military men waves that we are landing. The weather is still good, and it looks like we can land without any problems. The plane begins to descend in altitude. The undercarriage descends and we finally touch down. We are on Ross Island.
As soon as the plane stops, I start to get dressed: hat, glasses, gloves. When I am ready I start walking towards the aircraft door.
After a few minutes the door finally opens. In front of me is an almost alien landscape. The white ground of a whiteness I had never seen before. The blue sky I had never seen. On the horizon a chain of frozen mountains and a smoking volcano, Mount Erebus. My heart goes to three thousand. I really feel I have landed on another planet. Totally different from planet earth as I have known it until now.
Actually then, on arriving at the South Pole I realised that Ross Island and the coast are the part of Antarctica that most resembles planet earth. There are mountain ranges, the ocean (albeit frozen, most of the time), there are penguins, seals, whales and other animals. Temperatures are humane, in summer the temperature does not fall below -20°C.
Whereas the South Pole and the Antarctic plateau are truly an alien planet. A frozen desert that does not host any form of life, because nothing survives. The temperatures, and especially the wind temperature, even in summer drop to -50°C and in winter to as low as -100°C.
Today, on the eve of my fourth mission to the South Pole, I still vividly remember the butterflies in my stomach I felt when that hatch opened and I had that white, desolate landscape before my eyes for the first time. And although, five years later, I have experienced so many touching moments in that alien world, this is still one that I remember with goose bumps.
Sofia
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