February 21 Heading further south to Discovery Hut

The scenery was always spectacular! If you zoom in you will see wind turbines on the Hill - this is a very windy place. Once they used nuclear power but that was dismantled thankfully.



It was another icy landing at Hut Point Peninsula, but by this time we were getting quite adept at walking on ice - even in great clumping gumboots.

There was quite a line up to get in to see the interior of this hut and before we were allowed in our boots had to be brushed clean. The delightful Paul, a navy man who was there as the NZ Govt rep for the Dept of Conservation (to ensure we observed all the right protocols and protection measures), helped with that.

A memorial to a man, George T Vince, a member of the British Antarctic Expedition 1901-04 who lost his life  near here. Maybe fell off the cliff!

A pile of seal blubber and bones used to make soup etc - yummy!

What flavour dip would you like with these delicate biscuits? There were times when attempting to get to the Pole, that the men in the expedition parties survived on one of these biscuits per day. They’re quite large and with a chunk of cheese they would make a meal - or so the story goes. If I were hauling a sledge, I'd be wanting more than that!



Moulting Adelie pengiuns

Communications station perched high on a ridge behind the US McMurdo Station. It was very stark but so beautiful. That’s brave Lindsay waiting for me to come and walk with him - the drop on the left was steep and treacherous straight onto the rocky shore and sea (he has a bit of a height thing so I was really impressed with him tackling the places he did). Ahead is a colony of Adelie penguins.

Over a few days we visited the places on Ross Island where the expedition huts built by Scott’s and Shackleton’s early expedition teams still stood - after over 100 years. Amazing! We were fortunate to be able to land. A month previously, this same ship couldn’t get to some of the spots because of high seas and winds. Lucky us!  All the while Mt Erebus loomed nearby quietly puffing out ‘steam’.
There was little wind and the temperature was a balmy -4C as we dropped anchor that morning to visit Discovery Hut; this hut had been built on Scott’s first expedition in 1902. We landed close to the huge US base which houses over 1000 personnel, some of them all year round; we weren’t invited in (possibly the b .... virus) but we did chat to a few guys going for a walk.
It was a long wait to get in to the hut as only a few were allowed to enter at a time, but after we had solemnly tiptoed through the hut, we climbed a snowy ridge behind the hut and came across a colony of Adelie penguins. They are the cutest things.