The beginning...

Posted Monday 18th Feb, Describes: Sunday 17th and Monday 18th
I have arrived on the other side of the world!!!
After a long day packing and trying to work out what I inevitably must have forgotten (still not worked it out yet...), me and Laurence took a taxi to BAS with my 6 items of luggage. I showed Laurence round BAS (stuffed albatross and all..), then we loaded up the mini-coach and it was time to leave (5pm). We were waved off by a decent number of people, a few of whom came in specially! After a ~3hr journey we arrived at RAF Brize Norton ((Oxfordshire). I was starving, as I assumed we would stop off on the way, so got some food from the cafe there. It all looked exactly like a normal airport terminal, just lots smaller and many of the passengers were obviously military! The weight limit was 54kg in total (mine weighed 41kg!) but the hand luggage limit was 4 kg, I had 2 pieces of hand luggage, 6kg each! But they let me through anyway.
We spent 8.5hrs on the plane (Omni Air International - renamed Aldi Air by Huw). Watched Stardust (rather cheesy, but quite good) half and episode of Frasier and slept during the last film, ate 2 ok plane meals, before arriving Ascension Island, where we were herded into a building surrounded by barbed wire (aka 'the cage'). We spent 1.5 hrs there while the plane refuelled - I got a passport stamp (50p!) and bought an Ascension Island T-shirt and postcard (showing the beaches on the other – non-military side of the island). It was very hot and humid, the scenery was bleak but red rock, so looked like Mars! No picture-taking allowed, but we all sneaked a few! Then we were herded back on the plane for another 7.5 hrs and 2 more meals! This time there was
The Bourne Ultimatum and another film I slept through. Arrived at Mount Pleasant (neither a mount nor pleasant in the words of Huw again!) at 5pm GMT, 2pm local time.
Got all our luggage and went through customs where Lewis got a grilling and his apples taken away! Then we got on a minibus and drove for an hour through more bleak, but quarry-like scenery. Strangely pretty though. Arrived at Port Stanley (mainly tin-roofed houses but a population of ~1500!). Then we all formed a nice luggage-unloading train and got to our cabins pretty quickly. I am sharing a quadruple cabin with Hilary, one of the technicians at BAS, mainly here, I think, to crush core samples. It is actually pretty large and I have managed to put all my stuff away.
We all had dinner, I only had 2 of the 5 courses available, which were smoked salmon with dill/salad and lamb roast. Peter Enderlein (PSO-Principal Scientist for the biologists) came in part the way through to tell me Hugh was waiting for me in the UIC, I stupidly said ok, then he left without me having any idea who Hugh was, why he was waiting for me, when I was meant to meet him or even where and what was the UIC!! I blame it all on the long journey! Fortunately Tara tok me there, and I discovered he was one of the oceanographers/physicists on the cruise before ours who was going to brief me on the instruments and processing I would use/do. He was lovely and very useful, though apparently they have really chucked me in the deep end as I have never cruised before. But I can’t mess up the raw data so even if I kill the rest of it, they can always redo it from the raw data!
Anyway (obviously) I have managed to get online but bad news I am afraid, as it will be temporary. We will have internet while the newly-fixed engine is tested and the equipment is brought on board, and for the first week-ish of the cruise though it will be slow and it is unlikely I will be able to upload pictures. Then we lose internet for about 5 weeks, and regain it again for the last week-ish. I will try to find time to do blogs in Word and upload them all when we get back in range. Anyway, must go to bed now, have a long day tomorrow loading the ship up and unpacking the equipment!
Miss you all…
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