Almirante Brown – Body Surfing Down the Mountain

On Friday Morning, we stopped at Almirante Brown, a closed Argentinian base with an interesting history. Seven researchers were assigned here in the early 1980s, but after serving a year here, the Argentinian government told them to stay one more year as they didn't have the funds to bring them home. When this happened A SECOND TIME, in 1984, the station's doctor went “slightly mad” and burned the station down, turning their return trip into a rescue ... maybe he wasn't so mad after all.

This was our first landing on the Antarctic continent... all previous landings have been islands. We were hoping to swim here also, but the current here was also too strong... the launches had trouble loading/unloading both at the ship and at the landing site.

We're almost “penguined out,” so we decided to climb the hill and body surf down in the snow. I have given up taking pictures because we have such good photographers, with such great equipment, in our group. But I continue to bring the iPhone for some quick movies. This time, I got Melanie body-sliding down the slope. For this blog, the pictures will have to do.

The "mountain" as seen from the ship

The "mountain" as seen from the bottom

Melanie on her way down

Happy she made it

Oh yes, I went too

On a personal note, a big, big Antarctic “happy birthday” to our second-born daughter Tara. We had a laugh (and were quite impressed) when our eight-year-old grandson Jack answered our birthday call. I said “Greetings from Antarctica!” ... Jack laughed, and without missing a beat, replied, “Hello from North America!” ... the kid is quick :-) Rob