Day 4- Antarctica!

I had a rude awakening today at 4:30am to catch our flight to Antarctica. Wow, that was early. We ended up flying commercial and not on a Chilean Air Force plane, which was orginally planned. On the plane was about 40 people including me as the only American, 4 Spanish people, and the rest were Chileans.

The trip's sponsor for me is INACH (Chilean Antarctica Institute). They outfitted me with all the gear and provide all the accomodations at Escudero. Escudero is one of many bases on King George Island. As you can see on the map, King George Island is a little North of the Antarctica pennisula, which I call the Florida of Antarctica. There are Russian, Danish, Chinese, and Argentian bases on the island.

We landed on a gravel air strip. The weather was cold probably about 20 degrees, but very windy. We had to wait outside for a couple hours until all the bags were collected and we could get transported to our cabins.

From 4 straight days of travel and possibly drinking bad water in Santiago, I got really sick today. I had stomach congestion and a headache. After sleeping from 1pm to 8pm, I started feeling better, but we'll see how it goes.