Late last night, Dome C lived one of the major events of the season. The
last
traverse (or raid as they call it) from Dumont D'urville arrived after 10
days spent driving on the ice. We were aware of their approach from the
Aastino by the conversations the station had with them on the radio. The
first message they emitted was the report that some of the traverse had
mechanical problems and had to stop to repair 20km away from Concordia.
Imagine how you must feel so close to a warm meal and shower and suddenly
your engine stops. Being so close, some of the raid kept on driving and left
the others to their problem.

After another hour, the radio screamed: "I can see the camels!" The camels
they were talking about are carved out of plywood and sticked at the entry
of the station (if there is such a thing as an entry). I think they
symbolise the similitude between the raid and a Touhareg caravan going
through the Sahara. This meant that they were arriving. Jon and I dropped
everything, ran out of the Aastino with the video camera and watched the
first part of the raid driving in the base. There was two large snow trucks,
each pulling about 4 containers worth of supplies and attached one after
another making the whole procession look like an Australian road train. The
first two containers were clearly the habitable ones. With doors and smoke
coming
out of them, they looked from the outside easily as comfortable as out
tents. Driving the leading truck, I recognised Georges, the Doctor who fixed
my skull on the Astrolabe. It was good to welcome him in Dome C. He even
came with a present: a shirt I had forgotten just before taking the
helicopter at DDU. After arriving with Astrolabe, he helped with the
unloading of the Astrolabe and the loading of the traverse. We witness a bit
of this work while we were at DDU. A helicopter goes back and forth between
the station and the boat, picking up a box roughly every 3 minutes. It was
simply unbelievable to see the ease at which the pilot made those
manoeuvres.

We didn't stay around to see the rest of the traverse arrive a couple of
hours later. This morning however, the station, fattened with 10 extra
people
and a lot of trucks and containers, was busy like a bee hive to unload
everything. At 10:32am, Jon decided it was time to use brute strength on the
supervisor. He took the ribbon cable out of the guts of the beast and after
hesitating between running over it with the skidoo and squeezing it with
pliers, he chose the later option. Like a surgeon, he then placed the
tortured cable back in place and switched the power on. Having lost all
confidence by that stage, we barely looked at the monitor when the miracle
happened. The computer started normally and gave us the usual prompt as if
nothing has happened. Time for Champagne! Unfortunately none of it was left
from Sunday so we celebrated with the packet of biscuits I steal every day
from Jean-Louis' reserve.

This misadventure did cost us 4 days of work. We are now left with 6 days to
complete the mission. This should be just enough to get the Aastino fully
operational. The only uncertainty is the Sodar. I am still waiting for the
amplifier from Mc Murdo to fix it. According to the station manager there is
only one flight left out of Mc Murdo to Terra Nova on the 1st of February.