I woke up when I felt the pressure in the plane change significantly and looking out the window I was greeted with the beautiful sight of the coast. My eyes and camera feasted on views of the oceans and the first icebergs I had ever seen. To see an iceberg is truly amazing, they are huge, dazzling sculptures. We circled over the station and all too soon landed on the ice. A helicopter flew in and started ferrying people to the station and L'Astrolabe. The "airport" for Dumont d'Urville is on the mainland and the station is on an island so to get around you have
to go by chopper...classy. We were put onto the boat and found our beds, we would be sleeping on the boat while we were waiting for it to leave, as the station was rather full. At this stage I started to strip off layers of ECW. The temperature at Dumont d'Urville is around 0 degrees
which felt really toasty, I could get away with just a pair of thermals underneath my jeans and no overalls -luxury! Being a regular visitor, Jon gave us (us in this case being me and Simon the driller) a tour...this only took a few minutes as the boat is only 65m long and 12.8m at it's widest.

L'Astrolabe docks at the island Le Lion which lies next to the island that the station is on (Petrel Island). At the moment the two islands are connected by frozen sea ice, which is about 50m in front of the boat. Heading up to the bridge we watched Adelie penguins swim up to the
ice and leap onto it from the water. There was also a group of emperor penguin chicks hanging out at the edge of the sea ice waiting for their feathers to grow. It's truly magical seeing penguins up so close and going about their business.

At midday the helicopter came back to take the passengers and some of the crew over to the station for lunch. The helicopter is extremely busy today as it's the first day of good weather they have had for a few days and more bad weather is on the way. We entered the lunch room which was filled with around 90-100 people, this was extremely overwhelming. For the last month Jon and I have spent most of our waking hours by ourselves in the AASTINO and for the remainder the most people we've been in one room with is about 30 during meals. It's amazing how fast you get used to this, so 80 people was a bit daunting. We also had to get used to this being a French rather than Italian base, I was answering questions with a "si" which lead to people thinking I was
Italian, then a "yes" and finally a "oui", by which stage I think they had got the idea.

A English journalist had come in on our flight and Clare (a winter-overer bound for Dome C) offered to take us on a tour of the station and penguin colonies with her. We took a peak into all the science laboratories and had a quick chat to the scientists. At the moment the winter crew from this year are briefing their replacements for next year so it is quite busy. Most of the scientists had also just received their cargo off L'Astrolabe so the halls were packed with boxes of equipment.

The station is basically built on top of a penguin rookery. A couple of metres from the mess room a group of about 50 Adelie penguins are camped. There are 15 000 pairs of Adelie penguins on the island and each pair is currently sitting on 2 eggs. The chicks are due to start hatching in the next few days, hopefully while we are still here. The penguins have no fear of humans and quite happily wander around among the buildings. We start to walk down to the sea ice along a series of
metal walkways that wind among the various rocky peaks. Down at sea level we carefully walk onto the sea ice, dodging cracks where it meets the land ice. The sea ice is expected to start breaking up soon so it is checked everyday by the station leader to ensure it is safe to walk on.

On the ice we are greeted by the squawking of the emperor chicks, which are big, grey fluffy balls of fur about 50cm high. Walking along the ice we pass the emperor adults who alternate between waddling along as only penguins can and sliding along the ice on their bellies, propelling themselves with their feet - this looks utterly ridiculous. We visited the main emperor penguin colony which is spread out over about a km of ice. There are 6000 adults and about 1000 chicks on the ice. I think that the experience of wandering among penguins should make up for 6 days of sea sickness - I may retract this statement in a couple of days...

In the distance behind us L'Astrolabe Glacier rises up from the sea in a huge wall of ice. There were storm clouds building up behind it painting a very dramatic picture. We wandered on further, impersonating the kneeless waddle of penguins and taking lots of tourist shots. We stumbled upon a group of Weddell seals sleeping in the sunshine. The seals roll their huge bulks over to peer at us and pose for photos, then roll back and go back to sleeping. They very closely resemble large slugs.

On returning to the station we compare sunburnt noses and try not to fall asleep while waiting for dinner - in the last 3 days we've had about 6 hours sleep and it's starting to catch up. After dinner Olivier (a french scientist, also coming back on the boat) tried to commandeer
the helicopter to take us back to the boat. No helicopter for us - the pilot has been flying all day. So instead we have to traverse the sea ice on foot past a group of emperor chicks...it's a tough life.
- Suze