Another early start for everyone to get up and packed and breakfasted and out to the Christchurch for check-in at 8am. We had it better than some though, typical times for groups earlier in the season had been 6am and earlier. We got into our gear (lots of it), hauled our bags around to the terminal and got weighed. A lady doesn't share secrets like that. Then we hung around for awhile, and at 9:15am we got a talking-to by some American military guys (they are just so polite, it's great), then we got bussed out to the plane - a huge grey C141 (picture). They crammed us in knee-to-knee and hip-to-hip, lots of good-natured jokes about sardines and territory and exactly how much footspace the person opposite you was allowed to have (picture). We picked up a packed lunch on the way in, and boy was it a packed lunch. A ham and salad sandwich, a roast beef sandwich, a chocolate bar and a chocolate cookie, two packets of crisps, a muesli bar, an apple and an orange, and a bottle of juice and a bottle of water. As someone mentioned, it was closer to two days' rations than a single meal. I don't know what the rest of the passengers usually eat for lunch but I barely made my way halfway through! We took off right on schedule (a first, I'm sure) at 11am, with a long five hour flight ahead of us.

As you can see (hopefully) from the picture we are all crammed in very tight. Can you count the windows? There are two, for 70-something people. I was extremely lucky to be sitting right next to one and after a lot of ocean and clouds my cricked neck was finally rewarded with my first iceberg sighting! It wasn't very big but I stared at it in awe for awhile until I saw a whole bunch more and started looking at them :) They are very pretty and very blue. Then we were over the edge of the ice and there were mountains! Covered in ice! They were cool, literally and figuratively (I'm sorry, that joke has to be made by every diary writer at least once. But now it's out of the way!).

After the best landing ever (it must be the skis, I didn't even notice when we actually landed, just that the engines started making that really loud noise that means they're trying to slow down the plane), we disembarked on the ice shelf next to McMurdo station. I was finally in Antarctica! Hooray!! We piled on to Ivan the Terra Bus of previous diary fame and surprisingly slowly (surprising only in that I hadn't considered that driving over an ice shelf might cause one to perhaps lay off the accelerator just a tad) crawled our way past the NZ Scott Base and into McMurdo. Hmmmm. There was still lots of snow but now it was all dirty and there was basically a huge grid of containers and buildings everywhere (picture). Maybe it was the long flight but all I wanted was to get have a nap. But we had another few talking-tos first, basically welcome to McMurdo, but you're going to the South Pole tomorrow so have another talking-to about the South Pole while you're here. And check-in tomorrow morning is 7am. Go eat some tea.

So we ate some tea. Doug and Colin then decided to trek up the nearby mountain and I have to hand it to them, they did it and enjoyed it too. Bit too much effort for me though! I went to bed early in anticipation of the *gasp* 6:20am start tomorrow. But tomorrow I was going to the South Pole!! Hurrah!
- Jessie