The Russians are comming...

So I lied everyone, you can visit me in Antarctica... If you want to pay a little over 30 grand for a cruise ship tour of Antarctica, with the Russians. This Russian ship known as the Kaptian KHLEBNIKOV, has two helicopters on it. The helicopters bring in visitors/tourists for the day. Even though I've only been here for like 2 months, I got slightly perturbed when a tourist cut me in line at the store. But I remembered that I once was a tourist on this great continent...though my trip was way better than theirs. For one reason, I was with my grandfather Phil, and for the second reason National Geographic helped run it. But anyway I'm off on a rant. So here is a shot of the tourists. They were dropping a lot of cash on stuff at the store...so soon the store will be out of T-shirts and other random trinkets. Rumor has it that the store has some great T-Shirts that they have yet to put out...just because these tourists will buy anything.

I went on another hike, this time around Observation Hill Loop. It is roughly a 3 mile hike that wraps around Observation Hill. It is a very well defined trail and I think it is one of my favorites around the base. I got attacked almost by a skua. It was funny, and I wish I had it on tape. This skua decided to dive bomb me, even though I didn't have any food. All I did was point at him and I guess he thought I was threatening him. So he took a swoop down at me and a couple passes. I told you they were crazy birds! The hike was nice though. What was really cool was that we found a ton of bones in one part of hike. I guess that Skua lives there or at least eats there. The bones were littered all over the landscape, here is a photo of it. I am not sure the bones are penguin...and unfortunately I don't have any forensic biologist friends.

Typically there is more wildlife in McMurdo; but due to an iceberg that is off in the bay of McMurdo, most wildlife has been diverted for the last couple of years. In 2000, there used to be open water all the way to the edge of the base. And penguins used to walk downtown all the time. Now the penguins are mostly at the airfield these days. Now that iceberg sort of has ruined it. But the iceberg now has moved far enough they think that we will see a decent increase of the amount of wildlife this year. An icebreaker usually comes in the second week of January. When the icebreaker comes, it will open a path and allow the wildlife to come closer to McMurdo.

The best part of the hike, was that when I finished it. I was able to see the Russian Chopper land. It was really cool.They didn't land at our helicopter terminal, they landed on the sea ice. Hope you all had a great post holiday weekend! Take care.