A winter wonderland again

Coming home in the snow from dinner last night, still light enough, just, for photography at 10pm. By the way, bottom left foreground - if you look closely - a baby penguin asleep on the boot scraper. Cute!

Ice on the beach

cold toeses and noses

Lying in bed, 8 o'clock this morning, feeling vaguely guilty, and wondering when the cruise ship would arrive, then Rick remembers that they have changed their schedule and are not coming at all! So we relax, another cuppa and breakfast in bed. Even put the heater on as it is below 5 degrees - the benchmark for requiring heat! It's a blizzard outside. I go down to the landing site without getting properly dressed - I need to check if the package of 200 postcards and stamps is still there or whether the cruise ship that requested them had picked them up during the night. They are gone, and I hope they did not just blow away. Come back up, dripping into the bunk room, long johns soaked through and shivering, much to the amusement of the other two. Back into bed to warm up and dry off. It feels like we have come full circle here, there is a lot of snow lying outside, wonder just how much more wintry it will get before we go.

We had our visit from the Saga Ruby, they kindly delivered about 30 boxes of supplies, then we went on board briefly for a hasty dinner and Rick to give a slideshow. Met a friend of my mother's, who hadn't seen me since I was 4! he had some photos of me with him - I've grown a bit but don't look much different! Sadly we didn't have much time to chat - I had to go and do finances with the purser, as they had an on board shop for us on the way here. Rick's talk went down well, in fact he got more laughs by all accounts than the stand-up comedian who followed him. We set off home near to midnight, and while we'd been on board the bay had filled with ice! It was truly spectacular, but made progress slow, and we were even wondering if (hoping!) we might have to go back and spend a night in a warm cabin ..... but no, Neil the driver got us through, with a colleague at the front with a torch shining the way. It's getting really dark at night these days, the days are shortening quic
kly, and we are glad that Rick has fixed us up with an electric light in the bunk room. Though I miss the hiss of the Tilley lamp. The next night we had three cruise ships moored nearby overnight (oh, and another superb meal with fine wines...) and it was strange to see the artificial lighting around us making the ice cliffs glow at night.

I've got mail

A wee flurry of postcards the other day! mostly showing pictures of clean beaches in Arnside! How nice. Thank you! But perhaps I didn't distribute my address well enough before I left - the addresses used were varied and imaginative. One just arrived, 'Port Lockroy, West Antarctica'! and another 'Historic Site 61' - well done, Steve and Paula, you did your homework! And Hoorah for the British postal system.

We are a bit hectic here, three ships today, we are about to go out for lunch, and going out also to give a presentation and have dinner later on a large ship from the UK, Saga Ruby, which doesn't actually land passengers here because there are too many of them. They have some supplies from the UK to deliver, and have also very kindly agreed to take some personal stuff home for us. So packing up already, in any spare minute, it feels strange when we still have three weeks here. We have managed to fill three boxes and a couple of holdalls between us, hope we don't get invited out to any smart yachts, all my good clothes have gone in. Thank goodness for that! Because I will be taking a detour on the way home - been tempted by the thought of a couple of weeks in Argentina and will be flying home on the 26th March now. Not sure where to go, but as long as it is far enough north to relax in the sun I'll be happy. One of the ships is bringing down a Lonely Planet Argentina guide f
rom Ushuaia, so if I can squeeze in the time to read some of it that will help the planning.

However with 21 ships before the end of Feb there won't be a lot of free time. And with so many early starts and late nights - first ship in at 7am this morning, out til midnight the night before - we're all beginning to feel a bit frazzled! It'll be a lot of fun though I think, of course we will have to celebrate the end of the season with each ship visit.

The babies are growing fast now, they are all a pretty large uniform size and this seems to be causing the skuas to go hungry as there are no smaller weaker ones to pick off. We are seeing the skuas looking quite desperate pacing round the flocks of chicks, and just jumping on top of any they can reach. However they seem to be very afraid of getting injured themselves, and won't risk a peck from a protective adult. We did see one baby get 'got' the other day, just in front of the boat shed, and the poor little thing was eaten alive, still feebly flapping for a long long time while the skuas had their grisly lunch. Heart-breaking to watch. However we do have to keep reminding ourselves that there really isn't much room for any more penguins on this little island! Rick's favourite joke in his introductory talk, once he has everyone hating evil skuas, is that the world would be overrun by gentoos if something wasn't eating them!

cuddly gentoos

We have been overrun with thousands more gentoos! but they are quite manageable and are resting in boxes at the moment. They are soft and furry and about 6 inches high with Port Lockroy written on their tummies. We had a visit at long last from HMS Endurance, who had left the UK in November with more supplies for us on board, more leaflets, more shopping bags, more propane cylinders (hooray, we'd been eking out the one we had, trying not to put the fire on too often). And they brought us the cuddly gentoos that had missed the boat and were not ready to come down with us in October. We have spread them around the shop, in every nook and cranny, as advised by last year's postmistressing staff. They look lovely! and at least they'll be here for next season - I doubt we'll sell them all in the last few weeks.
Yes, and we really are on the home straight now, less than 5 weeks to go, only a month - and I can't imagine how we will get everything done that needs doing before we go. The last mail will go to Stanley on the 26th of this month, along with all the gear we picked up on the way down - oh but if we send the cancels back then how do we frank the mail for the last two weeks? hmm, and I ordered more stamps under the assumption that we will need them for the last few weeks of mail, but if we can't frank them then we don't need the stamps - this all needs a bit more thinking about! Not that straightforward being a postmistress you know! let alone dealing with the customers who want to know why on earth we have run out of one colour of t shirt, and why couldn't we have brought more stuff with us ... More stuff! really not possible. If only they'd been there at midnight on the day we arrived, when we finished unloading the first 500 boxes.
To more cheery subjects! - the baby pengys really are running around now, they have dried off, cleaned up and are very fluffy themselves, to rival the toy ones in fact, but even cuter of course. We are still in a social whirl and wondering how we will eat all the food parcels that are being pressed on us, when in fact we are out for dinner every night. Just returned from a barbecue (indoors thank goodness) tonight actually, our hosts were on the other time zone, so we were home, fed and showered, by 6pm! nice to have the whole night left without any washing up to do even. I've even turned down a few invitations recently due to a flu bug which has now got my throat rather badly - saw a nice doctor on a cruise ship who gave me some penicillin - hope that will clear it up soon. It's not good being under the weather here, there's not much chance to take a break without leaving your colleagues over-worked. February is looking pretty busy, but manageable, with the odd free spell h

ere and there. I do hope we get some more sun though - it's still pretty thin on the ground, was snowing hard again this morning - when will I get all the painting done?!