Summer station

We have been stuck in the base due to a massive storm for more than a week. The ship was supposed to be  leaving for South Africa today, but due to sucky weather half of the people are on the ship waiting, the drivers are at the SA Summer station, and a couple of people were still at the base with us. The plan was to drive to summer station with all of the remaining takeover personnel stuffed in the Caboose. Hopefully the weather clears up enough for them to be flown to the ship, either that or the ice breaks up enough for the ship to get close enough to the ice shelf for the peoples to be swung over with the crane. The ship can only stay here till at the latest the 25th of Feb. If it stays any longer than that there wont be enough fuel to get them back to Cape Town. So if the weather doesn't clear up enough for flying the last 20 people will have to stay till they can be flown out with a feeder flight or something.

We left for Summer station yesterday morning at around 11:30, ready for the 36-or-more-hour drive to summer station. We were 3 drivers per Challenger, and then 12people in the 8sleeper Caboose. The younger bunch decided that riding on top of the Caboose would be better, so along with some Mummy bags and a few bottles of Tequila, they roughed it out on the roof.

We reached halfway around 6am and had to stop to pick up Challenger 6, whose turbo (or something) crapped out in the previous storm. I know absolutely nothing about cars and engines, so clogged up air filters and turbo parts kinda just sounded like bla bla to me. Either way, it was leaking oil like a mofo. After some struggling we got it loaded onto a sled and tied it down so it won't slip off somewheres along the way. While some of the guys, that looked like they knew what they were doing, were working on 6, I decided to go wake the roof-sleepers with some Valentines day hugs/fall on top of them. Was kinda fun being one of two girls amongst a bunch of men on V-day, plus we had an amazing sunset once again!

An hour later we were ready for the second half, or so we thought, five meters further Challenger 3 was stuck, fun times. Apparently the load was too heavy, so we shuffled the loads around and we were off again.

Challenger 5 is a bit small, so only one of the three people can lie down to sleep at a time, unless you want to be doing some (semi-inappropriate) cuddling with a teammate...we took 2hour turns, so two hours driving, two hours of sitting on a way uncomfy chair next to the driver and then 2hours of sleeping in the back of the cab. So after we had challenger 6 on a sled at the back, I had one of my awesomely brilliant lightbulb moments, and rather than sitting for two hours and sleeping for another two, I jumped into 6 with a sleeping bag and pillow and slept like a dead thing for the next four hours. When I woke up the weather had turned kinda crap and it was windy, snowy and there was like no contrast, thank goodness we were almost there!

Three hours later we arrived at the summer station, unpacked everything, and finally had a chance to eat some proper food, but only after being hoisted up by the crane in a bucket rather than climbing up the ladder - so much cooler!! Our first CATtrain without the drivers was a success, yay!
The base consists of a couple of containers that were redesigned to be a mini base, having 5 rooms with 2 bunk beds each, a kichen, lounge, bathroom, and generator room.
If my maths serves me right, 5rooms x 4beds each = 20beds, and we are 26 people, so sharing or bumming in the lounge will be inevitable...