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Antarctica/Australia/New Zealand Tour

 

FRIDAY, 2/8/91. Up at 6:30 to find it's a VERY heavy swell and they say we may NOT land today. They lower rope ladders and blow horns while Zodiacking the 23 from the camp back (talked to a sexy, shaved-head guy on the bridge and lots of scruffy-looking guys are browsing in the library) to the base and test how the beach run-up is. We sail south along the island, for something to do, and they put on Dennis's slides on Seals at 10:30. Seals are Pinnepeds, divided into 1) True (hair) seals: elephant seals, whose hind flippers extend OUT from body, and GRAY seals, and Arctic seals and harp seals (pups that are killed), and Weddell seals, which we'll see lying near us, who can dive to 2000 feet for 45-50 minutes, and leopard seals and crab-eater seals, and 18-20 more species. We'll see Hooker sea lions at Auckland Island. Skuas eat placentas. Steller sea lions of the Pacific Northwest. 2) False seals---sea lions and fur seals, hind flippers fold UNDER body. 3) Walruses, only in ARCTIC. Seals have a one-year cycle of delayed egg implantation: 1) impregnated, 2) DELAY for a number of months, 3) egg implanted at start of gestation, 4) birth, 5) 12 days, 6) intercourse for the next impregnation. Get to lunch with the two oldest male farts and Mike joins us, and I say I keep praying for the wind gods to turn the wind from the east (which is odd and bad) to the west (which is usual and good). But they put down the platform and the waves wash WAY over the top of it, so it doesn't look so hopeful. But at 1:15 they say they'll go with the YOUNGER people and I'm OUT of seat, having eaten fast purposefully, and down to dress and FIRST of tourists on line, behind two crew who end up getting VERY wet holding boats. Wait long time (fearing I may have made a mistake leaving off my SWEATER) and we leave just before 2, being told to TAKE our TIME. We get VERY tossed around before leaving, and it starts SLEETING and raining hard and LARGE swells! VERY dramatic crossing and I fear they'll STOP our going. But it clears up a bit, other Zodiacs follow us, and first three (only 10 in each) gather with Bob, who takes us to the shop, the living area (and threesome meet a COUSIN who guides them into the forbidden living areas), seals and penguins, then up to lookout for panorama, then down to TRY to get gentoos (best at FIRST), and at end sit on beach and watch TIDE come in over sounding rocks and black sand and an occasional exiting gentoo. Bright sun by now, spectacle of fierce west wind over tussock grass, and I get into next-last Zodiac with 5-6 crew and back EXHAUSTED at 5:15 to change and SHOWER in time to get up to recap, followed by dinner. Excitement has TIRED me and I DON'T want to stay up even to 9:45 to watch Greg Mortimor's climb of Mt. Minto. Bed at 9:40 and BELLS go at 10:30 to say there's an AURORA. WANT to get up, but I've been SWEATING and might be getting SICK. I sit up, for I REALLY should go outside. But I'm so TIRED! Go to porthole and SEE the green draperies to the south. Not much COLOR or FORM. I COULD put on parka---but shoes and socks and PANTS needed too! Back to bed. Michael said it lasted for an hour, quite bright, as they climbed onto the helicopter deck to get away from the lights (which may have dimmed it for the woman who said it wasn't so great), and it was spectacular. HOPE for it the next few nights, but it's ALL clouds after that.

SATURDAY, 2/9/91. Up at 7, down to breakfast with Barbara and Alice and Roger, and Roger points out the Troykas, from Queens, who want to talk to me as an indexer. Then Meg (one of the sisters) says their videos will be on at 9:15 in the TV room. Talk to woman (and her suspicious husband) and get to TV room to find MILES showing HIS stuff, STILL without a viewfinder, and he goes back to restart it for me. Then the sisters show their stuff, and it's good for US, who were THERE, but it'd be poor for someone who HADN'T seen the real places. Guy with stutter shows a lot of his next, and then the high-eyebrow woman with the steely hands (who talked of a goose trying to pull her diamond off her finger for his craw), and then it's 10AM and time for Colin Monteath's talk on Dry Valley research in Victoria Land, followed by a carousel of photos accompanied by music. I think it's great, but fear others may want more hard science. Then back for more TV 11-12 and then to lunch of twin medallions of veal and beef. I then talk with people till TV (silent) of Shackleton's Expedition 1914-1916 2-2:45, and then up for "Krill" by Dennis. It's so mild I stand on deck at 4PM in SHIRTSLEEVES, marveling about mildness south of Macquarie but still north of Convergence. To library (too lazy to write) to scan books---mostly birds and animals and photography, and pick up Man on the Rim, (no sexy shots) and Xerox a page via Cecilia. Mozart totally drowned out by talk. Gurney gives his second talk on "The Heroic Age of Antarctic Explorers" from 5-6: 1899: first over-winter by Borchgrevinck, hut still there. Man FIRST exploited SEALS in 1800s, then WHALES in 1900s, and now KRILL in 2000s. 1900-1904: "International mice nibbling." 1907: South magnetic pole: 1200 miles in 126 days. 1909: 97 miles from pole, Shackleton turns BACK. 1/14/11: Amundson at South Pole, 1/30/12, Amundson leaves. Scott: Adelie's CURIOUS. 3/29/12: Scott dies. 1914: 10 men, Aurora blown AWAY, on Hut Point. Cape Evans IN Scott's Hut, AFTER 143 days in field, with Shackleton trapped in Weddell Sea. Then World War I stopped explorations. Other notes on Daily Program Sheet: 60°S at 9:12PM. 4°C at 7AM, 8°C at 6:30PM. Skies almost clear, wind almost calm. BUT there's said to be a LOW low off to one side. FORGOT dishes crashing, wet tablecloths, and CRASHES from KITCHEN. I regret missing Total Recall. Recap is canceled and dinner is served and I'm so tired I go to sleep almost instantly about 9:30, before TV.

SUNDAY, 2/10/91. Up pretty late and got to breakfast late, but Miles was drinking till 2AM and stays in bed most of day, a TERRIBLE day of pitching and rolling most of the time. Conversation around breakfast table delves into population control and I suggest we meet upstairs and continue, wanting to get their reaction to my killing off 99% of the people in Gain. Interesting talk with Roger and female nurse. Up at 10 to talk of Gondwana, NEEDED in rocky Dolphin Lounge because Greg has OVERHEAD viewer required, Xeroxing sheets for us later. Good talk, lots of notes: Byrd sub-glacial basin is 2500 meters BELOW sea level. Antarctica has 90% of world ice, 75% of world fresh water. Meteorites from MOON and MARS??? 55-meter sea rise if ice---which is 31 million years old---melts. Greater Antarctica around Commonwealth Bay exactly fits into South Australia. Lambert Glacier is largest: 250 x 400 km. And a WAVE washes Dolphin Lounge WINDOW. AS (at LAST) south South America BROKE away from PENINSULA, circumpolar currents could START and begin ICE FORMATION, because LARGE water-bodies could STAY cold. FUTURE studies at BASE of ice sheet will show MORE detail. CO2 levels GREATER in past. OLDEST ice is 150-200,000 years old. Very old rocks at WEST side of New Zealand MAY have come from VANISHED OLD side of Ross ice sheet. Andes connects with the mountains of the Peninsula. Cape Adair is less than 50 million years old. The Ross Sea is OPENING, and Ross Island and Erebus are in the MIDDLE of the rift. The dolorites on Ross Island are the same dolorites as Mt. Wellington in Tasmania. RED strata in Downshire Cliffs are OXIDIZED by lava flows. Terra Nova Bay is the STUMP of the Transantarctic Mountains. We laugh when there's an announcement that "pancakes and beer" will be served INSIDE, not out on the Lido Deck. Then lunch, good guacamole hamburg, with odd assortment of women at central round table, and then watch GREAT 2-2:40 Cousteau Beneath the Frozen Sea video next to snoring Miles. Then up to Gurney AGAIN talking about Shackleton in 1914, no notes worth taking, though I noted that Colin Monteath said that IF I ever go to the Antarctic Peninsula, be SURE that the trip includes South Georgia Islands, great for animal life. Noted! Pass time on bridge watching waves in DENSE fog, and then up to VERY rocky Dolphin Lounge for "Kiwi Dogs," about dogs, in general, in the Antarctic, and Monteath's sadness that they're all being phased OUT. That goes till 6, then to bridge to sight on icebergs, mostly small and only growlers nearby, the size of bathtubs. Then to dinner, no good wine on LIST, so I look at menu and pick #13, a good Sancerre for $19. Then (having thought maybe it was the awful movie with the star of Big [Tom Hanks]) up to the Dolphin Lounge AGAIN (people complaining of COLD, but Pete says it takes five hours to heat up), for Voyage to the White Volcano about AGONIES of ship of inexperienced sailors, and I could remember SO little I asked BARBARA of her memories and she "reminded" me that they were silly, ill-prepared people who WANTED to continue at one point and had to jettison FUEL at another point and had to land at Macquarie after spending ONLY twelve hours at Ross Island and doing inept "scientific" collecting of worms. It goes to 10:30 and I collapse into bed, Miles OUT, having slept all day.

MONDAY, 2/11/91. I left my name for a wake-up call IF we pass the ice-free Balleny Islands in the clear, but I'm not disappointed when I wake at 6:30 still uncalled. By coincidence, we cross the Antarctic Circle about that time. Decide to shower, which feels great, and put on next-last set of underwear. Look for black flannel pants and can't find them! I'm SURE I brought them aboard, so I search through BOTH sides of the closet two or three times and through my luggage and all around beds and finally put on white pants and go up for breakfast to ask Miles to come down and look through HIS stuff. We eat, he comes down, and we can't find them! Tell Cecilia and she's SURE it wasn't taken, but at 8:45 there's only the Singaporean non-English-speaking son on duty in the dry-cleaning establishment. She suggests I phone Hobart, and I figure I'll humor her. But can't find phone number, so I sort through ALL luggage, find number and get up to Radio Room at 9:45. He has a bargain for me: if Hobart HAS it, I pay for call; if Hobart DOESN'T have it (proving it's been "lost" on ship---I frankly suspect Macquarie Island overnighters), the SHIP pays for it. "Great," I agree. He phones, Jock answers and says, "You forgot your pants!" I'm astounded, but he says he has a visitor from New Zealand who'll take them to John Ward in Rotorua for me. AND, when asked, he says he found his lost PEN in the WASHER the next day. So TWO mysteries cleared up! GREAT! Radio operator is amused, bills me $21, and I dash around telling everyone it was all my fault, and at the same time the Captain is exhorting people to get their cameras on deck for Sturge Island, the southernmost of the Ballenys, and it's a sunlit, snow-capped, rock-split FANTASY that shocks me as I get on deck with my parka and shoulder bag full of camera and binoculars and close-up lens. GREAT shots in sun and shadow, and then there's an ICEBERG that the Captain circles: "The fuel bill will come to you later." He is ecstatic: "I haven't seen it this SUNNY in 15 years. I've NEVER seen the monolith [78 meters of rock pinnacle between two TOP Ballenys]. Crew, drop everything and come on deck for pictures. Anyone who's not on deck will be fined $100." We're all elated, snapping away like mad, seeing penguins on the side of the berg. Colin's talk is delayed until 11, then until 11:15, when the island is finally almost gone and we're heading into ANOTHER bank of fog to the south. That's 11:15-12 in rocking Dolphin Lounge. We're told the NEXT day that we crossed the Antarctic Convergence at 10AM TODAY. Colin's 1840 quote on FINDING of Ross Ice Shelf sounds so like Poe that I check to find that The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was published in 1838! Then lunch, then the 2PM movie Wild South - Under the Ice that AGAIN exhausts us with cold and agony until 3, at which time I'm feeling queasy with CONSTANT pitching of the ship and I wrap myself in a blanket until 5, when Greg does an extraordinary double feature of 4, 5, and 6 people up Everest with oxygen, first up north face, and first Australian, AND an expedition on the Allan and Vi Thistlethwaite to Antarctica to climb Mt. Minto for the first time. AGAIN exhausted, but I'm starting to sweat in my double sweaters. To bridge to get shots of BLUE water over forecastle, but feel queasy about dinner when I leave with Peter at 7:40 to dining room with Maya's friend from Fiji who operates a RESORT with two other women but has been TRAVELING since APRIL! Soup good, but with veal scaloppini I follow HER in taking off breading and eating mainly noodles. Mike is "on" and talk is nice, but I'd taken a Bonine about 6PM and got more from Delores who shows me their route to the WEST between Invercargill and Lake Te Anau, and THEY say I can give THEIR New Zealand book to Liz. Take pill at 9 and FALL into bed, awake at 10 and 11 and 12, but finally asleep as ship shudders and we stop about 2AM.

TUESDAY, 2/12/91. PROGRAM says we reach Antarctica, but Captain's message says we're essentially STOPPED 126 km from Cape Adare, confronted by high seas and headwinds. I'm dressed and out at 7:40 as Miles gets himself together after I FINALLY do teeth thoroughly between 7-7:20, then talk of politics and birth control with Roger and teacher and the group at the "center table" and am out at 9 to get to Captain's talk about the LAST trip at 9:15-9:45, where NO one from Australia on THIS trip wants to take responsibility for getting contributions to Mawson's Hut. Then Colin's talk is postponed from 10AM and I'm on bridge to watch four-knot headway against 40-knot winds and take photos, then down 11-11:45 for Control Room tour. Fuel for 30 days or 6000 nautical miles. TWIN engines, 6600 horsepower. Stabilizers ONLY effective ABOVE 8 knots. 20 tonnes of fuel/day. 3 diesel generators on standby and two magneto generators for screws, and one emergency generator. Batteries as backup. 310 liters of fresh water per passenger per day. 240 tonnes capacity. 50 tonnes/day of fresh water generated in vacuum, boiling seawater at 42°C. WE use 86 tonnes/day. Note at 12:25: "High seas, headwinds, 2-3 knots, no progress; lost day, more later." Back to bridge, then down to lunch after catching up with some journal writing, then lunch with Barbara and Roger, talking of my writing and agents, and silent women from Brisbane, with mushroom soup, ham and roast beef rolls with asparagus, and Monte Cristo of fried bread around ham and cheese. Good food here! Then ask for special showing of Total Recall at 3, to room to watch a TNT-taping of Secret Place - Byrd's Antarctica that ads expand from 52 to 80 minutes, so there's no TIME for the movie before 5, which he forgets ANYWAY. Up to lounge at 3:30 to write more, have an Apricot Sour while looking at Monteath's camera notes, nothing new, and down for peach cake and cookies for tea in Lounge while Delores chats up a California photographer at the bar. Strauss's Zarathustra blasts forth until, as I predict, they turn it WAY down. I finish, up to date for first time in over a WEEK, by 4:50PM, still no sign of Gurney's talk right here in the Frontier Lounge. Lazy day. Gurney on Endurance and Survival. Calamitous happenings. Eskimos REFUSE to eat liver, and SAVE themselves from hypervitaminosis A. Four ounces of husky liver is toxic! Mawson's MISERABLE stay. At 6PM STILL 3 knots, STILL at 69°45'!! No news WHEN our stall will end! I see a chart for the future: 6AM 2/19 leave Cape Adare, 6AM 2/23 to Campbell Islands! FOUR days cruising, with NOTHING between! Tiny, pure-white snow petrel. Patterned "pintado" petrel. At 6:35 we move from SLOW to HALF, and speed up to 4.5 knots. 6:30 Captain Aye announces, "We'll try increasing speed every fifteen minutes to get OUT of it." 7PM at 69°48'. Announce recap in Frontier at 7. Dinner with four women who say (at my shirt-stripes) that they're at MY table, not the captain's table. To bridge to wave-spray and NO ice, and to cabin at 9:30 for 40 minutes of 1910 Mawson silent Home of the Blizzard, and a ten-minute clip of 1949 sound Antarctic-Navy-Sweden trip. Bed at 10:30, ship creaking.

WEDNESDAY, 2/13/91. Wake at 6:35 at Miles fussing around cabin and he says, "We're there." Dress in parka and out to SPRAY of ice and salt in face! We ARE there! Low mountains, icebergs, Mt. Minto, and rocky Cape Adare in front. To bridge and out for pictures, then to cabin to write this, wash glasses, and breakfast at 7:40. Views are all the topic as we dash out for more of them. Sit in Dolphin Lounge and listen to drab conversation and see great cliffs and bergs till we pull EAST at 10AM. Colin delays talk till 10:30. I feel tired---want to TOUCH it more than SEE my Seventh Continent. We steer AWAY to 71°30', then along coast again. We VISIT Italian station at Terra Nova tomorrow morning. Wife calls doddery old fellow Moxon---a standout name! Colin: Wild Places give us SOLITUDE, they strip away our civilized ego. PRIVATE expeditions only in the last 15 years. $14,000 per barrel of fuel AT the South Pole. $4,000/barrel at McMurdo. Canterbury Museum in Christchurch is recommended. Gary Coles climbed seven top peaks in seven continents in seven months---Everest in August, 1990, Vinson Massif in Antarctica in December 1990, 13 days to ROW from Punta Arenas to Antarctica, in National Geographic in 1988. Governments NEVER help private expeditions, but Australians helped seven-by-dogsleds. Adventure Network only PRIVATE plane service in Antarctic---two groups SKIED across, the same years as the seven-by-dogsleds. Greenpeace aims: 1) No overfishing, 2) no mining. World Discoverer sailing since 1975, Captain Aye on it for 15 years. Lindblad Explorer now SOCIETY Explorer, carrying 80 passengers. World Explorer carries 130 passengers. Adventure Network International flies Twin Otters across Drake Passage. It's a 12-hour flight from Punta Arenas to permanent camp in the Ellsworth Mountains. 180 nautical miles, 2° of latitude, in one day with wind on kites pulling men on skis. Colin ends at 11:50, INCREDIBLE indictment against governments and spoilers and stupidity, and FOR Greenpeace and private enterprise. Coast ALL fogged behind now, but lovely berg to right, clouded mountains to right, and LARGE berg ahead and to left at noon on WONDERFUL Wednesday the 13th. Look out windows until lunch at 12:45, later to Mike's table, listening to his tales, and have cheeseburger and soup and pastry dessert. Brush teeth after taking pills, needing to borrow Swiss Army Knife Screwdriver from Delores for eyeglass frames. Up to stare at CLOUDY mountains along shore as drapes closed for 2PM Antarctic Film Festival Frozen Assets---ANOTHER polemic against governmental exploitation. At 3:40 I start doing a session, lighting CF and CM and RG, and think of various Joyous energies, and think, ah, Joyous Intelligence, with ALL the Joy energies! Great! 4PM, see PACK ICE in a SOLID line to the south! Out at 4:35, at 13 knots, and we HIT it. Mike says it's too SMALL for pack ice, it's just BRASH. 5PM Keith on Pinnipedia: 3 families, 34 genera, and 60 species: 1) Odobenidae (walrus) in north ONLY. 2) Otariidae (fur seals/EARED seals), include sea lions, which are DANGEROUS, have forward-facing hind flippers, and male is 4.5 times size of female. Last is 3) Phocidae (true seals): eyes on TOP, noses CLOSED to be FORCED OPEN, and more blood. Commonest of last are 1) crab-eaters: most numerous large carnivore on Earth, 2) Weddell, 3) elephant seal, 4) Ross, the best, and 5) leopard seal. This to 5:45, back to Dolphin, where at 7:50 a rock turns into a leopard seal and a turd into two penguins! DON'T eat; WATCH! Lovely colors and hills and ice, and "ice blink," and sadly they say the 9:30 film is by Iwago, and he'll BE there, so I decide to watch film, which hasn't started YET at 9:33! Getting chilly! Whales to be translated into English in March. More looking but ice ISN'T freezing. Snacks are only chips and guacamole! Two beers. Bridge to 12:30. Collapse into bed, still light outside.

THURSDAY, 2/14/91. Wake at 6:50 and dress groggily and out at 7:10 to bridge, and to breakfast at 7:30, making up for last night and sitting on OTHER side of Mermaid Dining Room with Barbara and an abrupt couple. To Dolphin and see Captain turn back up toward Mt. Melbourne as he overshot Terra Nova Base. It finally comes into sight as three, then four, then FIVE antennas on a nipply ridge. Then two blue buildings appear out of nowhere (asked OLD birthday woman how old she IS and she says "87!" Hope she can get off onto the WHARF waiting for us. Then at 10:15 I get down to shit, wash, put on suntan lotion for first time since Sydney, and Miles rushes by in full foul-weather gear. Get to Frontier Lounge at 10:20 and Italians arrive at 10:25, LOADS of cameras. They pack on the 19th and leave on the 20th. Professor Cervallati has 83 people ashore, and the ship Italica moored with 28 more in the next bay. They have four helicopters. Cute Kiwi jeaned helicopter pilot in photo. 1.5-hour tour in groups of 25. Lunch 12:30-2 here. Dark-striped rock is dolorite. "Heat-loving bacteria" on black rock. "Basic" is "swallowed" by granites. "Powdered granite" on roads. Arrive McMurdo 8-9AM, and 5AM enter the SOUND. Mt. Erebus 12,500 feet, still active. Mt. Byrd, 6000 feet. Southernmost SHIP point on earth is about 78°S. BUSY day. LUNCH to tour to ship to laundry to 5:30-6:45 talk by Colin, to spin-dry, to 6:55 wrap-up, to dry, to dinner at 7:45. Drinks arrive 8:30PM. Pass 76°S at 11:53PM. Stay to take photo at MIDNIGHT!

FRIDAY, 2/15/91. Ask Captain: farthest south IS at McMurdo, NOT to west as map indicates. He'll ANNOUNCE southernmost point. 7:30AM at 77°41'S, 166°10'E. Captain tells ME story of anchoring AT 180°: the foredeck was in Sunday and the aft was in Monday. Weather tomorrow? Go see! Miles: ONLY birds: skuas. Sight 2-3 blows and photo the fin of a whale. Two groups of 10-20 penguins (Adelies) ON ice floating north. We HEAR Captain talking to McMurdo: "Our ship comes NEXT on March 7 at 7AM after ice wharf breaks up and is towed to melt in the Ross Sea." McMurdo: "New Grumans unloading, you must anchor off. We welcome you." Polar Ice icebreaker back at noon tomorrow. No news of where the Discovery is. Then it's reported WEST at 77°44' at 7:45AM, in pack ice. 7:52AM at 77°45'. At 8AM clocks put AHEAD one hour to 9AM to agree with McMurdo. 77°46' at "9":03. Take 77°50' photo at 9:20 JUST as Captain CLOSES bridge and chases us all out. Mike goes in and out by Zodiac to find we can't use McMurdo's ROADS at ALL, either to climb Observation Hill OR to visit Scott's Hut at Hut Point. That causes lots of ill-feeling on the ship toward the Americans on the base. McMurdo tour will be tomorrow, so we sail south about 11:20 toward the sea-ice shelf (1/3 meters thick) at the FARTHEST SOUTH. We all crowd onto forecastle when they sight an emperor penguin on the edge of the sea ice! HOW LUCKY!! We get a sheet later, documenting at 12:10PM our farthest south was 77°53.85' at 166°37.1E, only 726.3 miles from the South Pole. Whales are spotted, also. Sail back north as we're encouraged to go to lunch NOW, since the Zodiacs will start leaving at 1PM for Scott Base. I DASH into lunch, wolf it down, and get told I'm in group 3, in at 1:20, but when some guy CANCELS from group 2, a single, and I ask Cecilia at the crowded Reception Desk if I can take his PLACE (106 people signed up to climb Observation Hill, many too many), she says to just SHOW UP and they'll put me ON. Get down to LONG line about 1PM and so many are so eager that even boat TWO has two extra passengers put off to boat 3. THEN the photographers go out in their OWN Zodiac and I get to stare at the high-thighed (when he's sitting he has lovely bulges), dark-loving-eyed crew member, whose eyes linger on everyone, including ME. We're warm and impatient, but we're at last off about 1:30. Cold ride over to the light green blockhouses of Scott Base, and up on small, icy slope to be met with the LOVELY eyes and blue jeans and open-necked shirt of Barry Were (and wedding ring, damn), who collects the 14 of us and takes us through a VERY comfortable-looking library/dining room: carpeted, with double-L-crossing bunks, and three Norwegians from a trans-Antarctic ski trip. Small modules connected by heated corridors through which we pass in stocking feet, since they make us take boots off in entranceway. Germans bumble behind me as I pick up Science brochure Barry says I can have, and fat David asks three times for water that Barry says isn't there. THEY'RE closing up, too, and lots of the facilities are closed already. Then at 2:25 he points us to the black road in white snow (which he says wasn't even THERE last week) that we climb to Observation Hill. Wind's behind us as we walk, seeing Zodiacs zipping in and out from ship to look at the seals in the bay, and the planes in the airstrip coming clearer. To Margaret at the intersection to the left, McMurdo base visible to the right across the point, and people in a line climbing the hill, even people shoe-skiing down the NEAR, STEEP side. Decide to bull my way up, and pass lots of crew skipping nimbly down. Behind Peter partway up to "bird feeder," then I pass him and plod up and up, hard and cold and panting, and get to top with some triumph. Later told to read Nevil Shute's In the Wet. Observation Hill cross: jarrelwood, four names, "In memoriam" and "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," by Tennyson. BIRD feeder was spot for BOOK for signers and remarks. Take photos with cold fingers and then struggle down, easier than I'd feared, though legs getting sore, and reach the bottom with great relief. Walk back is BRUTAL in freezing wind, getting a real ice GRILLE on the front of my scarf from my breath, worried that my cheekbones might be frostbitten. Catch up with Miles, who thought he froze his fingers with his video camera, but his mittens warmed them up. Cecilia is dancing around to keep warm at the intersection, and I DON'T see Delores and Michael going up, and can't recognize other bundled-up tourists. To Zodiacs about 4:30, and cold to ship to strip off and shower before Miles arrives---he was first in next Zodiac as I jumped ahead to be last into a full one. Then to bridge to watch ice-sheet touring Zodiacs chasing what look like 20-30 orcas near the ice, feeling jealous of their closeness. But have tea and cakes and warm up, then dine with Mary Anne from the base and Noela that I brought over for Delores and Michael and Francis, and great talk with her before announcement that Iwago will be answering questions on his film on the Humpbacked Whale at 8:30. Oh, must have been a McMurdo National Science Foundation introduction after dinner, too. NSF briefing after dinner on 2/16: breakfast 7-8, five groups of thirty, 40-minute spacing. 8:40 first group. Mike and Cecilia make list. Wear boots. 60- to 90- minute tours, NO credit cards. US cash accepted! Scott's Hut. Vincent's cross from first expedition. Scott's Hut here is "less" than Shackleton's Hut and Scott's Second Hut. Then to Cape Evans, lunch 12:30-2. First group at 2PM. ABOVE Evans Hut is Greenpeace Camp. Five over-winterers. THEN, after dinner, to Cape Royds: Shackleton's Hut AND Adelie penguin rookery. Midnight to Marble Point, entrance to Dry Valleys, to off-load helicopter. Next AM to Ross Ice Shelf. THEN to Cape Hallett and Cape Adare. NO written program for 2/16! 24 people for dinner, including Hugh from New Zealand, Simon from the National Science Foundation. Japanese film of whales humping, simple-feeding, and GROUP-feeding, followed by some questions and answers. Meet Ben and Lu Patrick from Oklahoma! First time I SEE them. Stoned on three vodka-tonics and one "4X" ale and PAYING for three Norwegian South Pole Expedition 1990 men who skied 105 days through Antarctica from Weddell Sea to South Pole to McMurdo: H. Odiford, Sven McFildy, and Sven Mody. McMurdo found three-million-year-old LEAVES. 130,000-foot-altitude balloon: LDB: Long-Distance Balloon---up for 9 days. "McMurdo is an industrial site---its product is science. They're anxious to do their activity. Be careful. Listen to your tour guides. Chalet is main NSF headquarters. Last stop is gym---photo display---incremental efforts on station." Fifty golden models of Frontier Spirit were made. Barry Were (Wier) is our guide. 10:30PM: Farthest south announced as 77°53.5', 726 miles from South Pole. Drank three vodka-tonics, lasted for a few visiting dignitaries, and went to bed to SLEEP. Cloudy, so no clear impression of "no sunset," as noted on 2/15 program.

SATURDAY, 2/16/91. No program today. Wake about 7 and down to breakfast to find we're on FIRST Zodiac at 8AM. They're going roughly in ROOM order. Eat VERY fast at table I sit at by MYSELF because I want to SEE outside, and then dash to finish dressing and out to Zodiacs. In to McMurdo to a group of FOUR guides who keep talking OVER each other. We wander outside lots of buildings, and get told about new, three-story expansion that's probably the tallest building on the continent. Into R&R building for bowling alley (surprising how many on the boat DISLIKED that!) and ceramics and plaster-molding and model-building and macramé shops. DIVING party going out at 3PM, but we're not going to be THERE. Steel-blue-eyed Navy man terse that "PR people would get letter from private parties wanting to visit McMurdo." Others (like "Rocky") are cute and enthusiastic. Chapel for gone-chalice. Chapel closed 2/13/91, will reopen in October---chalice in Christchurch Cathedral. Over 200 will over-winter. Into Gym for a DETAILED look at plans for new modules: entryways, heating units, ambient-temperature labs, expandable microbiology labs, library/dining room, johns, etc. Pick up LOTS of paper and back to ship about 10:30. Keep boots on and watch Zodiacs buzzing about and quick lunch and back to Zodiac for Hut Point visit---DARK, GLOOMY interior and a kind of dank MIASMA over it. Large, random-labeled, and Hugh talks rather pedantically. Hut Point hut FULL of stuff, AND rotting mutton! I try photos though I know they won't come out inside. Wander up to cross and around outside and photo almost-obligatory skeletons. Take so many photos I don't even record numbers. Then all are back and we go NORTH and then really back SOUTH (all clearer on map I took) to Scott's Second Hut BETWEEN two McMurdo-connected modules SOUTH of it and the Greenpeace complex NORTH of it. Out on Zodiac at 3:35. Greenpeace Base built in January, 1987. No sun for four months. ARE some hot vents and fumaroles and "bombs" from Erebus. Around Greenpeace, penguins NESTED in crates and tins and boxes left, and Hugh describes task of asking, "Is material from 90 years ago historic and to be left, but stuff added 40 years ago 'modern' and to be cleared off?" 30 years, 5 years? Take no information from Greenpeace, nor do I buy anything (and Scott Base patches were $20 each!), but I take lots of photos of Adelies between, though Delores and Michael are taking 30 rolls of film each these days. So far behind in writing and still so busy: again, Scott's Second Hut is dim inside and Hugh gives more cautions than information in his talk. The tags are too random to be read and the light too dim to photograph in, though this is not nearly as OILY and OPPRESSIVE as Scott's First Hut. Lots of recognizable labels like Coleman's Mustard and Heinz products and various flours and biscuits, but when I ask what Irish Brawn is, no one knows. Dictionary says "chopped, cooked, and molded pork bits of legs, head, feet, and sometimes tongue." There's always a line out front, people (Japanese) pushing in, and limited time inside so that none of us get that "ten minutes of silence to absorb the feel of the place." But the tired-looking cots, dark scraps of clothing hung over parts of bedsteads, paltry stoves, black hangings for darkrooms, framed photos, dead penguins, macerated mutton, give an air of gloom and "I'm glad I wasn't part of THAT." I'm JUST going into Zodiac when I hear, "There's an Emperor penguin over there." I debate, then regret returning to ship AS I return. I wash boots off, try Japanese Red Bean Soup, go to ask questions, and woman says, "I'm going back!" "Then I'm going back, too!" And I do, and take more photos. Talk to Barnett, who bought Wellingtons at shop at 62nd and Broadway, priced at $50, with a 40% discount for $30!! Back about 6:30 for Apricot Sour, and 6:40 Greenpeace slides and SAID to be 7:30-8:30 dinner and to Cape Royds Zodiacs 8:30-midnight! Cape Royds penguin rookery is a Specially Protected Area---NO entry---it's the southernmost penguin rookery in the world. Have dinner in shore-clothes and then cruise north to Cape Royds, angered to find that the helicopter is bringing in loads AS we try to photograph fleeing-in-terror penguins and listen to an exasperated Hugh in Shackleton's Hut as it's REALLY too dark to see, and I envy people with flash and videos. LOTS of supplies backed up against base of hut, and someone reports modern nails scattered over nearby ground. Garbanzo beans are scattered outside crates next to time-blackened unidentifiable stuffs. Women complain about stepping out onto two crates, one of which is broken (the other of which Peter breaks through and draws up a cane-tip whitened with flour!), and I bitch momentarily when Hugh asks me to take off my BACKPACK, but David later says on HIS (first) tour in BOTH huts someone turned and knocked over stuff on a shelf and in another a POKER clattered to the floor. Pay attention to the penguins BEFORE, going behind a rock to look at gloomy molters and see the more active pairs and chicks running around the forbidden ground of the orange-sign-demarked sanctuary. Since we have till midnight, I wander around to the north to solitary penguins stomach-paddling across bits of snow (and it STARTS to snow) and look at green-tinged water---when they fast they excrete only BILE. Lots of red-suited tourists clustered around inlet where two leopard seals flirt and dive far below in gloom, and I take another few hopeless slides. Sun-colors are glorious behind clouds and over growling sea-ice chunks. Then I go back to Zodiac landing about 10:30, cold and tired and figuring I'd seen it all, even in the silence after the helicopter drops stopped. Get to the top of the hill and see two LOADED Zodiacs and a Greg-manned, otherwise-empty one trying to get free of wind-blown sea-ice in cove! I walk across to get life-vest when Margaret docks at the RIGHT of the cove, over a very slick ice-coast, but I don't feel like being a hero or counting life-vests or taking photos, so I pile into Margaret's Zodiac, helped by sexy, blue-eyed waiter, and he gives his life-vest to an old woman who has to be LIFTED into Zodiac. I insisted on sitting on the shore before I got in, which helped. The three other Zodiacs manage at GREAT length (after many pushing paddles and people getting out and walking across the ice floes) to bull a way through, and then on the way out MARGARET gets stuck on the SHELF about a foot below the surface that rolls up and down in the swell. Others push us ONTO the shelf, and soon WE seem to be hopelessly stuck. Margaret orders us to paddle-push, we try rocking, and I even move to the other side to try to tip us off, but we remain stuck as MORE ice is coming to wedge us in. Then Margaret leaps out ONTO the ice and starts pushing, despite remonstrations from passengers. She pushes us off and jumps in, but we're instantly stuck again, and she jumps off again, getting us off and DIVING into the bottom of the boat. Cold trip back, and I have tea and cake and look out to see who's LAST. Third-last Zodiac is in at 12, but there's ANOTHER Zodiac waiting, and one person comes back and there're 2-3 life-vests left in a tiny stack, but I go down to third floor rear and see EIGHT red tags still over, including the three guys from 403. At 12:20 they come down, and across, and two of the Japanese photographers (who "didn't like the ship") bid them farewell before the photographers returned to their tents in the penguin colony. It looks like the sun DOESN'T set before I stagger off to bed about 12:45, exhausted.

SUNDAY, 2/17/91. DREAM at 7AM: I'm waiting for word to leave a stool sample in a tiny, dirty room. I've cleaned the edge of the toilet and left lots of stuff to be flushed down, mostly books. When I flush, there's a large rush of water (E-VAC?) and the books "float" to a higher level and I figure it's been designed that way. Then the person AFTER me sort of looks at me impatiently and I stick my head out to see where I shit. The doctors look at my chart and seem to imply that my "disseminated carcinoma" has ALREADY been verified, so there's no reason I NEED to leave a sample. I calmly accept the "fatal" news and wonder how I can live better before I die. Odd but NOT alarming, somehow. Record dream to about 7:30, then to leisurely breakfast, talking till 9, and get to library. Kelp is "Durvillaea antarctica." 9:33AM: Going east along Ross Island, SNOW (first REAL snowstorm of trip, though there were flurries 2-3 times before) obscuring coast, I page through Ponting's The Great White South, about Scott's last expedition, talking of Hut Point as I open the book at random, and reading Scott's last writings, so chauvinistic, and thinking that the main part of my trip (and my life?) is over, I want to fill the time---at 10:12 I realize I'm MISSING Bird on a Wire. Get to room and it's not ON yet! Phone Cecilia and look through Stein Der Grosse Kultur Fahrplan and THEN movie goes on at 10:15! THEN I worry about Ross Ice Shelf at 11 and they announce we get there about 1PM! GREAT!! Up to approach to Ice Shelf and Captain says, "12 minutes for lunch," but I want to watch from the beginning. What started as a white glitter through a break in the surrounding gray clouds (SNOWSTORM at first) grows to a CLEAR view of the high, amazingly uniform, wall before us. It seems it MUST be an INCREDIBLE coincidence that we DON'T pass any ice floes as we come toward it. Has it REALLY been inactive for a FEW DAYS? Captain announces a contest for the height above the water to hundredths of meters ("two places after decimal point, for Americans," I say as he announces "two places after the comma"). He admits FLOOR of Deck 6 is 12 meters. I mistake nine feet between decks for 2.5, rather than 3, meters, and get 17 when I should have guessed closer to 20 meters. 110 nautical miles long and we cruise 22 of them, just one-fifth, and each angle and small inlet is a joy, particularly with birds flying over (Tekeli-li) for drama and many turnings of the boat for passenger calls of "Picture; picture of the name Frontier Spirit on the lifeboat; orange against blue." Take pictures till 3 (height is 21.62 meters, the closest off by only 11 centimeters!), then go to bird talk by Dennis and take the following notes: DEFLECTION spots, such as rump of white-rumped deer and tails of many birds, are spots of WHITE on the REAR that DEFLECT your attention from the ENTIRE body so that when the FLIGHT stops, the SPOT vanishes, meaning that the CREATURE vanishes. Birds PROVEN to use lines of magnetic force using piece of MAGNETITE in brain, AND by orienting on certain STAR constellations. NO body heat ESCAPES from penguins---snow won't MELT on them! At 4 I go to afternoon tea to make up for missing lunch, having lots of little sandwiches and cookies. To cabin to see what Dangerous Alibi is, and Foothold in the Antarctic can't be on Channel 30 because Creatures of the Mangrove is on. Dangerous LIAISONS (schedule had typo) comes on at 5:15, and finally at 5:25 comes Foothold, but only until 6. Up to Frontier Club for recap at 6:30. Penguins, molting, are unable to EAT. Inuit has 160 words for ice and snow. Ice: Ice SHELF is freshwater, flows off continent; grounded icebergs are stuck on 250-350-meter-deep bottoms. Pack ice is broken-up sea ice. Oily, smooth-freezing ice is frazzle ice. Sea-smoke occurs when ice is cooling from pancakes to lily pads to sea ice. Brash is broken-up icebergs; bergy bits are house-size, while smaller, trunk-size, are growlers. Rate of flow of Ice Shelf varies from 90 to 200 meters/year. OLDER bergs castellated or rolled over. Sea ice is thinner, 1-3 meters, and sea ice breaks into floes. Castle Berg lasted 15 years. Weddell sea gyre destroyed the ship Endurance. Over the South Pole is a VAST flow. Also noted on Daily Program: at 7:30 Discovery STILL hadn't landed, but is still trying to land, at Cape Royds because of being stopped by pack ice. Then I drink until dinner at 7:30. To bridge as we pass parts of the coast, lots of ice, and I TRY to get to sleep by going to bed at 9PM, but I'm too full and can't really get to sleep.

MONDAY, 2/18/91. Wake at 2AM to shit and feel pretty lousy, and back to bed to toss and turn and feel like I get NO sleep, but probably I did. At 7:30 go to bridge and wind is 20-25 knots from west, our speed is 10 knots, and we're opposite Coulman Island in a SNOWSTORM. Go to breakfast and by 9:30 there's a HEAVY snowstorm. Go to Dolphin Lounge at 10 for Rod Ledingham's talk on the Australian programs, then up to bridge to watch the approach to Cape Hallet on a day that's become bright and sunny, staring at the approach of Mt. Herschel through telescope and binoculars. Dash to lunch at 12:30 and get dressed, only to be told that the landing site is full of pack ice. They stupidly schedule Hugh Logan to describe Cape Hallet at 2:30, when I and Zodiacs are due to leave at 3PM! I walk through gathered crowd to take my photos anyway. Then they announce at 2:50 that "Champagne cruise" starts at 3:15. In 1988, Cape Hallet rookery census was 60,000 pairs. I get out early at 3:20 with 2/3 of the passengers Japanese, and Lars as pilot, and we take off down the pack ice. I ask, "How far to the iceberg?" He says he wouldn't go that far from the ship without other Zodiacs around in case anything happened. Good pictures anyway, then we open champagne and Michael pours and Delores has none and others little, so I have much for me. Then Greg pulls HIS people onto an ICEFLOE and Lars asks if WE can come, too, and Greg says NO. Then we DO get on one, fun, though feet get cold on ice and snow, and lots of good pictures and I have fun toeing in tiny ice floes until I'm ordered back from the edge. Then they announce we're ALL going to the iceberg, and it's fabulous: shapes of cream and plaster, and cracks and turrets and holes and windows, and colors of white and yellow and green and blue. Wonderful sight! Back to ship at 6:20, feeling totally drained. Shower and up for bouillon and to bridge, then dinner, and Captain announces an attempt to have the FIRST landing on Possession Island! Watch it drawing near from the bridge, good photos, and he calls out Zodiacs (with echo depth-finders) at 9PM. Asks for second Zodiac with two birthday people and then Mike is calling for Pete McDowell, the driver! The first depth-finder doesn't work, yet the Captain continues in!! Zodiac 2 still isn't launched. 9:35PM CALL for echo sounders and Pete as second driver. 9:57: Pete shows up. 10:35 FIRST sounder not working, second sounder called out, bridge CLOSED. I remark to one of the sisters that I'm trying to remember everything in case I have to testify in court why our bottom was ripped out! "The Rock" is so steep that it could have its brothers ANYWHERE under where we steam. Can see what looks like ROCKS on a sandy spit to the north of the island at 10:15 when the Captain closes the bridge. I figure the second echo sounder will work OR that the Captain will let the Zodiacs go from here. I go down to DRESS and at 10:30, as I get my boots on, they say, "Surge too great, NO landing can be made." Undress! "NO attempt at Possession Island first landing." Later hear that "Earl" wanted to step off onto what he thought was land---and fell into freezing ocean up to his NECK! So they raced him back to the ship WITHOUT anyone making a landing. AND the second sounder did NOT work. Brush teeth and plastic rubber-tip probe breaks off, and I did not bring a REPLACEMENT! I go dejectedly to bed at 11:07PM, exhausted, but ready to be wakened at 5AM for breakfast before landing at Cape Adare.

TUESDAY, 2/19/91. Wake with a jolt at 5:35, having MISSED 5AM "breakfast" announcement. Dress fast and up to breakfast 5:50-6, cutting down only to CEREAL and FRUIT, as I should have ages ago, though safety-levels of eggs now up from two to THREE a week. Dress quickly in gear and Miles still lies comatose, and I say something as I go out and he wakes. Out and down to Zodiac deck at 6:20 to turn over one of the LAST tags to red, and STEP RIGHT INTO waiting Zodiac, which is GREAT! Wait a bit for 6-7 more people and push off for sun-bright landing point, but no sun past cliffs yet. To right along beach and lie to watch chicks who probably won't survive preening adults who can't eat because they're molting. Some adults appear to HAVE molted, silver-shiny feathers where sun hits them. Gradually aware of lots of dead bodies, too, some with only one bite out, some unscathed. Walked on deck to take last two shots of roll 39 and put in roll 40, and by 8AM I've taken last photo! Go to northern tip of beach and then head east to sunrise along base of cliffs. Also stopped to see Borchgrevink's Hut, looking really like NEW, and boathouse to right where Hugh's helping put up a red Emergency Survival station. GREAT penguin groupings, GREAT photos, a GREAT morning! Hugh comes down from hills (we missed a cross and Scott's Third Hut from 1910-1911) and says most of chicks are too young to survive impending cold---later says 40% of chicks die!---and that there were 750,000 nesting pairs in this LARGEST rookery. Ask if he has a "St. Bernard extra roll of film" and he gives me a Kodak 64 36-slide film! Use it completely by 9AM, on skeletons, "arty" shots of penguins in and out of focus before icebergs in and out of focus, and almost TRIP over a Weddell seal! Try for a touch but he makes a QUICK move that scares me off. Fingered dead bird. Peter asked time at 9:55 and we both start hurrying back for "last Zodiac at 10AM." I'd love LOTS more time. Picture/picture/picture to shore at 10:10 with Roger and Hugh and Alan and a few others. Peter gets into next-last Zodiac and I change lenses and Greg roars up with LAST Zodiac. Roger and I and one other passenger with Greg and Alan and Hugh and Rod! We zip out to look at a leopard seal on a floe and I blow my LAST panorama shot on it, hoping to get lots of ice VISIBLE BELOW in amazingly clear water under sunlight. Back to ship (with Captain pacing in impatience, as is said) at 10:30, and I feel great! Then ship starts breaking through pack ice that's blown in completely around it, and I race up to bow on a comment of Miles's and throw myself over side for GREAT view of floes coming up with blue aprons spread around them, then the crush of the bow, THEN the ugly SCRAPE of ice against ship ALL ALONG the side of the hull, so that ice-hardened means the WHOLE bottom, not just the tip, which CAPSIZES some floes and throws up brash ice for decor: a candelabra and two dinner plates placed on a flat table as I watch. GREAT sights and shots, and Maya compliments me for my comments in the recap last night: "All the penguins ran in terror from that helicopter." And Hugh must add that only in ONE MONTH are the molters OUT of the rookery proper and USUALLY they're no closer than 200 meters and "No movies on time." Two or three others before and since have praised me, including the Italian, the ecologist old lady, and the plaid-slacks Explorer Club buffoon. Finish a roll of film THERE as I'd started in with panorama of Cape Adare and the newly opened Lido Deck far on the fantail. Then down to take my wet clothes off at 11:30, when they announce WHALES off the bridge! DOZENS break the water, racing ahead, and three and four plumes go up at once. Some turn in GROUPS of 4-5 as if on a cartwheel, and others go away as others cut across. Some insist they're orcas AND minkes. THIS goes on, with BRILLIANT icebergs and arches and colors, until 12:30, when everyone's STARVED for lunch, and they have VENISON, and I ask Michael if this is a good time for champagne and he gets his bottle! Farewell toast to Antarctica! GOOD venison and meal (and cute Erik) and then to now-closed Lido Deck to chat with Greg before Margaret nestles into him for warmth. I stare at lovely mountains and clouds as we speed north. Go to bridge and ask when we cross the Antarctic Convergence and find water temperature of 1°C, so we already HAVE crossed it at 70°30'! On stern for Antarctica vanishing until 2:30, then talk to Maine woman and Lady Mary Downer! To Hugh Logan's lecture on New Zealand program at 3. In October-December they fly down to land on the sea ice. It takes C-130s 7.5 hours from Christchurch to McMurdo. I ask if density-measures for penguins are exact and he answers, "Yes, but it's better to count them directly." Both whales and penguins are way down in numbers recently. Ozone degradation takes place in EXTREME COLD by CFCs. New Zealand's Antarctic Research Program costs about $5.7 million NZ dollars per year. Cape Royds penguin population was DOWN 15% this year! Now, TWO-million-year-old leaves found on Antarctica! NO one's CALLED for Antarctic Treaty review, but Environmental Protocol MAY be added. NO notions of taking MEASURES of south-movement of Antarctic CONVERGENCE for global WARMING. At PRESENT, an INFORMAL MORATORIUM on Antarctic mining. For WHALING there IS an International Whaling Commission. FISHERIES group is in Hobart. MAY be overfishing near South Georgia. 70°24'S, seawater is 1°C, we PASSED Antarctic Convergence. Read in EB that Convergence "WAS between 50° and 60°S, so could THIS be a record of global warming?---and it does NOT, Encyclopedia Britannica says, change SEASONALLY very much. I read EB until 5:30, then decide I need to lie down. Don't sleep, and up at 7:30 for dinner at round "woman's" table because Michael and Delores were talking to the Bells and dined with them. Leave at 9 and go up to Dolphin Lounge for silent film from 1935 from 9:30 to 10:05, then down to find Miles OUT. I'd had EROTIC thoughts about Tony while waiting for film to start at 9:30, so I decided to jerk off. Undress and get into bathrobe and lock door (then lock it "again," unlocking it, I find to my horror at the end) and lie on floor to TRY to get very erotic, but I'm out of practice and stimulus (and boat is rocking), so I merely get to edge and TRY to play, but just release pressure with HUGE jets over my left shoulder into wet lumps on my undershirt that I placed beneath my head. Wipe off and brush my teeth and get to bed at 10:40 JUST as Miles opens the door and enters. Sleep quickly.

WEDNESDAY, 2/20/91. Miles wakes me by pulling aside the curtains at 7:05. Lie a bit and get up to breakfast at 8, laying out shirt and pants for laundry and taking this to fill in today. Cereal and fruit again with Alice and white- haired photographer, and write some, then get to 10AM Greg Mortimer talk on mining in Antarctica. Mineral ASSUMPTION based on Antarctica as KEYSTONE of Gondwanaland, and mineral belts of Africa and Australia EXTENDING THROUGH Antarctica! LESS than 2% ice-free land, and all THAT is now BIOLOGY-intensive! Chilean rift separates mineral-rich north Andes from mineral-poor south Andes. EXCEPT for coal and iron, "No known economically viable minerals in Antarctica." Coal in Transantarctic range and Prince Charles Mountains is of LOW QUALITY, high sulfur, and would NOT be mined if it were ELSEWHERE! Hematite of Prince Charles Mountains is 60% iron, which would be mined if it were near Perth. In 1973 Glomar Challenger (pure science?) found methane and ethane under Ross Ice Shelf---along with 1/2 billion gallons of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Another bored hole at Marble Point, where we dropped the helicopter, uncovered natural gas. I jot down Greg's saying that the Antarctic map has been "Right royally rammed down your throats." Liz says that in April, 1991, in Madrid, US MAY back a 50-year moratorium on mining. Hugh: UN debate emerged in last ten years. "Antarctic Treaty" nations want IT stronger, with WEAK LINK to the United Nations. At 10:20AM we were watching a short film, which was STOPPED by seven short, one long, sirens, repeated twice. THEN there was Captain Aye's voice, "Don't move from seats," and it was a drill for the CREW! Great! Thanks for telling us! Greg's talk goes to 10:50, we continue to talk to 11:15, when I dash to cabin to watch semi-professional Cheetah by Mitsuake to 12. Up to write more, then lasagna lunch after salty ham and asparagus appetizers, with Lars and Erik exchanging sexy men-talk. Get Kodak roll from Michael to repay Hugh, and write MORE of this before getting a Bonine from Delores because seas are getting higher and barometer is DROPPING. Joan Hudson (picked up her poem and some maps today) thanks me for asking about showing of Cheetah. EVERYONE'S thanking me! Even rougher after lunch, noting "large iceberg" and last ice-chunks at 2PM, berg at 2:30, and lots of brash at 2:50, at 3, at 3:50, and at 4:20. Finish journal to date at 2:53PM, and go to CENTER seat in the Lounge (Peg had asked for the NICE music to be turned lower and they turn it OFF) for Gurney's talk on Sledging NOW. Pee (asparagus odor covering the smell of stale semen) in the oh-so-convenient public john (this AM on 4, later on 7, now on 5). Amundsen's Hut, 9 men, small hut, floated away on Ross Ice Shelf. They even had a SAUNA in an ice cave! I noted to copy the food list, but Gurney gave me a copy of it the next day. Cherry-Garrard's TEETH cracked in the cold! Cherry-Garrard's Worst Journey in the World is CLASSIC per Gurney. His talk ends at 3:35. Dennis adds that at Indian bases they're NOW using mining EXPLOSIVES. Australia uses CONSTRUCTION explosives, even though ANY land or air inspection may be done with only a 24-hour notice. Then I go to bridge to watch the seas building AGAIN, though we're still on maximum impulse, and at 4:30 I go to Antarctic Pioneers, parts of which we've seen before, to 5, and then think to read Rama II but CAN'T get into it, though I THINK watching the increasing seas didn't make me WORSE. At 5:30 go to cabin to lie down, having taken a Bonine at 5. Doze till 7:20 and get to dining room feeling increasingly poorly, and Delores's bright observation that "At 7:15 I really thought I was gonna puke, but I took a Bonine and feel fine now." Having seen Michael with a Fosters at noon, red wine at cocktails and lunch and dinner, and various other drinks, I think he tolerates seasickness and Delores with ALCOHOL. Snails in garlic butter VERY hot with dry bread, filet VERY good with pasty potatoes, and I could only eat the ice cream from my crepe suzette flambé not flaming before excusing myself. Delores said that David and the Japanese woman left right after me. I got to cabin JUST before the awful flood of saliva and got CLOSE to upchucking for the first time, but DIDN'T at 8:30. At 9 Delores, bless her, knocks at my door to give me two MORE Bonine, one of which I TAKE just as insurance. Lie and doze and check my watch at the DOT of 12 (set ahead one hour today) just before Miles shuts the lights off from his captain's-table dinner.

THURSDAY, 2/21/91. Up at 6 to pee, then at 7:30 when Miles bustles off to breakfast. I look at schedule and see Room 404 is to tour the galley at 10, take his offered meclizine at 7:30 (taken all ELSE and they don't work, so TRY this, and he has LOTS of them to spare---he's STOPPED using the ear patch). Even though Bell is sitting at the "talk" table, I sit and listen to Peg and Naida and Roger and Barbara go on about the feminist movement and even touch gay liberation. I eat quietly, only saying, "All wonder if Shakespeare was anti-Semitic when he wrote Merchant of Venice, but I never heard anyone wonder if he was megalomaniacal just because he wrote about so many megalomaniacs!" Out at 9 to catch this up to date at 9:11, noting that days 1/5-27 (23 days) took more than 92 (23x4) pages, and the 25 days since took MORE than 100 pages (to 205 now), but by end of 38 days, THIS book should end at at LEAST page 252 (100+38x4). Actually READ 9:20-9:55, then to galley tour: 160 passengers and about 100 crew; 20% of crockery broken, but US requirements for CLEANNESS in CORNERS will probably prohibit EDGES being put on tables. ALWAYS same rotation of menus, leftovers given to CREW. Over at 10:20 and up for Dennis's sheet and talk on Captain Cook to 11:30. Up to bridge to find 25-knot headwind and Nav. (Navigational?) Full for 12-knot speed at 11:45. At 8AM, sheet said AVERAGE for last 4 hours was 8 knots, but rumor said we'd gone down to 2 knots at night in high seas. Campbell NOW scheduled from noon to 6PM on February 23: station visit, Zodiac cruising, guests on board, shop in station. Only pass 62°S at 11:56AM. Continue reading, then to lunch and have TWO mushroom appetizers and soup and ham salad and gnocchi and rice pudding with NICE chocolate sauce, and a beer! Continue reading, then to 2PM meeting of Australians re Mawson's Hut, at which the talk goes ON and ON to 3, and is followed by Keith's "Sincerity in Art is ESSENTIAL." Titanium white oil STAYS pure white. His style is RATHER "paint by number" nature studies. To 4:05PM, and I'm TIRED again! Then Delores tells me I asked for special showing of Cheetah at 4PM, which Cecilia announces and Peter puts on at 4:15, so I stay and watch it until 5:10, when I think he's going down to put OTHER film on Channel 30, but it's black and I lie weakly, hearing Miles come in and out, then shit gluily and take another of his pills with about 4000 mg vitamin C, as my right nostril seems to be running! Up to dinner for coq au vin, STILL not feeling fit enough for wine, but feel so good that I propose Trivial Pursuit with Delores and Michael. We play till 9:30, when I go to South With Shackleton till 10, then finish the game, winning, at 11:15. Down to room and surprised to see Miles IN bed. Take more vitamin C and get to bed with lots of tissues to wipe my dripping nose.

FRIDAY, 2/22/91. Miles wakes me by pulling the curtains aside at 7:20, and I get up and SHOWER, first time in 3-4 days, feeling OK even though the ship is gyrating. To breakfast to the "talk table" (this morning's talk about reality and plays and Shakespeare and acting and believability) till 9:05. Up to finish text of Rama II, and as I pee (took 4 grams vitamin C and a COLD pill at 8AM) they announce Hugh at 10:30 in Frontier Lounge, replacing Dennis at 3 in Dolphin Lounge. Notes on sheet: Campbell Island, found in 1810, has "introduced" Sitka spruce; and Auckland Island, found in 1806, has Rata tree from New Zealand. Both are wet, windy, and cold. Five people at Campbell Island Meteorological Station. Auckland has only temporary people, penguins, and gravesite of Flora McDonald, who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie. Sheep are gone on Campbell, which has wandering and royal albatrosses and mollymawks. To get to the albatrosses, walk a three-hour route. Auckland has bellbirds, rails, ducks, fur seals and Hooker sea lions, is 25 km long, and has rabbits and cattle on Enderby Island, pigs on Auckland, and sheep and goats remaining. Smaller island is a STRICT nature reserve with NO landing. Bad weather is likely, so be weatherproof. Enderby: "Beautiful walk around island," and has rare yellow-eyed penguin. "Arrival between 7AM and 7PM." Over at 11:15 and talk to Michael (returning New Zealand book they lent me last night, begging off a larger guide until I get MY New Zealand addresses out), and Delores about COMING ALONG with them two days to Milford Sound (2/26-27), 2 days to Mount Cook (2/28, 3/1) and Christchurch (3/2), then THEY fly to Auckland and LA on 3/3, and I can go to Rotarua (3/3-4?) and Auckland (3/5) for MY flight. Then at 11:45, as I finish Rama II completely, Miles loses his balance as the ship lurches, he falls toward three women in chairs, twists to avoid them, catches his foot at the edge of a chair, and falls full-length on the floor, hitting his wrist (he says) on the wall panel with a sound that EVERYONE in Frontier Lounge GASPED at, certain that he'd hit his HEAD. His friends are very solicitous and the doctor's wife gets the doctor. He lies on the floor a bit, face totally WHITE, and then is taken down to the room. There he tells his sequence, and insists he's OK. Friend's wife says she'll bring soup for lunch, Miles says he's felt a bit seasick since night BEFORE last's aquavit with the radio operator. I ask if he wants visiting, but his color's back and he says he feels fine. I get notebook and chat with doctor's wife: WORST trouble is BURNS from crew, and one waiter needing 5-6 stitches in a cut finger. LAST trip had a woman fall and need 2-3 stitches in her head, BUT they worry MOST about an old passenger breaking his/her HIP getting on and off the ZODIACS. But Miles seems fine now. Guy from two previous trips talks of the low that followed them two days into Fiji, 40 miles from the eye of a hurricane, and 150 mph winds knocked out windows of five passengers' suites at the end of THAT voyage. Seems a low is following us from the SOUTH for two days already, while the captain seems DETERMINED to get us to Campbell in daylight tomorrow. Only time will tell, as Mike says we may be in "between 7AM and 7PM" tomorrow. Down to lunch at 12:30. Deer stew! 1:30PM, at 11 knots, thus 11 hours to go, from bridge, but very bumpy even at 9 knots. Also news of Lan Chile crash out of Punta Arenas with Society Expedition Cruise passengers on board! At 56°60'S. But then, as we watch, speed inches to 9 knots and we're on Navigational Full! Listen to Mike and Hugh and Dennis and Captain PLAN the next two days (provided we GET there on time against WIND), which sound wonderful. Down at 3PM to Gurney on "The Mechanical Age." He GIVES me copy of foods! 11/29/29: 16 hours to fly to South Pole by Richard Byrd. He was monoxide poisoned by his wireless generator, NOT his cooking stove! 1/1947, maybe 600 men IN ALL in Antarctica. US's Operation Highjump put 4000 men on continent. Antarctic Treaty is RESULT of IGY. To 3:45, to BED! Not Big but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels comes on the TV he left ON at 5, and I can actually watch most of it lying down. He's feeling fine and we laugh at the manipulativeness of the movie. That's to 7. I take more pills and get down to SIDE table because there's a party at our corner. Cecilia says I talk to Hotel Manager for copy of all menus. Out and to bridge to find we're making medium progress in rough seas, then up to Dolphin Lounge at 9:30, where they'd said it would be Foothold in Antarctica, which we'd seen already, and on comes Siege of the South from 9:30-11! Watch it, good narration by photographer Hanley, and then to bed at 11:20.

SATURDAY, 2/23/91. Wake at 6:30 to pee, nose dripping, and now at 7:35 to bridge to see 29.4 km to go and making 13 knots! I'm ONLY person on bridge at this moment and can just say, "Great, Great, Great!" Down to breakfast and talk to Peg and others, saying TOMORROW at 7:40AM I will tell them about my book. Back up to bridge and THERE'S the island, first land in four days, and lovely light and shade as rainstorm passes diagonally in front of us, while cloud above island visible BEHIND gray, our windows dashed with rain. Captain hails Campbell and hears of 10-knot wind from northwest and 9°C and scattered showers for "Good day on Campbell." Enter harbor at 10 and drop anchor at 10:30! Fabulous! At 9 down for cameras. Look at map and MOUNTAIN on left is 1867 meters, island is 600 meters high, and La Botte looks about 100 meters high. At 6752 tons and 111 meters long, Frontier Spirit is BIGGEST passenger ship to get to Campbell Island. SEALS leaping TOTALLY out of water! Drop anchor at 11AM. Lunch 11:30-12:30, first group off at 12:30. Looks WARM. Hugh and Mike and Erik and Brad go off with Lars to dock BEFORE we anchor. LOVELY day!! Dress, lunch with Delores while Michael saves place in line, and STAFF goes back first, then Japanese who've never LANDED here before, THEN at 12:25 our boat. We're in Hugh's group going uphill, and he takes off ahead of David ahead of me. I'm tired at top at 1:30, but elated at view and dots of albatrosses on hill. Look at what Erik's doing and decide not to crowd him, so up to a crooning trio, then a double, then a single, leaving my bag behind, but when it starts to get DARK for RAIN I dash about looking for it, finding it MUCH closer than I'd expected. Into rainsuit JUST as it pours, but it stops soon, yet now it's 2:30 and time to start down. Lovely drama and grandeur to photo till 3:30. Zodiac returns me to ship to hear of 4PM cruise. To room to change out of sweater, onto boat at 4 to cruise inlet and LOTS of birds and seals and sea lions and diving birds, but I'm getting tired and COLD and HAVE a cold, and get back at 5:20 and shower deeply and to drink at 6:05PM. Have two Apricot Sours and talk to David, but when he leaves I'm quite alone. No recap to speak of, but rain cloud following us out of Campbell Bay impresses Margaret and me. Dinner is a fantasy of rolling vessel, spumy waves, and diving albatrosses in shafts of light from setting sun and slanting showers. So great that AFTER dinner I even get camera and shoot out window to 9PM. Then up to Dolphin to watch spray onto all front windows, but no 9:30 movie there. Down at 10 and Miles isn't in by the time I sleep at 11.

SUNDAY, 2/24/91. Wake at 6:30 to noise in hall and hear Mike's voice. Put on bathrobe (oh, washed clothes last night and dyed all white underwear RED from long johns!) and look at vacant hall and won't open door to Officer's Quarters. Up at 7:20 and to dining room at 7:35 for Peg and Al at 7:45, and I tell them my novel. Up at 8:30 to Dolphin for lesser waves, and down to bridge at 8:45 to find we're still at 51°S and due at Auckland Island at 4PM. THEN hear from maid that at 4AM Mike's WINDOW was blown in, essentially room 400, as room 404's window had been blown in (so THAT'S why the loads of caulking!) on the PREVIOUS voyage. Brush teeth and get out Foucault's Pendulum to start AND New Zealand addresses, and to Lounge at 10:30 for Hugh's talk on Auckland Islands. Bartenders, of course, MUST put out GLASSES on the bar JUST at the time Hugh's talking! He continues to 11:10 as I take the following notes: We're aiming for Port Ross and Sandy Bay on southern coast of Enderby Island, which is 5.5 times bigger than Campbell Island at 40 km long and 27 km wide. Cliffs on WEST (we approach from east). Sealing DECIMATED species: to HELL with the future. Tradewind, 50-passenger NZ excursion boat, spends 3-4 days at each of Campbell and Auckland Islands. Sandy Bay at Enderby has Hooker sea lions and yellow-eyed penguins. I give my card to Maya's friend from Fiji for resort's mailing list. Move from Lounge for Captain's Party for officers, and start reading Foucault's Pendulum. Aye is 55 today, so he's 34 days older than me. Read till lunch, MANY birds flying outside windows. To bridge, seeing island draw near with a GREAT lack of enthusiasm. Announce Zodiacs at 3 as we land at 2:30. "Wet landing" announced as I go to cabin at 2:40 to dress. Decks 6 and 5 go first, but we're off about 3:20, not bad. Sandy Bay beach is LOADED with fur seals, and I take pictures and then go "right" along coast. Great HIDDEN pockets of seals that rear suddenly BEHIND me, and great drama of calf that can't find a mothering tit to suckle. Dennis points out a yellow-eyed penguin pair to Liz and I photo them, chasing a third into the picture. Back along kelp-colorful coast to a seal POOL where they MUST be fed, why else would they poke out with such APPEAL on their faces? Then blue rabbits fascinate, and the colorful parrots, burrowing birds, and dull-green songbirds lure me into the lichen-rich, twelve-foot forest of TOTAL ENCHANTMENT with its crown of red-flowering rata trees. I pee and the birds come TO me and sing and poke and I'm TOTALLY captivated. Shoot all film and reluctantly return to beach at 7:10, looking back at all the laggards, then look at PINK lichen in rock-surf cave, and yellow and white and light green lichens, and trees of colors and birds and LOVE the place down to its limpets. Back to boat at 7:30 and miss talk by helicoptered-in staff that's leaving tomorrow. Dinner for Captain's birthday at 7:45, good food, and Michael and I order THREE bottles of wine and I get to bed at 10, after cherries jubilee, QUITE drunk.

MONDAY, 2/25/91. Wake at 7:40 and get edged OUT of round table, eating with SWISS at "corner table," ugh! Then to bridge and find we're HEADING for Snares Islands and they announce arrival and circumnavigation at 10AM. I get film from Michael and take three shots of rainy islands from distance. Feel a BIT ill from motion and take a pill at 8 and another at 12. Oh, four SHIPS on the starboard horizon this MORNING. Distribute LAST of my pills, lunch with MY champagne till 1:30, and I pack parka, boots, and raincoat in bag and figure I can get the REST in the suitcase and ONE backpack/shoulder bag. GREAT! Up to Dolphin---rocking wildly---at 2 for Mike's talk on the Lindblad-hired Soviet icebreaker. Ah, it's a PLOY for upcoming trips! Antarctica 10% of land mass; Arctic Ocean has 10% of waters. Migration into "new world" moves at ten miles/generation. Transarctic trips have no appeal at all for me. Talk to 2:50. Dennis in Dolphin at 3 on Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), based on Long Island. He goes to 3:45 and then Lars seems to have control over tapes, and he says he'll put Total Recall onto Channel 42 for me. I get set in room at 3:54, easy to make dark with the WINDOW permanently screwed closed! I've been counting the meals down from 8 (now 2) and the days from the start---now about 16 HOURS left on ship, and I feel it's REALLY about time! Total Recall VERY full of killing in UGLY ways, stopped at 5PM to let me pee and ending at 6, when I go to bridge to find WHY ship is rocking and find winds of 56-57 knots, Beaufort 11, above Storm to Violent Storm with Precipitous Waves! Making about six knots and someone says we can't DOCK in over 35 knots of wind! Put on silk shirt and get camera for final dinner! Few good shots of waves on deck to 6:45, then down to room to find that Florence, in 402, has fallen and bloodied her nose. Free champagne and canapés while Mike introduces staff and we go to dinner of steak AGAIN. Over at 8:30 and sit till auction starts at 9:30 and bed at 10, TIRED.

TUESDAY, 2/26/91. Miles is UP at 4:20AM! I'm up at 5:30, pack, breakfast 6:15-6:30, luggage in hall, passports and customs, off at 8AM in threat of drizzle, taxi from Invercargill arrives at 8:25. Pack in and leave FIRST at 8:30. Invercargill at 9, plans and maps to 9:30, Museum after we wander town and get back at 10, tuataras three, exhibits, leave at 11:15. Lunch and north to Milford at 6PM. Photos and dinner and watch tide and bed around 10PM.

WEDNESDAY, 2/27/91. Wake at 4AM for moon, then at 7:10AM for breakfast at 7:30. Boat tour 9:30-11:30, then they're on helicopter while I have a sandwich lunch around the corner, and Delores and I on the helicopter 2:35-3:30 for Gunn Lake and chasm and third- or fourth-highest Sutherland Falls. Back out to viewpoint, watch tides, early dinner, early bed.

THURSDAY, 2/28/91. 7:30 breakfast, pack and into car 8:30 and south to Te Anau for gas at 11AM, average speed going from 60 kph to 75 kph at 12:30 at lunch in Queensland. Keep driving and get to Mount Cook at 5PM. $208NZ for room! Great view of Cook. Down the walk to neighboring stores. Dinner prix fixe at $33 in Alpine Room at 6:15-7, then out toward Kea Point for photos to 8:45, when it's dark. Back to jerk off in lovely way.

FRIDAY, 3/1/91. Jerk off in morning, to breakfast at 8AM, negotiate for helicopter at 10:30. Mistake-filled drive to arrive at 10:25 and fly 10:35-11:27. Drive to Tasman Glacier walk-start at 12:15. I go AROUND Glacier Lakes and back at 2:15 and waterfall, no photos. To Hotel at 2:25 and up to tanks and Viewpoint and down by 2:45 to see Room 705 from ship check-in! To Hooker Glacier road by 3, bridge by 3:15, second bridge 3:40, to stream by 4, and lake by 4:35. Blocked by stream from going to base of glacier. Back 4:40-6:10, tired; I say "NO" to Kea Point. South to hotel to take shoes off and get vodka-tonic in lounge 6:30-8:30, for dinner in Panorama Room to 10:40, talking to Lady Mary, who tells us that GEORGE and NEIL are the duo from Room 705. Then to room and TV for music videos to 11:20 and bed, moon high.

SATURDAY, 3/2/91. Wake at 7:10 for GREAT pink Mount Cook, then lie to 7:35 and watch TV; pack and write a quick summary of the last few days from 2/26 to now, and sit watching News 8-8:22AM: Saddam asking for sanctuary in Algeria! Looks like war IS over. Catch up on this summary at LEAST to 8:23 and go to knock on their door. They're SLOW and want breakfast HERE. 34 days in this book, at least in summary, for scheduled 136 pages, so I'm 12 behind. The two-passenger helicopter was so roller-coastery that this six-passenger helicopter seemed almost fixed-wing tame save for actually landing on Murchison Glacier. Started counting final days about eight to go, now QUITE aware of five to go and the increasing prominence of the coming TWO days of 3/5. But I seem little concerned about flight, good, since NERVE pills are in SUITCASE still in car. Delores says I should come to Christchurch AIRPORT with them SUNDAY to fly to Rotarua. But I've not phoned John Ward yet! Watched kea promenading room-balcony railing in front of Mount Cook, good photo if you feed them, which I don't, since "Kea View" on way to Lake Damon. Cut toenails this morning, feet sore from last night and my SOLES are peeling! They're late for breakfast but the gals bring my hot chocolate and toast while I enjoy SENSATIONAL dried bananas that taste like they're related to figs! I'm tired, though the kick of the suspension bridges and the rushing waters showed I was still awake. Trying NOT to think of paying bills, checking for indexes, calling friends, and settling back into NYC, though I DO retire my EAB Visa card as FULL and get my Crosslands out, though it expires 3/91. And just DON'T feel like writing, so put this away and sit on PORCH at 9:37AM to wait for their knock. Long drive to Christchurch, confusing drive to hotel, check in and then out to Christchurch Museum till closing, then out to the next-door botanical gardens, where I take these notes: It IS ti or Cabbage tree all over: Cordyline Australis, family Liliaceae. Agavaceae family YUCCA is Phormium. Swamp grass is cortaderia or toe-toe. Down-pointing, hard sawtooth is Pseudopanax ferox, Aralia family, toothed lancewood. ONLY PHOTO Erica Verticillata---it's HEATHER! And photo Erica and Dahlia "Color Spectacle" and "Sunset Glow" and "Pink Jubilee" and "Ballet Girl" and unknown BORDER. Katy: It was so good (3D kiwi film) it could have been made in America. Delores: Snout spray in my parka pocket. Katy Means and Tony take us to the Sign of the Takahe, incredible place and dinner with Tony, Mary Downer, Katy (Catherine)Means, and Michael and Delores and me taking place of three others who canceled at the last minute due to some business with a wedding party. Venison and duck paté, bacon and potato soup, and pork in mustard sauce before Crepe Suchard for dessert. Brandy to start and endless white and red wine for a $130 wine bill that Michael gave $50US and I $20US toward. Home at 12:20AM stuffed and exhausted.

SUNDAY, 3/3/91. Wake at 7 and see rain outside and laze to 8 and jerk off with smooth baby lotion, chair, and mirror, then shower and brush teeth and knock at 10 to find they leave at 11:30. Breakfast 10:40 to 11:15 and up to final packing and get stuff to car. Off at 11:35 to airport at 12 and I get a Mt. Cook Air ticket for $172, off at 1:40, stop in Wellington, and arrive in Rotarua at 4:50PM. Into first-class lounge with them at 12:30 and sit to 1:25, and down to hear the plane hadn't arrived yet! I hope I hear wrong when someone uses the word "Hurricane!" Write this to 1:40, wishing I'd taken the time to ferret out a nerve pill. Oh, mentioned settling our accounts to Michael and he said I should consider them SQUARE due to the $800 I paid at Milford. But 1/3 of $1500 is $500, and 30 rolls of $6 film is $180, which is what $300NZ IS, so I get the car AND gas free! LOTS of people in airport, including two Maoris in a blue and a brown skirt! THEIR flight to Auckland is full, boarding already. I board at 1:55 and seat IS just behind right wing, as stated. Twin-prop Hawker-Siddley 748. Still cloudy. Maybe shorter time in Wellington? Loud music! 44 seats, 4 across, about 30 on board. Off at 2:15 and into clouds, bumping up, bumping through, a tiny snack I can barely eat, cursing my tenseness in a flight MUCH smoother than two-passenger helicopter! Seat-fasten sign comes on after twenty minutes and stays on though it does at LEAST break over channel, and a good series of shots of Wellington in bright sunlight. Land at 3:10, just 55 minutes, and stroll lazily into terminal, past sexy guys who MAY be security cops, and flight is called! Board 3:25, they're obviously going to make up for lost time. Sit partner-less again, hot in sweater in 70° Wellington. I figure that 6-passenger helicopter ride as #13 of trip, so I finished 14, start 15, and have 18 in all! Nice bits of blue sky over Wellington, geyser in harbor. Maybe 25 people aboard. Loud music (notice name of Guy Maddox from Washington!). One hour to Rotarua, off at 3:40. Houses are built RIGHT to edge of airport in Wellington. Land at 4:52, clear MOST of way and beautiful. Fantasize John MEETING me at airport! 16°C = 61°F. [No notes from rest of day:] to Eaton Hall, sort through handouts, walk to lake to photograph birds and vents and clouds and local steamy bubblers, then back to check through Maori shows, they DON'T have one tonight at the Hyatt across the road, and buy a ticket for the Travelodge show. Wander town more, in for the disappointing show, with a couple of cute guys, then keep the Chinese restaurant open until after 10PM while having a good meal. Back next door to sleep.

MONDAY, 3/4/91. Settle pants on the telephone. Incredible: MAY have to MOVE from Room #1 and DON'T. Shuttle from airport yesterday took me directly to Eaton Hall when NZ Tourist office was closed at 5PM. People on bus say weather was AWFUL for the past WEEK here! Today GLORIOUS by 9AM. Then DON'T get John Ward until 9:30PM last night---out of town! No pants! He gives me Tom Clougher's name. Phone him. He's BRINGING pants to Rotarua TODAY!!! He'd been taking them to John Ward's TODAY, as he took two visitors from Montreal on a tour to the SOUTH. No, no room for me, AND they're not returning to Rotarua tonight. From all being poor and undecided, it turns out all GREAT today, and even the TOUR BUS will take me from Rotarua to Auckland tomorrow! Buy ticket and take the AM tour. Notes from tour: Mile-long RIDGE pushed UP forty feet in earthquake 3000 years ago. Next valley SLUMPED hundreds of feet 100,000 years ago. WOW! 6/10/1886 Mt. Tarawara blew up! Now 22 craters in a 16-kilometer path that buried four villages, two of them TOTALLY. 147 Maori, 5 whites, and one English tourist from Scotland. Off at Whakarewarewa at 12:40PM, leave at 5PM on Intercity Tour Bus with driver who DIDN'T return me to Rotarua this morning. Buy three films, photo gardens and the "Aussie" park, and back to Eaton at 6:15 and decide to GO to Hyatt Maori show IF they have it. At 6:20 they say they do, and I'm seated at 7, good buffet dinner to 8:20, show to 9:20, then back to hotel to brush teeth and sort and count films and bed at 10:30PM, taking one set of pills and one tranquilizer.

TUESDAY, 3/5/91 #1. Wake at 4:30 to pee, take second tranquilizer. Wake at 5 and lie and think and mope to 6:15, then catch up with this by 6:30, only FORTY hours to GO! Take third tranquilizer. Shower, eat at 8:15 after phoning Intercity and being told ONLY pickup time is 8:15! Food is HARD going down. Phone for 9:10 taxi that comes at 9:15 for $4 including 20-cent tip. Ask for "Auckland" and told "Platform 2." Take bags off there and get others out, prepared to write. Agent says, "Auckland at 10:40?" I say, "No, 9:30." "THAT'S the bus, then," he says, pointing to WAITOMO TOURS at Platform 4. I lug bags and he says, "Get tags." I go inside and say, "Two Auckland tags," and she starts fussing with COMPUTER! Finally she says, "10:30," and I say, "TAGS!" "Oh, take them from the stack." Tagged my two bags and on at 9:27, doing this by 9:29, hot enough to remove sweater. Sit, emotionally drained, at 9:33, waiting for departure under increasingly cloudy skies. Tickets collected by 9:39, told to "stay on same bus right through." Stop in Puriora Fire exhibit (not much but Kokaho information brochure) from 11-11:15. Stop in a dreadful place called Merrovale for Lilliput Village (real disaster), which lasts too long from 12:15 to 1:10. Clear with first driver's log that I want off at South Auckland. Sky increasingly gray as I get increasingly blue. 60° in cave. Tomorrow I'm home. Try NOT counting hours/meals/etc. To Glowworm Caves, which are GREAT, from 1:15 to 2 for tour, bus leaves at 2:30. They accept a Visa card for $5.45! Stop 2:40-3 at Waitomo Orchard Fruit Stand, photo kiwi fruit, eat sample apple (no big deal---does that mean I have to return to New Zealand?), and SUN comes out! CASH $20US for $32.15 at Bank of New Zealand at 3:55 and buy an egg salad sandwich in the bus station for $1.50, the only thing that appealed for lunch in Hamilton, leaving at 4:15. Next stop: South Auckland! I really DO belabor my THOUGHTS on the way. Tried (in vain) lightwork, distraction, and becoming absorbed in what's passing. Get to South Auckland at 5:40 and there's ONE taxi that a woman gets, but when I ask her if she's going to the airport, the DRIVER says I should come along. He goes along road CLEARLY marked "No access to airport," at the end of which is a sign indicating "Airport." I get in at 6PM, giving him $15 when the METER says $15 and HE says $14. He's probably double-charging (or wants to fuck) her. It's been VERY hot for the last week, he says, and today is COOLER. Great, as I'm sweating in my flannel shirt! Get cart and get on line amid SCREAMING kids, and she IGNORES my 30.1 kg luggage, just putting a "pre-damaged" tag on my suitcase, saying, "The strap should hold it." She confirms $16 departure tax, and from $32.25-16 I have $16.25. Get two fifty-cent pieces from bar for phone to John Foot, who's HOME and had been wondering if I would call, and he hadn't heard from Don by 6:30PM. I spend sixty cents on call and $16 on tax and have 50-, 10-, and 5-cent coins left! Films OUT for X-ray, mixing all up, after paying $27NZ with Visa for Grand Marnier (only 70 deciliters?), and have to dig for passport at security gate. In ASTOUNDED to find it's 7PM ALREADY for an 8:20 plane departure. Oh, clerk ALLOWED five-minute leeway over REQUIRED "no thru baggage" on my 7:05 hour layover in Los Angeles, so I don't have to get them in Honolulu AND Los Angeles. She says I should "show tags to company agents at LA gate," whatever THAT means! Then juggle shoulder bag, and by leaving it OPEN I can put in booze AND my sweater, putting it ALL into one container! THAT takes to 7:10, and finishing this takes to 7:20, so there's only AN HOUR TO GO. How EAGER I am to just SLEEP! Couple of LOUD kids! GOD, can't they have ADULT flights? Is THAT what first class is? Literally ONLY 28 passengers in lounge at 7:25! Take next set of notes in back of Foucault's Pendulum: Return flight: first call to board at 7:55. Getting dark. Board in FULL row at 8:02, the screaming kids in the middle, one row ahead of me. THEN I get a whole four-seat row and stewardess's sympathy about my upcoming long flights! BUT at 8:20 we're still sitting. Dark out. Move at 8:25. 7:50 flying time. But at 8:30 we're still parked. Move at 8:35 with ROARING sound beneath the middle of the plane, the first time I SIT here! 8:40 "cleared for departure" and take off. Flight to 4:30AM, 6:30 local time. I take sleeping pill at 8:50, lie, but NOT asleep at 9:15, so I ask for vodka-tonic and get TWO of them! Drink them and I'm INSTANTLY out to sleep at 9:20PM.

#2. Then LIGHTS go on at 3:15, so I had SIX hours' sleep! I set watch to 4:15AM of the second day of Tuesday, March 5, because of crossing the International Dateline. Then I record my dream in the notebook: A character is named Canada Kavikani, and I wonder if she's not Kavafy's daughter? I'm AT Don Maloof's house (is this PRECISE?) and he's almost totally gutted the insides for a redecorating job, which he tends to do every 3-4 months. I look at ONE particular area beside the living room (I seem to KNOW the apartment) and say, "I didn't even know you had a ROOM here; what is it FOR?" And in his characteristic manner, Don smiles and really doesn't answer me. There are LOTS of workmen milling about, many of whom seem to be FAMOUS, but I can't quite identify them. Then he calls everyone to go eat, and he begins to have some of the traits of Jim Henson, in that small areas of the room have been given over to miniature scenes (inspired by Merrovale yesterday?) in which tiny puppets are operated from below to have them "living and working" in their little scenes: farmers, mechanics, factory workers, beauticians, etc. I'm concerned that all these OPERATORS (albeit hired) are working below and not EATING. Then, behind a kind of fence or railing, there's a gathering of old women who are either society figures or retired publicists. One old woman is caring for an even OLDER woman (isn't Don's mother very old?) who keeps SWOONING into a heap on the floor. "I think she's only faking it," I say rather snidely to no one in particular, then am embarrassed that she seems to have HEARD me and she glares at me. I look at ALL the absences, ALL the workers, and ALL the space, and I despair of ever catching up with the whole of it. Someone like the Swedish Chef (which I realize even in the DREAM had been played by Jim Henson, who's now dead) has been preparing special breakfasts (like Chris at Eaton Hall?) and hands me one, saying, "This is for Canada Kavakani" (is it a coincidence that the last name has the multiple consonant-vowel pairs of all the Maori street and place names I'd been reading on the tour yesterday?), and though I get him to repeat the name TWICE, I still have no good idea whom to give it to (and NOW it dawns on me that this is BREAKFAST, which they wake us to HAND OUT) when I wake up, feeling REALLY like I've had a FULL night's sleep (a RECORD for me on a plane?) thanks to Rolf's pill AND four seats to sleep in (though I DO remember waking ONCE to feel the plane bumping), but ONLY compare it as INSIGNIFICANT as compared to the BOAT'S contortions---a real psychological WIN). Even the TAKEOFF was great: in a MIDDLE seat I really couldn't SEE where we were going, and it felt like we really WEREN'T gaining speed for the takeoff, NOR did I particularly react when I looked UP and the 3 x 30-foot ceiling module in the center that contained the seat belt-smoking signs, lights, and air vents, and overhead racks on both sides, started to UNDULATE back and forth as the plane apparently FISHTAILED into its takeoff. I watched rows of Auckland lights through windows five seats away on either side and felt, not oddly, DISCONNECTED from the takeoff. Even as we mounted to the first layer of clouds, lit in bright startling flashes by the wing-lights, drawing the rapt attention of people sitting on my right---lightning flashes? engines burning?---I felt my DISTANCE from the windows as a BUFFER to my emotions. Maybe my night and ocean flights SHOULD be in center seats? Then after five minutes of ascent, through another bumpy cloud, the No Smoking lights went off and the stewardesses bounded up the aisles, so I pushed all seat belts but the CENTER (SAME slot) and strapped myself in, blanket below and blanket above, managed to make enough room for my left arm without cutting off circulation, lay FLAT on my stomach (SUCH a luxury) and despite a light in FRONT of me, I did lightwork, tried (and didn't) to conjure up the mympths while counting backward from 100, and dropped off somewhere in the 20s. GREAT! Write this to 6AM (set watch two hours ahead), (and turned it twelve hours back TWICE, so this SHOULD be 6AM on the FIFTH the second time) and feel GREAT, not even watching a Continental AD for travel they're running for ten minutes---saying it was a "news clip" according to the woman in front of me (since I couldn't understand the announcement)---and had TWO ham-on-croissant sandwiches and two orange juices with my pills from last night (since I hadn't eaten anything but an egg salad sandwich at 4PM and two vodka-tonics at 9:20PM---and didn't feel particularly hungry, to my amazement and pleasure) and tea, and NOW it's 6:05, landing in 40 minutes, but there's NO sign of dawn-light through the distant windows YET. May MOVE to a free left window if there IS one, for the Hawaii landing. What a GREAT way to FLY! 69° in Honolulu, 180 miles south of it, it's 5:07 local time, will be on the ground at 5:40AM---no WONDER it's still dark out. Fill out customs form. No Smoking sign on at 5:20, nothing visible outside. Lights, then land at 5:40, next flight at 8AM, all bags through customs. Off at 5:50, passport easy at 5:55, but they want $1 to use a baggage cart. I retort, "Great service," to which she snottily replied, "You're back in the US, my friend." Yeah! Wait for bags and write this at 6:02, with 24-6=18 hours to home! First in (as my luggage was) last off? Both bags off at once, NO inspection, and when bags are put on SECOND belt I ask, "Are these going to the same place?" "No," she says with a smile, "these are going to Newark." I tell her the history of the 7:05 hour's delay. "No, these will go through to Newark, no problem." ANOTHER solution by vanish! Get directed to a shuttle bus for three different flights, and they say that I'm to go to gate 24, and when I check, it's really at gate 25. Lose another Actualism pen here somewhere. Have two kids screaming from the corner, so I move down across from a sexy pair of jeans. Then a father carries his crying kid to a seat DIRECTLY behind me and I move over ANOTHER row, watching the sky get red in the east at 6:35, the Muzak in the lounge not QUITE as loud as it was in the shuttle, which had forced me to put in my earplugs. What looks like a possible set of members for a bodybuilder's convention comes past, one looking like Peter Martins with his bowl-cut blond hair, and ANOTHER father, this time black, takes HIS son to the window where I'm sitting. What a BLESSING it'll be to be back in childless Brooklyn Heights! There's an Air Marshall Islands plane on the tarmac. I guess I COULD feel like 6:15AM on a Tuesday? A number of guys STILL in Australia/New Zealand shorts; they must be STOPPING in LA! With no CALL from Don, either he FORGOT or he'll BE at the airport! 144 pages written in 36 days: four in January plus 28 in February plus four in March, so I'm ALMOST up to schedule! Departing jet catches rising-sun glint on its underside. Truly, THAT eight-hour flight was one of the EASIEST EVER! COULD past-life regressions have helped? Now, TRULY, by tomorrow at this time I'll be home. Guy in SHORT shorts and a BLAZER looks ODD, like he forgot his pants and wears only his boxer shorts. Clouds bright pink at 6:55AM. Now, with relief, MORE US accents than various down-under twangs. MORE people in lounge at 7AM than in Auckland. Kid wears a Guam jacket, and I think smugly, "I've been there." Sun's up at 7:05AM. 7:14: Boarding in five minutes. Board at 7:25, kids on first. JAMMED plane: thank goodness it's LIGHT and I have a window. Chat with people who flew 22 hours England-Auckland and will fly 25 hours back via Honolulu-LA-Houston because RTW is cheaper than two trips. I tell them how to sleep, if plane is only partly full, since they were tired from not sleeping. Get out camera at 7:50 while people behind talk about "basically over" Iraqi War. Move at 8:03. 4 hours and 18 minutes! INCREDIBLE! Set watch two hours ahead, to 10:10. Then in at 2:18, 8:12 to wait in LA? Off at 10:20, CIRCLING Oahu under BRIGHT morning sun, and then pass over cloud-covered Molokai, steel hut-roofs indistinguishable from whitecaps. Decent "lunch" of French toast, one sausage, blueberry muffin, fruit, and tea, then just over brilliant white clouds strewn over bright blue sea. Home Alone is a movie I'll watch, Roberts Blossom's characterization of the estranged father MAKING it, and an iron in the face is WORSE than a popgun in the crotch! Movie from 12:55 to 1:40, when they announce forty minutes to landing, making it four hours EVEN, SURELY a record. Bounce during movie and I alternately curse, pray, and do lightwork, sending out Deva ahead to SMOOTH way, but I'm getting worn down, happy though I am over 4-hour flight. High, bumpy clouds undoubtedly caused by heavy jet traffic. Fly over barren Avalon at 2, rocky California coast ahead, and loop WAY south over Long Beach airport, cuts of Santa Monica Freeway large and brown, and HUGE freeways being built, which I PHOTO (as WELL as eastern part of Oahu where the Carpenters lived), and a strange peninsula, but NOT center city. Land at 2:38, 4:18 to the minute, but 40 minutes EARLY. Look at gate: no Don. Then people say no one but PASSENGERS come in here. Then to ENTRY point, but NO one there. Try baggage claim and no Don. Ask and wait and try office, which PAGES at 3:15, 3:30, and 4PM. No Don. Call information and get Woodland Hills number and a woman's message, that I tell: 1) contact baggage claim, then later 2) phone the office. To ticketing and information, no Don. Call DENNIS and NYC information on Don's NYC number, no information. Read Foucault's Pendulum. Solicitous people say I can sit, use phone, do I need help? Some SEXY guys picking up luggage. Getting TIRED at 7, so leave and only snack bar open at Continental. "Try Delta." "Only McDonald's and Burger King." "I said I wanted to EAT." FINALLY someone suggests The Theme, which is the flying-saucer building that I photo after I leave 7:15-8:45 dinner of Chicken Oriental and a bottle of Mateus for $33 including tip for surly service. SO many planes taking off and landing that I'm SURE the airports' NEIGHBORS are most convinced of airplane safety. Walk to Continental area and have to be SHOWN monitor that says flight 12 is on time at 10:20PM. No one in lounge except a surly Hawaiian worker who ignores my killing glances but has to listen to flight attendant who arrives finally at 9:15 and verifies my Tina-gotten 10A wonderful seat. Took tranquilizer ALONG with night-pills at 8PM, and I THINK I might be able to sleep through MOST of the dark over-USA flight and wake up at 6AM faint light over New Jersey ALMOST back to schedule, provided I didn't over-alcohol myself with the WHOLE bottle of Mateus. This page, page 248, COMPLETES March 5, and my sweater seems to be OK, too. Lots of people (including some in SHORTS) check in by 9:25, so we probably have a FULL redeye, but at least SO far no squally KIDS. Sweat-smelling Latino in a tapered, broad-shouldered silk suit saunters sexily near my chair. Don't I WISH. NOW at 9:30 it's 12:30 NYC time and I only have SIX hours of trip to GO, thumb SORE from writing, and turn the page to 249, which MIGHT be the LAST, or at least the PROPER first of March 6! Announcement of Airbus 300 ARRIVING at 9:45, boarding at 10:10, delay due to strong headwinds from Newark on Airbus300, meaning strong TAILwinds for US? Now 9:30PM, ALMOST HOME. Special announcement for Manila and Honolulu passengers on flight 12. Last notes in back of Foucault's Pendulum. LAX-EWR: At 10PM the 10:20 departure changes to 10:10. First announcement for kids. Board 10:30, STEAL cushion and blanket from another seat to fill my empty one, and there are 2-4-2 seats, announcement saying it'll be a fast but BUMPY flight because of winds! Great! My 10A seat, WAY in front of wing, is broken, so I get 17A, ON wing, good for bumps, AND my classy female neighbor moves to a VACANT center THREE, so at least I have TWO for myself. Get water and salve my nose. VERY small seats, and I'm SURE the guy ahead has tipped his seat BACK. Real panic-hassle to find my Vaseline! Start moving at 10:45PM.

WEDNESDAY, 3/6/91. Land at 6:15AM, after not that much sleep, but the flight went fairly fast anyway, Rolf saying that the sleeping pill is ALSO partly a TRANQUILIZER. The left jet is THROBBING during taxi, and WHAT was wrong with seats 10A and B? Read my book, get my luggage, taxi home, and relieved to find that everything looks OK. Make the list of telephone calls described on page 2 from previous notes, and THAT'S THE END OF A FANTASTIC TRIP!

ANTARCTIC JOURNAL TRIP SUMMARY-PAGE

SAT,JAN.5: 4:10PM flight to Los Angeles; poor Continental food. 7:25PM to Hawaii.
SUN,JAN.6: 12:35AM flight to Auckland; sleeping pill works!
MON,JAN.7: Dateline day-loss; 8:45AM land in Auckland. See Australia 12:15PM. Jerry, Bill, and Kevin drive me home: lunch at 2; tea at 4; buy tours; dine in.
TUE,JAN.8: Plan, cash money, walk central Melbourne with Kevin, dine in.
WED,JAN.9: Ocean Road tour, lunch at Apollo Bay Hotel; dine Trocadero Café in Colac.
THU,JAN.10: Zoo all day: kangaroos, butterflies, echidna, wombat, koala, monkeys, HOT.
FRI,JAN.11: Queen's Gardens, Museum and restaurant, Venetian Twins at Arts.
SAT,JAN.12: Visit Geelong, Wildlife Exhibit, Ballarat, Gold Museum, Gardens GOOD.
SUN,JAN.13: Coonara Lodge lunch in Blue Mountains, tea, TV, and Tucker on VCR.
MON,JAN.14: Victoria Museum, "Good Loaf" lunch, Flagstaff, Fitzroy, Conservatory.
TUE,JAN.15: Old Jail, Performing Arts Museum, Wizard of Oz matinee, Hungry Jack's lunch, buy Ballard book, walk Melbourne, home to another great dinner as usual.
WED,JAN.16: Fly Melbourne/Adelaide/Alice Springs during eclipse: Whitegum Motel and Royal Flying Doctors,  Panorama Guth, Anzac Hill, Billy Goat Hill, Overlander Steakhouse dinner.
THU,JAN.17: Imparja TV, Noel Fullerton's Camel Ranch, Mt. Ebenezer, Mt. Conners, Yulara, Iraqi War Start, Tents up, Dreamtime, Olga Viewpoint, Katajuda Lookout, Cookout dinner.
FRI,JAN.18: Climb Ayers Rock! Motitjulu and Makutu souvenirs and flight-see Olgas and Ayers, Curtin Springs, to Kings Canyon Campground for dinner and talks.
SAT,JAN.19: Kings Canyon walk and swim; rabbit satay at Blivey's, bacon and egg at Jim's Place, bus back to Alice Springs and wander almost-deserted town streets.
SUN,JAN.20: Aborigine Settlement just north of Tropic of Capricorn; eat Witchety Grub; Snake-Dreaming Corroboree; Alice Museum; fly back to Melbourne and home.
MON,JAN.21: Blue Dandenong Tour with Puffing Billy, Gumnut Village, Fergusson's Winery lunch; Healesville zoo and lyrebird! Treat three to Florentino's dinner.
TUE,JAN.22: Fly 50 minutes to Sydney, stay in Stockade. Tour Hyde Park, Circular Quay lunch, Harbor Tour, Botanical Gardens, Bennelong Restaurant dinner and Sydney Opera House for Clemenza di Tito, great Paul Dyer harpsichord; bus to hotel.
WED,JAN.23: City Tour: Kirrigilli, buy Fuji Film, Dee Why Beach, Manley Oceanarium and shows, Jet-Cat, Explorer Bus: Mrs. Maquarie's Chair, Art Museum, Claudine's dinner, rain, Little Night Music with Joy Vogelgesang and On the Beach climax on steps.
THU,JAN.24: Explorer Bus: Powerhouse Museum, City Tour, Toronga Zoo Ferry; dine at Mozart Cafe at Sydney Opera House before Mikado and home by bus very tired.
FRI,JAN.25: Canberra via Mittagong "Old Bank Cafe" and High Court lunch. Tour Parliament Building, Embassies, War Memorial, Mt. Ainslie, dine in Wienerwald in Gordbaum, climb Merino sheep exhibit; ignore pressure to be gay on Friday nite!
SAT,JAN.26: Blue Mountain Tour to Windsor, Aerial Skyway, Inclined Railway, lunch. Featherdale Zoo for Koalas, Quakkas, Wombats, walk WAY around Sydney: Rocks, Darling Harbor, Aquarium Underwater, dine in Don Restaurant for fireworks and laser show and bus.
SUN,JAN.27: Morning Tour of Sydney, lunch on revolving tower, fly to Melbourne, dine at the Sharkhouse in St. Kilda's via Fitzroy Road, good sunset; finish Book 1.
MON,JAN 28: Phone Jock. To Spencer St. Station, RoadCat to Lorumburra lunch, to Port Welshpool for SeaCat, using Scopolamine, bus Launceston to Hobart and Jock's.
TUE,JAN.29: Jock drives: shot tower, Birney Island, Captain Cook's landing and home to photo albums, drinks, guests, "Nasi Goreng" dinner, and Lara and Matt and sleep.
WED,JAN.30: Jock to Tasman Arch, Devil's Kitchen, Remarkable Cave, Port Arthur for packed lunch; drive Mt. Wellington: rainbow, Margi's dinner of lasagna and wine.
THU,JAN.31: Watch sunrise. Bus to Queenstown, stay in Commercial Hotel, visit Information Office, Galley Museum, Mine Tour. Empire Hotel dinner and wine; jerk-off.
FRI,FEB.1: Hobart via Derwent Bridge and Tarraleah Chalet, Hobart Museum, Theatre Royale, treat them to great dinner at Mure's Upper Deck with 3 wines for $200.
SAT,FEB.2: Matt buys rainsuit and sunglasses for me, to Sheraton, St. David's Cathedral, booksellers, chemists, botanical gardens; Tasmanian Atlantic Salmon at Jock's. Bed.
SUN,FEB.3: Gazebo Breakfast, tour: Penitentiary Chapel,Runnymede for Tea, Bonorong for Tasmanian Devils and albino kangaroo! Board Frontier Spirit; Jock on to say I stole his pen, meet Miles Murphy my roommate, dinner and photos of Taroona.
MON,FEB.4: Frontier Lounge for tea with Cecilia and others, huge breakfast, talk by Dennis Puleston. Seasick; Mortimer and Gurney talks; no dinner tonite.
TUE,FEB.5: Morning tea, lesser breakfast, library, talks, Delores's Bonines.
WED,FEB.6: Windy, albatrosses, talks, Zodiac-cruise Macquarie Island, tea, dinner, and late-night showing of Franz Lazi's World Park Antarctica. Bed.
THU,FEB.7: Macquarie Island: King penguins, elephant seals, Gentoos, Royals, both nesting and courting; tricky Zodiac boardings, Solo: Voyage to the Ice.
FRI,FEB.8: Macquarie Island tour of overlook and ANARE base, great photos and penguin behavior and tussock grass; so tired I DON'T go on deck for AURORA!
SAT,FEB.9: Watch videos taken, see Shackleton's Expedition 1914-1916, Monteath, Puleston, and Gurney talks; dinner amid crashing dishes from kitchen.
SUN,FEB.10: Many talks during day; storms that wash Dolphin Lounge's windows with waves, see Voyage to the White Volcano, and collapse into bed at 10:30!
MON,FEB.11: Cross Antarctic Circle! See Sturge Island in Balleny Group! Phone Hobart to find I left flannel trousers there. Cross Antarctic Convergence at 10AM, see Wild South – U­nder the Ice, and more lectures. Travel with MP&DF!!
TUE,FEB.12: Stop in high seas and headwinds. Control Room tour. "Lost day." See Secret Place - Byrd's Antarctica and Home of the Blizzard. GREAT food!
WED,FEB.13: Mt.Minto and Cape Adare of Antarctica! More talks, Frozen Assets, Iwago's Whales. Collapse into bed at 12:30AM, still light outside.
THU,FEB.14: Land at Terra Nova Italian Base. Great rocks, glaciers, vistas, penguin, Zodiac cruise, and dinner while doing laundry at last downstairs.
FRI,FEB.15: 77°50' South as Captain closed bridge outside McMurdo Sound; photo Emperor penguin farthest south! Great New Zealand Scott Base, frozen climb up Observation Hill with wind chill at 30° below zero; hot shower; Norwegians talk.
SAT,FEB.16: McMurdo Base tour, Scott Hut at Hut Point, lone penguin; then Scott Hut at Greenpeace Base and second Emperor; then Cape Royds for Shackleton's Hut and Adelie rookery and penguins, sunset seals, pack ice blocking in Zodiacs!
SUN,FEB.17: Page through Stein Der Grosse Kultur Fahrplan; fascinating Ross Ice Shelf and height-contest; more talks and TV movies and food and sleep.
MON,FEB.18: Cape Hallet champagne-Zodiac cruise around iceberg, after walking on ice floe; attempt first landing on Possession Island with no depth-soundings!
TUE,FEB.19: Incredible morning at Cape Adare, Adelies, Borchgrevink's Hut, lots of photos; leopard seal on ice floe; pack ice under bow; whales and orcas; first j/o.
WED,FEB.20: Cheetah by Iwago; lots of talks, almost vomit before Crepes Suzette!
THU,FEB.21: Galley tour; food; library books; watch South with Shackleton; cold!
FRI,FEB.22: Finish Rama II; Miles falls; deer stew for lunch; Society Expeditions plane crashes at Punta Arenas, see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Seige of the South. Keep taking seasick pills and feeling seasick! Over Now!
SAT,FEB.23: Campbell Island: porpoising seals! albatrosses nesting! Great green vistas! departing rainfalls! Fantastic photos from dining room of sunsetClouds!
SUN,FEB.24: 4AM Mike's window blown in! Auckland Island: Hooker fur seals; 4 yellow-eyed penguins; blue rabbits; pool-swimming seals; rata, bird, wood FANTASY!
MON,FEB.25: Circumnavigate Snares Islands; request Total Recall, free champagne and canapes at Captain's farewell dinner; start packing and leaving!
TUE,FEB.26: Dock at Bluff at 7AM, taxi to Invercargill at 9; tuataras in museum till 11, drive to Milford Sound and great photos and hotel and tides &Mountains!
WED,FEB.27: Milford Boat Tour; helicopter tour of Sutherland Falls; tides; dine.
THU,FEB.28: Drive to Mt. Cook; fabulous dinner in Alpine Room; Kea Point photos.
FRI,MAR.1: Mt. Cook helicopter tour; walk Tasman Glacier; Glacier Lakes; Hooker Glacier paths and bridges; dinner in Panorama Room talking to Lady Mary Downer.
SAT,MAR.2: End of Gulf War on TV; long drive to Christchurch, Museum visit, and Botanical Gardens, cocktails at Mary's and Sign of the Takahe with Tony, FREE!
SUN,MAR.3: Mt. Cook Air to Wellington and Rotarua; check into Eaton Hall, wander town and lake and tiny steamvents; Travelodge Maori show; Chinese Restaurant dinner.
MON,MAR.4: Get pants today! AM Marengu tour and PM Whakarewarewa stay; Hyatt Maori show and dinner much better; start parking at last for return trip to NYC.
TUE,MAR.5#1: Tranquilizers; Waitomo Caves, Merrovale, Lillipu, Auckland airport. Fly.
TUE,MAR.5#2: Hawaii 5:40AM, watch Home Alone to LA at 2:38PM, dine at The Theme Restaurant, take off at 10:45PM, taking last of sleeping pills with drink.
WED,MAR.6: Land in NYC at 6:15AM, phone lots of people, END OF FANTASTIC TRIP!