Life Beyond the Beaker

March is flying by! Next week Rothera turns to a wintering base as all of the summers are leaving on the Shackleton which is due in on Wednesday, there are then three days of relief where we unload some freshies and various other goodies to keep us winters happy and then load on all of the now ex-winters P-box's and gash. The past few weeks I have been busy finishing all of the summer sampling, collecting my own microplastic sediment samples, finishing off the hand over with Sam, lots of snowboarding , climbing and walking. So lots of random bits in this summer of fun blog..      There have been so many fledging penguins around the Point, the elephant seals seem to have left us until next summer; I'm quite happy about that because they are rather smelly.      We had a visiting yacht, I was so excited; we were not allowed to go sailing though much to my dismay, I did stand on it though so technically I've been sailing in the Antarctic,... right....

At Rothera there is a type of cleaning rota where by everyone on base takes it in turn to have a day where they help out in the kitchen and clean certain areas around the base. It's a great day to get involved with the kitchen and do some of your own cooking, give your own back to the base and it's nice to have a day off from your usual job to do something different. So we actually call it the gash rota, and it rotates around like below. We then do various cleaning jobs, but then we work in this awesome kitchen for the day. When you are in the kitchen doing the dishes there is a pretty good view. Haha, no there actually is a good view. You can watch ice bergs float past or pieces of pack ice drift by with seals sleeping peacefully or even watch a penguin waddle on by and if you're lucky you can watch the planes land! You are given the option to make what ever you want if you're keen so I mixed some herbs together to make Herbs De Provence ...