We woke at 8 am. The temperature is minus 6 and the wind is 20 meters pr. second. The two remaining cars arrived yesterday so we have enough work to do installing the equipment. There is snowdrift and the cars are filling up with snow as we try to install antennas and electricity. We finished all the work inside the cars but will leave the rest until tomorrow when the weather hopefully will be better since it is almost impossible to work outdoor today.
Around 5 pm we all took a greatly appreciated sauna, after some hard working last few days. Again Vladimir gave us some pancakes and vodka. This shows well the atmosphere around here, everybody is so positive and willing to help us. The people here are unique!
This was the first day where we could take it easy. We met Olek who is a station manager here, but he has been located in Antarctica for the last 20 years. He is 45 years old which means he has spent his entire working life here! He knows this area extremely well and showed us some ideas for the future here in Novo.
Andrei has suggested that we drive around 100 kilometers down to the coast to look at some penguin areas. We will try to drive this way within the next few days. This is in the same area as they land the oil barrels and they keep a large stock there, close to 2000 barrels. The idea is to use that trip to bring back as many barrels as possible. The vehicles they use to transfer those barrels are almost pre-historical and in a very bad shape. In their last trip they managed to bring 40 barrels back and the trip took three days.
Olek also told us about this convoy he participated in, in order to safe some helicopter pilots that had gotten into trouble by a big cliff which is a very popular place for tourists to climb in. This cliff goes 1000 meters up from the ice and is in fact very dangerous to climb. They are very interested in making a trail they can drive up there to be able to give service to the visitors. Recently 3 or 4 groups have gone there by a plane. The planes have been getting in trouble there and those trips are very risky. The cars could prove very useful in those trips. As a matter of fact, we belief our cars could be used for almost every task around here, instead of those old machines they have got here. In order to make this place more tourists friendly they also need to clean it up, remove the oil barrels that have been left all over. But there is a lot of work to be done making tracks and GPS tracks around this area.
Gísli Jónsson
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