The South Pole

Wow. I've been busy. You can probably tell because I haven't posted much here. I went to the South Pole, all the way to the very bottom of the planet. It was so cold there, something like 25 degrees below zero with a wind chill factor of between 50 and 70 degrees below zero. When I smiled for a picture outside the water between my teeth froze! That's cold.

I took lots of pictures. I'll show more later. Here are two featuring the bear Kelsie gave me. He went to the South Pole too!

I'm 16 hours ahead of you!

I know you're just learning how to tell time. Has anyone explained time zones to you yet? Maybe not. Anyway, down here in Antarctica I'm on the other side of the world as well as on the bottom of the world. I'm 16 hours ahead of you. I used to be 17 hours ahead of you until last Sunday. (We're in the same time zone as the country of New Zealand.) Being 16 hours ahead of you, it's already tomorrow here! When you read this on Wednesday (if you do), it will already be Thursday here.    

Day Off

This seal has the day off today, just like you do. He and his friends seem to get a lot of days off!

Penguins!

Yes, they do have penguins down here. Here are some that a friend of mine named Joshua took a picture of when he was out doing his work. We are not allowed to interfere with penguins at all, so when they show up they go where they want. We try to stay out of their way. They are fun to see. They are more interesting than the seals sometimes, becuase the seals just lay around like big blobs. They barely roll over. Even though they are cute and nice, they are a little boring. The penguins, however, seem always to be busy and on the move.  

When Volcanos Burp

Volcanos burp!

And when they do it's a big deal if you're nearby. You have to avoid the temptation to run and turn around and watch what comes up and out of them so you don't get hit by it. They spit out bits of molten lava that quickly harden into light rocks. Sometimes these rocks have lots of holes in them like a sponge.

In this picture I'm in a special volcano lab holding one of these burped rocks.

Scott's Hut

Today we're looking at a really old hut used by one of the first and most famous Antarctic explorers, Robert Falcon Scott.

They've left everything in here exactly as it was 100 years ago, even pants they hung up to dry!

Here's some old, frozen socks!

 

Here's some old food.



More old food. Can you see the crackers they left out? It's so cold here that they still look like crackers, even though by now they would be dust anywhere else on earth.

Here's a package of sugar that's older than your grandparents' grandparents!

Here's some old hot chocolate. I wonder if this is still good.

The roof had ice on the inside. That's when you know it's cold!

Scott Base

I take a shuttle and go to lunch at Scott Base, New Zealand's base, every Wednesday as part of my job. This is a sign outside Scott Base that shows how far some big cities are away from it.



This is a room in a museum they have at Scott Base. It shows some old things they used before they had computers. 



This is their old stove. Now they have much newer ones.

These are some of the things they wore back then.



They used to have big dogs help them get around. Here's a sign saying how much food they used to get.




This sign shows what the dogs looked like. They don't use dogs to pull sleds anymore. They don't have any down here now, not even as pets.



This is an emergency exit which is up in the air because sometimes the snow would be so deep you couldn't open a normal door.

Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana is a funny name for a funny thing that happens a lot here in Antarctica. It is the name for a mirage. A mirage is something you see that's not really there. Light plays a trick so that what you see or what a camera takes a picture of is bent or stretched. This picture of a mountain by where I live down here looks like it has a cliff on the bottom of it, but that cliff is not really there; it's a mirage. Isn't that amazing?