Neat, not-so-neat and chaotic piles of equipment, clothing, books, paperwork, electronics and camera equipment are scattered across most of the furniture and various floor spaces throughout my apartment.\u00c2\u00a0 Three seperate computers are connected to a pletora of portable harddrives and flashdrives, all frenetically downloading and creating backups.\u00c2\u00a0 A list of lists of things to do is at my side, with items being added faster than they are crossed off.\u00c2\u00a0 Amongst it all, I’m experiencing potent deja vu.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it’s packing-for-Antarctica… again.<\/p>\n
Before you dial the local psychiatric services on my behalf, be advised that I am not repeating the 15-month overwintering expedition.\u00c2\u00a0 Phone down?\u00c2\u00a0 Good.\u00c2\u00a0 What I am<\/em> doing is taking all my year’s leave from my real job and embarking on a working holiday of sorts as the expedition\/ship’s doctor for an eco-expedition to a plethora of the most environmentally, hisptoric and geographically important places in the South.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, that’s right – this<\/em> time we are going to take pictures of cutesy pengiuns, and lots of them \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n I’ve been blessed to join the crew from Cheeseman’s Ecology Safaris<\/a>, a well established team who have been leading natural history oriented expeditions around the world for the last 30 years.\u00c2\u00a0 Their frank and foremost ethos is to provide their participants with the most indepth and immersive wildlife and wilderness experiences possible, and they seem to succeed grandly.\u00c2\u00a0 This expedition will take us aboard the MV Polar Star<\/a> to the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands), South Georgia and Antarctic Peninsula.\u00c2\u00a0 Read about the trip, staff and itinerary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This promises to be a very different experience to my previous expedition with SANAE; although there will be considerable scientific input the focus is more upon the wildlife and natural beauty of the area than on investigation itself.\u00c2\u00a0 The participants are multinational: a brief scan of the manifest shows that they\u00c2\u00a0 hail from Canada, right across the USA, UK, Ireland, Germany, RSA, Thailand, Finland and Australia.\u00c2\u00a0 The expedition team are fantastically diverse, most with tertiary qualifications in fields ranging from biology, ecology, and geology to wildlife photography, art and polar history.\u00c2\u00a0 I can barely contain my excitement at picking this collection of minds and experience.<\/p>\n I will be posting updates from the ship throught the expedition, with photographs and video to follow as soon as I return.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully, you will be able to share in the trip \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I leave on Saturday 27 December… watch this space!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Neat, not-so-neat and chaotic piles of equipment, clothing, books, paperwork, electronics and camera equipment are scattered across most of the furniture and various floor spaces throughout my apartment.\u00c2\u00a0 Three seperate computers are connected to a pletora of portable harddrives and flashdrives, all frenetically downloading and creating backups.\u00c2\u00a0 A list of lists of things to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-cheeseman-expedition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}