all photos
[11/14(Mo) => Antarctica (McMurdo Station)]
5:30 Got to the airport, put on the ECW gear.
7AM-1PM I'm now on the C-17 jet-powered cargo aircraft with ~25 passengers. Just visited the cockpit -- the pilots are nice. Cruising at 10km altitude.

Q1. Is there an airport there?
1PM Landed. I later learned that we landed on a ~2 meter thick ice on the ocean -- doesn't sound so thick! Then we drove on the ice to the island where the McMurdo Station is. -10°C. Not cold at all! With some clouds, not too bright either -- nice!
2PM Orientation w/ National Science Foundation; checked into a 6-bed dorm room. Checked email -- internet is slow here. There were 1100 people at the station.
4-6PM Decided to see Scott's Hut; Robert joined me. It was a little colder than before, so went back to get more clothes -- later turned out to be a really good thing. With a lot of the snow melted to expose the rocky terrain, this place was like Mars.

Seen in the distance is the wooden hut built by Captain Scott's team for their expedition.
By the hut was a big black object that looked like a dead seal.. We saw a cross on top of a little hill nearby, so hiked over there.
The view from the top was magnificent. We saw the airfield where we got off the plane. We wanted to explore more, so went along a ridge toward higher hills.
Found a little pond of ice... bluish and pretty, but so strange... there're many white bubbles embedded within the ice. I still can't figure out how they could've formed. The surface of the pond is very bumpy, with many big cracks. I like these ponds a lot.
We kept going up along a steep cliff. It was getting windier and colder, but we just wanted to see more.
The surface looked just like the photo sent from the Mars rovers, except here it's greyish.
Q2(Ali). Are the hills 10,000 feet high?
=) The hills are not quite that high, but the last photo shows (in the background) a part of Mt Erebus, which is 12444 feet tall (3794 m). The South Pole itself that I'm going to next is at elevation of 9300 feet (2800 m)!
I saw nothing alive, except 2 birds (skuas), but nothing else alive. It was mostly cloudy, but Robert's UV-sensitive glasses got very dark, so UV must've been pretty strong...
8-9PM Went back to Scott's Hut, this time with Tom who got a key to get in. Inside was filled with a smell of oil -- they were using seal's lard for fuel.
[11/15(Tu) => South Pole]