Antarctica Day 7 - Base Esperanza
December 28, 2014 to January 9, 2015
We got back on the boat just after 4 from Brown Bluff, and at 5:30 we made it to Base Esperanza for our visit. We were all so excited we made it - this is where we could get a passport stamp and a lot of us really wanted that! Esperanza is an Argentina base, and the people there only spoke Spanish. Thankfully there were some bilingual people on our ship and they helped translate for us. The base has people that live there year around - military and researchers. They even bring their families to stay the winter. We got to walk around to a few of the buildings – the school, church and dining hall. The small stone building you see in one of the photos below was a shelter built in 1903 from a Swedish expedition. Walking from house to house was so difficult – tons of snow, either sink to your knees, slushy or slippery. I have no idea how they navigate around in the winter! While we were visiting the base the ship staff brought all of our passports and postcards we had written to shore and got them stamped and sent. Yea!! We came back on the ship just in time for dinner at 8pm. A long but really great day!