A Night Out in Antarctica

We get an interesting mix of recreational opportunities here in Antarctica. Some are familiar: hanging out and having a few drinks with friends, going for a hike, watching movies. Others are a little different from what you might get at home. I’ve been enjoying an interesting mix.

On Thursday night I had the unexpected opportunity to visit neighboring Scott Base, the New Zealand research station that is only 2 miles away from McMurdo Station. Scott Base is much smaller than McMurdo, only supporting around 100 people compared to McMurdo’s 1200, but it is quite lovely. The buildings are all painted the same pretty shade of light green on the outside, and the inside is very comfortable and homey. I have heard that all the buildings are connected to each other, too.

You can’t just go to Scott Base whenever you want - Americans would quickly outnumber the residents if visits weren’t limited! (The Kiwis are always welcome at McMurdo, though.) On Sundays, there is a shuttle from McMurdo taking people to the Scott Base store, which is super cool. They have Scott Base-branded shirts and sweatshirts, really nice IceBreaker merino wool clothes, New Zealand chocolate, and lots of other souvenirs.

If you want to see the rest of Scott Base, you have to be invited by someone who is stationed there.

But there is another way you can go, which is American Night! One night a week, a lucky few dozen people at McMurdo win the lottery to go visit the Scott Base store and bar. An, one of my field teammates, won the lottery and invited me to be her plus one. We were shuttled over in an NSF van, and as soon as we got out we noticed several Weddell seals basking on the sea ice very close to the entrance to the base. After snapping a few pictures, we headed inside.

At the crowded little store I spent a rather large amount of money (fortunately it was New Zealand dollars so I could pretend it wasn’t real money) on an IceBreaker hoodie with the Scott Base logo, a merino wool hat with penguins on it (made in New Zealand), and a few other knick knacks.

Then it was time to head to The Tatty Flag, the bar on base. Bars at McMurdo no longer serve alcohol because of, uh, reasons. Instead, each person gets a weekly ration of how much alcohol you are allowed to buy from the store, which is 3 bottles of wine, or 3 six-packs of beer, or 1 bottle of liquor. You go to the McMurdo store, they look up your name in the computer to check how many credits you have left that week, and then you can buy your alcohol. To drink it, you can take it to one of the approved alcohol consumption locations, which includes the bars that no longer serve alcohol, and enjoy it there. It’s not quite the same experience, so it was nice to have a couple of drinks at a proper bar. It was quite lovely in there, and An and I hung around, made some new friends (some Kiwis, some Americans), and played a few games of darts. After a couple of hours we got back on the shuttle and headed back to McMurdo around 9:30 pm.

As soon as we got back within range of our dorm’s wifi, my phone exploded with Whatsapp messages from our field team group text. In addition to logistical deatils about another outing that evening, there was the news that Emperor penguins had been sighted out on the sea ice, and you could see them through the spotting scope at the Crary Library. I hustled over there (bringing my key card - the Crary Lab is closed by that time) and sure enough, there was a little huddle of huge penguins, about five of them, pretty far out. I managed to take a terrible blurry photo of them with my cell phone through the lens of the spotting scope.

I got back to the dorm entrance just in time to meet up with the rest of my teammates who were assembling for a 10 pm tour of the McMurdo power plant. Yep, that’s one of the many things you can do for fun around here, and I have learned a lot of interesting things about where our electricity comes from and how the drinking water is treated. We’re still hoping to get a tour of the wastewater treatment plant before we head out to our field site in a few days.

McMurdo’s electricity is produced by these giant 12- and 16-cylinder diesel powered generators, and supplemented by three wind turbines. We learned how this energy was produced and distributed throughout the station. Fun fact: McMurdo provides the electricity for Scott Base, too!

It was close to midnight when I finally got to bed - the latest night out I’ve had so far. But it was super fun!