The Whole Wide World

Better late than never! What a weekend. Two amazing midwinter dinners in the books. It kicked off with a trip over to Scott Base on Friday night. There were about 60 of us invited to their dinner and they put on a fantastic spread. It was my first non buffet meal in eight months. After a cocktail hour at their bar, which is called The Tatty Flag, we all sat down to dinner.

The appetizer was a salmon and seaweed salad, followed by a family table sharing style main course of all the meats. And I mean all the meats; ham, lamb, pork belly, roast beef, chicken…I definitely had a skip day on being pescatarian and had a cheeky piece of lamb and strip of crackling from the pork belly. Drool. There were veggies too; mashed taters, green beans, asparagus, sweet potato and kumara. Kumara is the Kiwi version of a sweet potato. Fresh baked bread. And for dessert, profiteroles with real whipped cream (a luxury) and Eton Mess as well. The final course was a cheese board with the most stinky delicious blue cheese and brie. So much yum.

After dinner everyone migrated back to the bar and general chaos and carnage ensued. I enjoyed watching the craziness go down. My host for the evening, Ed, took me on a tour of the Hillary Hut which was a real treat. That’s Sir Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. The hut was built by Hillary and a team of 22 men back in 1956/57 and is the original feature of Scott Base. It still has original items in it, much like Discovery Hut does here at McMurdo.

The following day being a workday, we ended the evening and headed back to station around 10PM. It was a great evening and I am so grateful to have been included in the Kiwi celebrations. More to come on yesterday’s McMurdo midwinter festivities later…back to work for me now.