How to Travel to the Most Remote Office on Earth
The plane is a super impressive Hercules. You arrive on this little bus and you see this monstrous plane, and you enter your back. Then you sit side by side in these longitudinal seats. And then it’s the start for a seven -hour trip without a toilet, with a small snack, many of you around you – just sitting until you see, for the first time, a little Antarctic.
You see these wonderful ice shelves from the small windows you have there. The first thing you see when you go out is just ice everywhere. You are really new in this environment, and sometimes it’s a bit like being on another planet.
There is an Italian station there, and we had to stay for a day. But what we learned very quickly is in French, we say, In Antarctica no prognosticThis means “no forecast in Antarctica”, because the weather is super unpredictable. So, instead of staying one night, we stayed almost a week.
This station is just logistical; It is not intended to accommodate people, and all those who stay there prevent others from coming. It is a real logistical challenge for people who work there, so they want us to go as soon as possible. But the weather is so unpredictable that you cannot just take a plane and go inside the land. You have to wait until the weather is almost stable, and the pilot says: “I’m ready to fly” because he has the last word.
I always had my data problem before and I was trying to connect to the internet. There it was like the Internet of the 90s – you know, BIP BIP. I tried to connect, and finally, after perhaps two or three hours, on a computer, I arrived at the stadium where he said: “Okay, I will connect to your account so that you can download your belongings. Please give me your phone number. I will send you an SMS to connect. ” It was the double verification, and it did not work because, obviously, there is no telephone service. So I could not access my data because of this double verification.
Finally, we took a plane. This one is smaller, a BTH-67 plane, which comes from Canada to fly in Antarctica and then returns to Canada at the end of the season. This plane trip took four hours. It is an unwarken plane. You make sure to put all your clothes, to be ready to go out in Concordia, because it is less than 30 Celsius. We were very afraid.
The first thing after landing in Concordia was that feeling of dizziness, vertigo. What I didn’t know when I got there, you are 3,200 meters above sea level, so you feel the altitude. After four hours in this little plane, where you just see the flatness of the white, and nothing else, you go down to Concordia.
By far, you see the station. This station seems so small because there is literally nothing around him – no mountains, nothing. And you have this little Job in the stomachAs we say in French, like butterflies, because you know: “Wow, it’s going to be my house for a year.” We went down to Concordia station, and the crew which had just spent a year and which left the station now, awaited us and welcomed us very warmly. They brought us inside the station because we were sometimes afraid of high altitude. They want to make sure nobody is carrying anything heavy, that we do not do physical activity. They told us, “Stay calm for the next few days.”
The station is made up of two towers, with 18 sides for each round. It’s fundamentally white, with a little orange, and that’s it. You enter through a tunnel between the two laps. You remove your boots and leave all your things there. It’s quite small. Then you can go to the left, which is the “calm tower”. Inside, you have dormitories, laboratories and hospital. He has three floors. The intermediate floor is dormitories and the upper floor is laboratories. This is called the “calm tower” to keep it calm. Then we go to the other tower, on the right side of the entrance. He has technical things. On the second floor, there is the video room for movies and the gym. On the top, you have the living room, the dining area and the kitchen.
In five minutes, you visited your new house. It’s super impressive because you think: “Someone had to build this in the middle of nowhere. Someone had to take the first steps.” And it’s just incredible. So many people go to Antarctica without anything. We arrive here and we have the luxury of having this building to protect ourselves from this environment.
It’s so out of this world to be there. We have seen a lot of photos of Antarctica, and we have probably read a lot of books, but you have never been at the center of Antarctica, which is quite different. There is no life – no birds, no trees – there is literally nothing, just ice and wind.
