Dallas-Fort Worth Airport

Rob writes:

Ted and I have completed the second leg of our journey. (The first leg was a drive from Boulder to the Denver International Airport, courtesy of our dedicated colleague and friend, Jenn Bohlander—thanks Jenn!) Speaking of legs of our journey, we still have a few more to go: Dallas to Santiago, Chile, then Santiago to Punta Arenas, Chile. From Punta Arenas we cross the Drake Passage to Rothera Station on Adelaide Island, and then we have one more flight to the Beta site where we’ll establish our base camp. From here, the planes get smaller and smaller (Boeing 777 to Santiago, Embraer to Punta Arenas, DeHaviland Dash-7 to Rothera, and finally a ski–equipped Twin Otter to our camp site to conduct the study).

We flew to Dallas on American Airlines, and we’re now waiting to board our plane to Santiago, Chile. Ted and I changed a few dollars into Chilean pesos: $54.00 is about 24,000 Chilean pesos,  so we have an impressive stack of 1000-peso bills.

As we travel, we’re still working on final preparations. We’re laying out our initial plans and going through our lists of equipment one more time. We also managed to look at a few images of our field site while on the plane.  We’ve just had a chat with Erin Pettit, another member of our field team, and she is ready to depart Alaska for Punta Arenas. We hope to see her by Thursday.

We’ll check in from Punta Arenas with an update and a few photos.

Rob Bauer and luggage in the Dallas airport

Ted Scambos works on some final details