The final days in Chile.

Mark, Steve, Phil and I went out for a farewell dinner that first night back in Punta Arenas. We returned to a very nice place we had all enjoyed prior to leaving for Antarctica. Steve insisted that it be his treat. A group of ALE people were also dining there. They came over to our table and introduced two dignitaries they were entertaining; the geologist who laid out the blue ice runways, and a former high-ranking general in the Chilean Army.

Two Australian brothers own and operate ALE. Both were present that evening. One brother is lively and humorous. The hands-on manager of their Antarctic Operations, he is also the visionary of ALE with serious intentions to launch a space tourism operation. I attended a spontaneous post-climb celebration hosted by this brother shortly after returning to Union Glacier. The absence of darkness may have had something to do with the party going until 5 a.m. It was really fun and I was really woozy the next day.

The other brother was rumored to be caustic, prone to angry outbursts and generally bad for business. I was surprised then when he visited our table a second time, pulling up a chair and socializing over a glass of wine. He would ask a question then ignore the answer. It was kind of clumsy, but not awful. At one point he steered himself to the topic of the IL-76, commenting that it flies military missions in Afghanistan during the off-season.
Following my blog entry entitled "Half the Fun," I received a Reader comment expressing what appeared to be an informed critical view of the group ALE subcontracts out to for the IL-76 services. I invited AC and ALE to respond. ALE declined, and AC answered a different question than the one raised by the Reader.
"I wonder how many questions you ask the people running the IL-76," I asked the brother seated at our table. An immediate tenseness washed over everyone's face as he bristled at this.
"Yeah, I've been told there's some Lawyer sniffin' around about that, asking questions and that. Name of Maura or something," the brother said peevishly.
"Yeah, that's me. Only I'm not a Lawyer, I'm a Writer. And it's not me asking, it's one of my Readers," I said.

We were probably done eating anyway.  At this point everyone except me and the brother got up and left the restaurant. They waited for me outside  ...a block away. To my surprise, the brother did not explode, though he certainly looked as if he would. However, he also did not answer the question as to whether any improprieties had been committed on the part of the IL-76 subcontractors. His basic position was that ALE is only concerned about the services they hire for. In all fairness, these services had been performed remarkably well in the course of my experience. The aircraft seemed to be in top condition. The crew delivered two of the smoothest landings I have ever known in the course of much global travel. As well, it is doubtful their are many, if any, substitute providers available. So ALE sticks to their knitting.

Phil, Steve and I spent the next day shopping for Christmas gifts and eating like Kings. All of us had left weight on Antarctica, in my own case 12 pounds. Not a remarkable sum. The human body burns massive calories when trying to stay warm. They are the coal thrown into the boiler. As well, a person's heart rate increases meaningfully at altitudes above 10,000 feet as the air thins. With less oxygen available the body in a sense tries to make it up in volume, pumping the blood much faster. This in turn burns still more calories. All of this occurs independant of the obvious caloric burn attendant to mountain climbing. A Feb 2010 article in "Wired Science" (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/high-altitude-weight-loss/) makes several interesting points regarding the effects of weight loss in higher altitude. "Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off," the article reported. It goes without saying this effect is amplified at still higher elevations. Did I mention that Vinson is 16,048 feet tall?  Just checking.

The following day we took an excursion to the Isle of Marta to see the penguin colony. "OK, I'm done, " Steve commented after ten minutes. Their were hundreds of penguin, maybe thousands. They looked at us. We looked at them. Some peered out from their burrows. Others tettered casually down the roped path set aside for humans. "Hey fellas, where ya goin' all spiffed up like that," I questioned. A few penguin made their burrow right in the path itself. It was a casual scene, and one could not help but feel the life a penguin is a pretty good gig.