As Alex wrote in the last post, we have been together in Christchurch with rolling 24-hour delays. New Zealand is a wonderful country and spending a week in Christchurch is hardly something to complain about, except we are so very eager to get to Antarctica to search for meteorites!

Our enthusiasm for ANSMET has led us to grasp onto anything related to Antarctica that we can find! It has become something of a scavenger hunt…luckily, Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula have lots of contemporary and historical connections to Antarctica. We all regularly visit the memorial to Scott and reverently ponder his fate; this statue was sculpted by Scott’s widow! Cindy and Nicole did a bit of reading in the Antarctica section of Tūranga (the incredible Christchurch main public library).

We have explored the Antarctic exhibits of the Canterbury museum, which includes a section about ANSMET, an Allan Hills meteorite from 1979, and even a faded photograph from the field featuring a newly-found meteorite. We are still trying to guess whose hand is holding the field number in this photograph (John Schutt’s hand?). We spent a little bit of time in the International Antarctic Centre when we picked up our gear from the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC), and are looking forward to going back to spend more time checking out their exhibit hall.

Cindy and Nicole

Christchurch

December 10, 2019