Anyone seen the glue?

Today’s Plan A involved landing on Paulet Island. This has a combination of penguins and historical ruins dating back to Swedish ship Antarctic, trapped and destroyed by Weddell sea ice in 1903 or so. Until recently, this would have been the largest concentration of Adélie penguins on this side of the peninsula, but then the scientists bothered to count the penguins on the Danger Isles. And as a rare treat we may even get to see other species along the way. The plan is a landing, followed by a circular walk. Jordi assures us the walk is easy, but with a slight climb and descent. By now we have a healthy disbelief of anything Jordi says about walks, so the obvious question of “How far?” is carefully directed at Sarah. She assures us it is about a kilometre or so, and we believe her, for Sarah is trustworthy. According to Jordi, this is always a calm landing, and in a show of confidence he declined to use the drysuit. Sarah and Nilla wisely declined to follow his example. I can well understand Jordi’s decision - in these days of breathable layering I can think of few worse things to walk in than a neck high rubber suit. The landing is wet, and possibly tending towards very wet. The guides are waist-deep in water, catching and spinning the Zodiacs so that us soft passengers can land without having the water over the top of our Muck boots. Jordi is regretting his bravado, but the girls are fine. Or maybe not. Sarah - she of Spitsbergen and the internal blast furnace who laughs in the face of snow, ice and freezing winds - has been hiding a little secret for the trip so far. Her drysuit has a leak and someone has mislaid the dry suit repair kit. The leak is getting worse, and today the blue skies have gone grey, and the wind is whistling by and reminding us what wind chill really is. The walk is between the sea and the rookeries, and we traipse slowly in single file as we patiently try to minimise our disruption to the penguins. So slowly that we are not generating any heat, and many of us are feeling we are missing a layer or three. And Sarah, with her dry suit retaining the icy water from the landing is struggling to get her blast furnace glowing. After an hour or so, I am beginning to get a little suspicious about the stated lengthy of the walk, so I start the technology on my wrist for a second opinion. Surely we are not walking that slowly? We pass the penguin nests that decorate the grave of the one casualty of the Swedish expedition, and reach the penguin nests on top of the ruins of the stone hut where twenty or so shipwrecked men spent the winter. It is bleak, and the wind whistles around us. As a place to spend the winter, the kindest thing which can be said about this hut - even after assuming a roof, door and other creature comforts - is that it is better than not having a hut to shelter in. A slight rise leads us to the crater lake in this extinct volcano. Or as a vulcanologist once told me, dormant volcano as to him there was no such thing as an extinct volcano. Then the short climb up to the edge of the crater gives us a glorious opportunity to generate a bit of heat at last. By the time we get to the top I feel I am only one layer short, but suspect the slow descent will soon cool me down again. Meanwhile the technology on my wrist informs me we have completed one kilometre since I became suspicious - by the time we reach the pickup it will be close to two, and the overall walk will be well on the way to three. Jordi has obviously trained Sarah well on the finer points of marketing shore excursions, and our faith is shattered. The pickup is effective if not elegant, and Jordi and Sarah get to replenish the cold water supplies inside their ineffective wet weather apparel. Not that we could tell anything was amiss simply by looking at them - Sarah may have winced when a wave broke over her back and sent any icy envoy down the open neck of her suit, but she quickly laughed about it and got on with the job of ensuring the water didn’t go over the top of our boots. And Jordi was Jordi, more concerned about his cameras than his personal comfort. During the afternoon finding the drysuit repair kit finally became a priority. It appears that there are limits as to what even Sarah is prepared to endure.