Chapter Seventeen - Halley VI Part 1
OK then, are we sitting comfortably, good I'll begin . . . .
After my somewhat less than successful adventures on Ascension Island things were a tad quiet for a while, after a spell in the office I was seconded/sentenced, not sure which, for six months to a wind farm in sunny Doncaster, in fairness it was actually quite sunny, was just a tad chaotic, involved four hours driving a day but did have a resident adder population so it wasn't all bad, thankfully I got an early release for good behaviour & joined up with the team preparing for a return to complete & hand-over Halley VI to BAS.
Halley Research Station is located on the Brunt Ice Shelf floating on the Weddell Sea, it's a British research facility dedicated to the study of the Earth's atmosphere, measurements from Halley led to the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985.
There
have been five Halley bases built so far, this is number six. The
first four were all buried by snow accumulation and crushed until they were
uninhabitable. Various construction methods were tried, from unprotected wooden
huts to steel tunnels. Halley V has the main buildings built on steel platforms
that are raised annually to keep them above the snow surface however with
Halley VI now on line Halley V will be partially demolished/partly buried
as per the previous four.
The main structure of Halley VI was built in Cape Town by a consortium lead by the outfit who employs yours truly, we shipped the first sections to Antarctica in December 2007 & completed the build for occupation this last season.
Temperatures at Halley rarely rise above 0°C although temperatures around -10°C are common on sunny summer days. Typical winter temperatures are below -20°C with extreme lows of around -55°C. There is 24-hour darkness for 105 days when residents are completely isolated from the outside world by the surrounding sea ice and impossible flying conditions. Winds are predominantly from the east; strong winds often picking up the dusty surface snow reducing visibility to a few meters. One of the reasons for the location of Halley is that it is under the auroral oval, resulting in frequent displays of the Aurora Australis overhead. These are easiest to see during the 105 days (29 Apr - 13 Aug) when the sun does not rise above the horizon.
So, again, are we sitting comfortably, then I'll begin . . . .
Saturday 12th November 2011, bags packed I said a sad farewell to those at home & headed for Heathrow in the hire car picking up a couple of lads on route, England were playing Spain, kick off 17.15, the intention was to get checked in, grab something to eat & watch the football, amazingly it all went to plan, we even won the game 1 - 0, result, twelve hours & 6000 miles later we touched down in Cape Town.
Unfortunately
we weren't going to get much time in South Africa's "Mother Town"
after checking in at the hotel most people headed down to the harbour to explore,
do a bit of shopping & have at few beers at Mitchell's, a cracking pub
with great food & excellent ales on the waterfront, I can't recommend
it highly enough, needless to say as I wandered around the waterfront I seemed
to always end up back at Mitchell's
Cape Town competes with Alexandria for recognition as the most famous port in Africa and is certainly one of the most beautiful harbour's in the world with a magnificent backdrop of Table Mountain framed by the mountainous Peninsular. The port is situated on one of the world's busiest trade routes and will always retain strategic and economic importance for that reason alone. It's also a pretty busy container port, second in South Africa only to Durban, and handles the largest amount of fresh fruit. Fishing has a significant place in the economic activity of the port, affecting the ship repair industry in particular, with large Asian fishing fleets using Cape Town as a transshipment logistics and repair base for much of the year. The emerging oil industry in West Africa has also become a significant factor for the port's repair and maintenance facilities.
The
port is situated in Table Bay at Longitude 18º 26' E and Latitude 33º 54'
S and lies 120 n.miles northwest of Cape Agulhas (the most southerly point
in Africa). Cape Town was established by the Dutch on 6 April 1652 when Jan
van Riebeeck arrived in Table Bay to establish a victualing station for ships
of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on their long voyages to and from the
Dutch East Indies. The port progressed steadily over the centuries and consists
today of two 'docks' - the larger outer Ben Schoeman Dock in which lies the
container terminal, and the older inner Duncan Dock containing the multi-
purpose and fruit terminals as well as a dry dock, repair quay and tanker
basin. Cape Town also boasts an extensive yachting marina.
The waterfront's a busy place but it's definitely geared up to tourists but it doesn't take much walking to get out of touristville & into the docklands area or take a short taxi ride to Long Street, whatever you want, wine, women or song, it's got it 24/7 but watch your pockets.
Apart
from Table Top Mountain which dominates the inland skyline one of the most
in your face aspects of Cape Town is the 60 foot tall & 27 ton figure
built from over 4,000 plastic Coco-Cola crates, I believe there are several
of these in South Africa but this one "Elliot"is the biggest.
The figure was built as part of the initiative to drive recycling as part
of Coca-Cola's PETCO, a plastic recycling program. During the 2010 South Africa
World Cup, the firm gave away 20,000 tickets in order to encourage visitors
to recycle their plastic bottles. The figure's pretty impressive but it does
seem a bit bizarre that the company who sponsored it's construction created
the waste in the first place.
I
was surprised by how few people were to be seen "cap in hand" so
to speak around the water front as once you get away from the area the underlying
poverty is there for all to see. The waterfront is somewhat sanitized. There
appears however to be a thriving community of musicians & dancers who
are allowed to 
perform
unmolested. One
such group that I was pretty taken with was four old guys playing under the
moniker of "Mr Pietersen & the Guys" I'm
told they've been playing together for over 40 years, you could tell, they
were so laid back they were lying down, music wasn't three bad either, I picked
up a copy of their second CD, imaginatively titled "Volume 2" This
is something I always try & do on my travels, pick up local music as all
four of us back home are pretty keen on music (On a separate matter as I'm
writing this we've all just got back from the Bearded Theory Festival, pretty
cool weekend
With
Sunday wrapped up I said good-bye to Mitchell's & hit the sack. Monday
morning we had to troop down to the warehouse BAS share to get kitted out
for the flight, Monday afternoon was spent at the offices of Antarctic
Logistics Centre International, ALCI provide a logistics/feeder
service from Cape Town into Antartica, after going through the flight briefing
& dumping our bags we headed back to the waterfront. I managed to squeeze
in a couple of hours taking a trip around the harbour on one of the many yachts,
I got a bit wet & it wasn't really up my street but t it was free, if
not cheap, champagne for the trip. Whilst
it was only a brief sortie a group of us went up to Long Street on the Monday
night, some good live music & decent beer, it's also crawling with young,
mostly white, kids with to much money to spend kids, mostly non white, begging,
me thinks equality still has some way to go.
With
out flight scheduled to leave Cape Town on Tuesday afternoon any plans for
the morning would need an early start so bright & breezy myself &
Nick T plus Strange Steve grabbed a taxi to the cable car intending to take
the easy route to the top of Table Top Mountain & walk down. Best laid
plans however soon crumble as we found the cable car broken, the girl behind
the counter was helpful but at a complete loss as to how long it would take
them to fix it so with typical English spirit we set off to walk to the the
top armed with only a couple of bottles of water. Several hours later &
a couple of pounds lighter we made it up Platteklip Gorge on onto the plateau,
weary legged we headed for the cafe but not before taking in some of the breath
taking views west through Kloof Nek, south to Oudekraal National Park &
north to the Twelve Apostles &, the infamous, Robben Island beyond. I'd
wanted to visit Table Top Mountain, however briefly, not only for the views
but because it's a bit of a gold mine for reptiles, I had hoped to get a couple
more days in Cape Town & spend a day or so poking under rocks, this wasn't
to be so I had to make do with a couple of hours, even so I did manage to
stumble across several basking lizards but alas no snakes as well as a couple
of humming birds & the Mountains population of Dassie, or Rock Hyrax (Procavia
capensis) Dassie are a smallish, about 4Kg, mammal, superficially resembling
a guinea pig with short ears and tail however the closest living relatives
to hyraxes are the modern day elephants and sirenians.
Having walked up Platteklip Gorge it was pleasing to see that the cable car had been fixed so at least we had a speedy return back down to the foot of the mountain. Rather than take a taxi back down to the waterfront we bought tickets for the open top circular hop on/hop off tour bus, it's not a bad way to get a perspective on the beach-side suburbs of Cape Town but regrettably it does reiterate the difference between the have's & the have nots'
Back on the waterfront the obligatory memento's & presents were bought as well as a last beer & a bite to eat at Mitchell's before heading for the airport.