Just a short note here, so as not to keep everyone wondering: we made it to the ship about as uneventfully as could be imagined.

A small mountain of paperwork shuffled and copied cheerfully by Chilean officials at the airport, lines waited in, and a mere 3.5 hour hop south in a jam-packed Airbus with a bored teenager in the row ahead banging his seatback against my knees. Just one(!) line and health official on the other side, grab our bags, and we were in. Our handler, Pablo Miranda, met us at the curb with a driver and van, hustled us to the port (one more health official and temp check, but no further cranium scratchings), down the pier, and here we are.

Now I’ve got just 10 days to make it worth the Program’s trouble sending me down here. We’re on nominal 84-hour weeks here (7×12) and I’m likely going to be using all that time, so updates may be…sparse. But you won’t be missing much: we’re just sitting in port, so no great stories of the ice, or life at sea, and we’re confined to the ship, so no great stories of life in town.