What?! Are the ice shelves melting? Is Antarctica disappearing before our eyes? Actually that is me swimming in the Mar Caribe, a.k.a. Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Cancun. Cancun??
Global warming has taken a turn for the worse it appears
During our training up in Fairbanks we were told over and over to be "flexible." Good call, ARCUS ! On our way down to Santiago, Chile the pilot came on the intercom around midnight telling us that we were going to have to make an emergency landing. It seems that the plane had sprung a leak and there was a problem with the air pressure in the cockpit. As you all should know, bad things happen when the brain is deprived of oxygen...and there isn't much oxygen at the altitude we were flying. We landed in Cancun, Mexico. Thankfully, I was barely awake so I couldn't fully appreciate the fire trucks that were lined along the runway. Cancun isn't used to such large and heavy jumbo jets so they "wanted to be prepared."
Daybreak in Cancun
All went well, and after 2 hours of waiting they decided it could not be fixed in time. So we spent another 4 hours waiting in lines (immigration, customs, taxi) I am now lounging on a gorgeous beach, watching the sunrise.
There are worse places to be stranded
They booked us into some swanky hotel rooms until our flight could be rescheduled. My balcony overlooks the Caribbean Sea and is quite elegant. I fully plan to go swimming before we head back to the airport this afternoon.
Not what I expected as I headed off to Antarctica. The balcony overlooks the Caribbean
I need to soak up as much vitamin D before we end up at the end of the globe wrapped up in parkas like the one you see me modeling here for my Verizon commercial. Oh wait, no that was in Fairbanks during training on satellite phones.
Can you hear me now? My modeling career didn't go far
The weather is beautiful. I ran across some iguanas sunning themselves. Little Honey, my bearded dragon lizard would love it down here, though she may be intimidated by the size of these.
Everybody was enjoying the Caribbean sun today. Who can tell me which species of iguana this is. Is this an iguana?
Though it has been frustrating and is setting back our already tight schedule, there are worse places to be stranded on than a warm, beautiful beach. Kristin and Lisa (the researchers heading up this expedition) and I got a laugh at the irony of heading off to Antarctica and landing on the sands of Cancun.
Until next time...
Hopefully my next missive will be from Punto Arenas, Chile! Ciao
p.s. Reminder to my students - as I noted in the earlier blogs, you need to be looking up the italicized words (or any word) that you don't know and check out the geography of the places I am writing from or about.