Merry Christmas to Everyone!!!!

Hello everyone,

Merry Christmas to everyone who is following our adventure on this blog.

Last night we had a 6 pm meeting with ALE to discuss our current situation. The outcome of this meeting is that we have been put on another weather hold, this time for 56 hours. For anyone else besides me, who has lost all track of time here, this current hold will last until the morning of the 26th of December. This was both a bit of good news in the respect that we will not spend Christmas waiting to fly to Antarctica, but also bad news in that we won´t be flying to Antarctic for Christmas. If that makes any sense¿

Yesterday and the day before we had a whirl wind tour up to the Chilean National Park called Torres del Paine. It is truly an incredible place. Our trip started at 1 pm on Monday, as we packed ourselves into a van for the 6 hour road trip. Once there the team diverged into two different locations within the park. We did a bit of hiking, lots of sightseeing, some eating, and we actually managed to cram what takes everyone else two days to do, into the space of a mere 16 hours. An impressive act of tourism for sure, performed by the entire team. It was a bit frustrating to come back to Punta Arenas to news that we will not fly for another 2 days, but everyone was happy to have at least gotten a small taste of another part of Patagonia. I can honestly say that in the last nine days, we have done a great job of keeping ourselves busy; this has taken some of the edge off of the wait.


Our hotel has become our home of sorts for now, and we pretty much have taken the joint over. As I write this update, a few other folks are nearby and they have added some personal messages below.
--Hi, this is Stina. I wish you all - my family, friends and good colleagues - a very Merry Christmas. I am looking forward to seeing you all in 2009.
--This is Turkish and I would like to send my love to my beloved wife to be ¨Vika¨, who is waiting for me in California.
--And Heidi would also like to send my love and best wishes for this holiday season to my family and friends back in Colorado. We have heard that the snow is deep, and the ice is in! Enjoy.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and if anyone has any extra Santa wishes that they are not calling in tonight, please ask him for a break in the weather down here. We could use it.