King George Island. Part II. Artigas Station

March 27, 2015

The average reader is accustomed to seeing only bright and sunny photos from Antarctica. So let’s give the reader a dose of realism.

One can just about make out the buildings of Uruguay’s Artigas Station in the fog.

The welcome sign is painted a color that’s visible even in thick fog.

The signpost totem pole that no polar station can do without.

Señor Artigas, after whom the station is named.

A historical concrete mixer.

Two principles are always observed in remote places such as these. The first is to paint buildings bright colors—so that they’re visible under snow.

The second is to build them some distance apart from each other—so that not everything gets lost in a fire.

There isn’t anything particularly interesting here.

Let’s step inside the main barracks, where the club is located. Welcome messages in the languages of the island’s other occupants greet us at the entrance.

I’m amazed that there’s another country (besides Russia) where people consider varnished yellow wood to be beautiful. I don’t care for it at all, personally—it always makes me think of a bathhouse or school locker room.

An iPad!

The Uruguayans live far from the other stations here, so they don’t see any new faces for months on end. And our ship of itinerant retirees caused quite a stir. They were so overjoyed at our visit that they laid out three tables’ worth of cakes (although it’s usually the visitors who are supposed to treat a station’s residents since the latter don’t get to see things like, say, fresh vegetables very often).

The polar researchers lead modest lives.

They’ve assembled a whale skeleton out of sheer boredom.

It’s time for us to leave. The cook runs out after us to take a photo—who knows when he’ll see new people again.

And on the following day, the sun came out and whales appeared.