Curacao Amigu di Tera's Inspire Antarctic Expedition 2008

Hello tur hende,

Ki tin,? I’ll continue in English, so that everybody can understand. After my last mail to you all (via Claudette) we rapidly embarked on the ship, and heard that it wasn’t allowed to make contact. So this might be the last mail you´ll get from me. Everything is going well. I´m very honoured to participate in this expedition, and get along well with everybody. The food is oke, sleeping take sometimes time to snooze in, but other than that I feel like ´God in France´ and the scenery is so beautiful. Really, and this is just the beginning. Tonight we`ll anchor in front of Bellingshausen en tomorrow we´ll get ashore, to meet e.g. Robert Swan. I´m sure everything is A-oke with you all. Don´t forget not to send me mails with attachments, or preferably no mail at all, unless it´s necessary. Take care, all the best, and who knows I might be able to mail again.

Arthur Nieuw

Life is not measured by the amount of breaths you take but by the moments that took your breath away. Today, I had a few of those moments. One was when I saw the whales!!!!! Yes, Michael I finally saw whales!!!! The other moment was when I saw this huge Iceberg with beautiful blue colors. What an inspiration for my art-attacks. The cold is bearable. You need to put on layers of cloths to feel warm. At this moment we are on the Bransfield Strait, passing by the Nelson Island. Huge Iceberg just in front of the island! Although, you need to have layers on when we hear that there is something interesting to see - people rush outside with their slippers on!!!! Another highlight of the day was the unexpected visit of Robert Swan to the ship. Tomorrow we will join him and his crew at the e-base. Amigu di Tera, A-Team, I wish you could be here with us. Michael for tomorrow, March 18, happy anniversary!!! Love you all. Te pronto! Diane Copini-Rigaud

The trip so far has been just great. The hike up to the glacier was quite incredible.

The Drake Passage went quite smooth according to the team leaders but I spend a whole day in my bed. I decided to go true it without taking any medicine to see what it was like, that was a bad idea. The next day we came across our first ice berg which made it all worth it. It was quite majestic. I’m really looking forward to landing on shore tomorrow and meeting up with the rest of the team that has been at the ebase for almost 2 weeks now. As soon as I get a chance ill write a blog about the challenge I was put on by the team leaders which has made my expedition a bit harder but I also learned allot from it.