First week in KiritimatiFebruary 1, 2016by Paul Johnston (CIRES)
First week in Kiritimati
February 1, 2016by Paul Johnston (CIRES)
KIRITIMATI ISLAND, Kiribati — Scott Abbott and I have been here a week. Life has settled into a routine: up at 7AM (all times are local Kiritimati time, so LINT, or Line Islands Time) for breakfast and morning email session; lunch at noon, followed by balloon launch at 1:15 PM; end launch between 3 and 4PM; transmit data and another internet session; dinner at 6:30 PM; go to bed about 8PM; up at 1AM for morning launch; transmit data between 3 and 4 AM; sleep until 7 AM — and repeat every day.
Sounds simple, right? Along the way, we stay hydrated with water we have to boil or treat; work with the hotel to get our air conditioner fixed so we can sleep; find time to communicate with home, three time zones later; and get someone to go into my office to find my PIN so I can pay my bill. Nothing overly strenuous, but it is tiring.
Our hotel rooms are very adequate. The housekeeping staff brings new towels each day and cleans the room. Each day they arrange the towels into some new shape.
To connect to the internet via a WiFi connection, we have to go to the hotel’s “lobby” because the WiFi doesn’t reach the rooms.
Here, Scott caught me hard at work (really on email). This cat sleeps in the chair for hours, allows petting, and adds a domestic sense to the lobby.
The internet connection is slow, but it works for what we want to do. We’ve learned which websites require a lot of bandwidth: Facebook is impossible, Google News is okay but only the headlines (since many links are full of ads that hog bandwidth and never get loaded), NOAA-Google mail works okay once it’s loaded, and most of the time Skype allows reasonable phone conversations — but since we’re in a public area, we’re careful what we say and how loud we talk.
Here’s the hotel dining room — and Scott waiting for lunch one day. The menu is limited, but there are options. Other guests report that another hotel on the island only has one menu item for each meal. Some days there are several people eating, but usually only three of us. The weekly plane comes tomorrow, so the crowd may change.
Last night we met two pilots ferrying a plane from Australia to Wyoming. One of the pilots had flown a Twin Otter for SHEBA, a field experiment several years ago north of Barrow. He and Scott (who was at SHEBA) knew some common people and talked about the experiment — what a small world!
One last note — during our first week we’ve had periods of heavy rain (over 4 inches in one day), an overcast day with light rain, and periods with mixed sun and clouds. The wind blows, and the ocean roar is always present. Last night we saw our first colorful sunset. I was going to end with a sunset picture, but this afternoon we saw this, so I’ll end with a picture of hope [photo above].
From Kiritimati, best wishes, Paul.
By CIRES on February 2, 2016.
Exported from Medium on January 12, 2017.
