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Preparing for Flight
Sunday, November 28, 1999

Coombs

The Team's Call from Antarctica
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Hi, this is Doug Coombs with the Antarctic '99 trip. Today is Sunday, we are calling from Punta Arenas. Today is a nice day, it's only blowing 30-35 knots. Temperature is hovering around 50, probably in the 40s in the shade, and partly cloudy, a few showers coming through. Overall a perfect day for Patagonia and this region. The forecast is nice weather and it looks like we are going to get a flight out of here possibly tomorrow, Monday. We are pretty excited about it, the weather conditions look pretty good in Antarctica. It's minus 11 Celsius down there right now at Patriot Hills, which is low elevation and we hope to get over to Vinson in the next day.

	Doug Coombs

Today we went kayaking, sea kayaking along the coast, that was really fun. A lot of wind though, we got sideways in the waves and you can go over really easy. Water temperatures are hovering around 40 degrees. There are a lot of boats out fishing today, basically a nice Sunday stroll in Patagonia.

This morning I watched one person play a 20-person chess match in the central square in Punta Arenas. It was pretty fascinating. It was one guy running from chess match to chess match as fast as he could, playing 20 different people in 20 different games. Then a military parade of 100 soldiers went by with a big blasting outdoor band, big booming drums. That was pretty fun.

Now we are still doing our last minute shopping, I just sneaking in chocolate, teas and coffees, and whatever. Even though our weight limits are way over, we don't know what we are going to do. We might have to go broke paying for extra weight, but I think we are going to need it, because we are pretty excited to do a lot of activity when we get down there. Okay, this is Doug Coombs signing off. Bye.

—Doug Coombs, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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