The volleyball and football finals were this morning in the Chilean base sports dome, followed by the Olympic closing ceremony (our Russian hosts won the poker, China won the badminton and ping pong, the Chilean military won everything else between them). I was pleased to see the only female participant, Patricia from Uruguay, got a special certificate for her badminton playing.

The post-Olympics party consisted of traditional dishes from each of the participating countries, washed down with free flowing Chilean wine and pisco sours, all with a backdrop slide show of photos taken over the last four days. It was a lovely fiesta to mark the end of this special occaision of fun and socialising, bringing together new members of the bases and forging new friendships between the nations.

Later on Steve and I went up to the lake to take some depth readings in preparation for our lake coring. The weather wasn’t good enough to core but we wanted to check how many rods we would need to lug up the hill when we eventually get a window in the wet weather. We also collected some catchment samples, amazingly things can apparently still survive under all this snow.