The observant reader will have noticed: the location in the title bar of this dispatch reads "Oamaru, New Zealand". Hmm, that’s odd, is probably the reader’s first thought, I thought the guys are on the Snares since the 25th…? Well, obviously not. And this is why…

Tuesday morning. My alarm clock was set to 4.30am. That way I'd have time to check my email, pack the rest of my stuff and have a coffee before Dave and I would leave for Dunedin and Invercargill at around 5.30M. But not the alarm clock ended my short night's sleep. It was the banging of Dave's bedroom door and his flying footsteps into the bathroom, that woke me up. I squinted at the clock, it was 4:25am - oh... golden five minutes left; I thought and turned around once more. Suddenly a loud banging on my door: "Get up, Thomas! We've overslept!"

Huh? I sat up, grabbed the alarm clock and was stunned in horror: the bloody alarm clock stopped working five minutes before the alarm - the battery died. Only now I realized that it was light outside. Now it was me how went flying into the bathroom. While I hectically started to pack my stuff I heard Dave moan in my back: "Heck! I've set my alarm to 4.30 PM !"

Only one and a half hour behind our schedule, we hit the road. In Dunedin, Melanie and Des - another PhD student, who volunteered as a driver - had already finished packing all our groceries and equipment into the van and the attached trailer. Theoretically, we could have started almost immediately - if it was not for the annoying notice I found in my pigeon hole in the department. Last week, I ordered a copy of an identification key for krill species of the Southern Ocean and the guys at the library promised I would get a copy no later than Friday. Well, it wasn't there on Friday, so I assumed it must be there by Tuesday. It wasn't. Instead I found a notice saying, that my copy is held at the science library waiting for me to be picked up. Great! I glanced at my watch. 8am. The library wouldn't open until 8.30am. Perfect! Mel and Des headed off while Dave and I stayed behind, looking at our watches, observing the seconds dribble slowly towards 8.30.

On 8.30 sharp I sprinted into the sciences library, ready to pick up my copy of the identification key and to bugger off. Of course, it wasn't that way. The librarian handed me an age-old booklet with a big bright yellow sticker on it saying "NOT FOR LOAN". What??? I only wanted a copy in the first place. As I opened the booklet some 2 meters of folded pages with tiny drawings of the different specimens of Krill dropped towards me. Oh great! How am I supposed to copy that? Aw heck, has to be done, I thought and jogged towards the photocopiers. I swiped my students ID through the copier's slot. It greeted me cheerfully, telling me that I had only 20 copies left on my account. Aw, heck... I started copying the booklet anyway. And of course, during the first folded page I ran out of copies. I left everything where it was, and ran off to the copy card charger. I grabbed my wallet just to realize that apart from a few coins there was no money to charge my card with. Awww... I started fumbling with the coins and slowly but surely my copy account grew to another 20 extra copies. That was not sufficient, of course. Awwww!!! In the end I had to beg for 20 cents and finally the librarian had mercy. After a 20 minutes copy ordeal I had a complete jigsaw copy of the identification key...

Finally, we got away. It was a bit past nine; at eleven we'd have to attend a meeting with the guys from DOC Southland in Invercargill. As we travelled south, the weather worsened. We left Oamaru with crystal clear skies and a bright sun, we arrived in Invercargill with dark grey clouds and pouring rain. Not the best conditions for a boat trip to an subantarctic island.

We stepped into the DOC's head office at 11.20am - Mel and Des were already there. Not long afterwards we had our meeting with Pete and Jeremy, the rangers responsible for the southern islands. The meeting was a tough procedure. The whole negotiating process until we finally got our permission for work on the Snares was a rough road for all parties to travel. In the end our permission was granted although Pete and Jeremy objected. In the end they had to follow orders from above, rather than acting upon their own opinions. Therefore, it was understandable that both weren't too favourable towards our project - and to be honest, I can't blame them for that. In the end of the meeting, everyone had a sour expression in their faces. Overall, our activities on the Snares are strictly limited. We are not allowed to move on the island apart from the routes hut/toilet and hut/working colony - which in total amounts to, say, 300 metres... for 7 weeks. Yahoo. Well, I think have to make the best of it.

No coffee break after the meeting. We headed straight to the DOC's quarantine centre. Every piece of our equipment was examined very closely for the slightest sign of dirt, seeds or insects. While Dave took care of overseeing the whole quarantine procedure, Melanie and I left for the nearest supermarket to buy all the perishable groceries we wanted to take with us. I generally am no fan of shopping. And by now, I know that Shopping-things-for-a-2-month-stay-on-a-remote-island isn't my favourite activity either. And we only had to buy fresh stuff... we already bought all the other basic stuff in an 3 hour orgy last Friday. In pouring rain and freezing temperatures we finally loaded all the cabbages, banana bunches and tomato bags into the van and returned to the quarantine centre. There we were greeted by Dave who had an expression on his face that almost made me want to run away. Apparently the quarantine check wasn't a smooth procedure after all. In fact, most of our rodent proof containers did not match the DOC's standard of cleanliness, so that Dave had to withstand some telling-off from his colleague. The icing on the cake was unfortunately my backpack: in the sleeping bag compartment they found an inch of Chilean dust - a leftover from my recent visit to Ursula's Humboldt penguin project on Isla Choros. And not only that! Furthermore, my bush shirt was interlarded with dried grass seeds; Dave ended up picking all the seeds from the fabric in an endless procedure! All in all, it would be an understatement to describe Dave's mood as "bad tempered" when we got back to the centre.

The day reached it's utter climax when we called the Foveaux Ferry to inquire about the chances of getting to the Snares the next day. "No way mate!", rumbled Alan, our Skipper at the other end of the phone. "We got some heavy seas between Bluff and Stewart Island - I don't even want to imagine what the conditions are like south of Stewart Island. Call back tomorrow morning. Maybe we know more by then." Glumly we stayed the night in Invercargill just to receive the expected message form Alan - "Not before Saturday..."

Well, up until today, the weather's definitely not on our side. The overall pattern of the pressure zones over the Tasman Sea and the West pacific is less than promising, the subantarctic region experiences some heavy winds of up to 100km/h. It's just not possible... Anyway, we'll talk to Alan tomorrow... with a lot of luck we might get to the Snares on Saturday. Until then it's back to the waiting game...