Did I say it was a trip of 40 hours...turns out to be a little bit longer (depending on where you call "home")!On the morning of Wednesday, August 22, Colby, Ben, Mike and I got up at our usual time of about 6:30 or 7 am. We ate up some of what remained of our food - oatmeal, some milk, dried fruit, cheese, sausage - and had some coffee or tea. Then we got to work getting ready to go. We had to finish packing and thoroughly clean the apartment. Our flight was at 4:40 pm, so we knew that we would be picked up sometime around 2 pm. We were still waiting for the paperwork, etc from Russian Customs for our 7 coolers and 4 crates of samples that we wanted to take with us back to Seattle. Each container weighed the maximum 30 kg that we could check as baggage on the airplane - that's 330 kg of materials and doesn't include ALL of the samples that we collected, even!
In order to make more "room" for checked baggage, Mike and I had sent nearly all of our "non-essential" gear ahead with the groups that had left last week and two days beforehand. So we had only carry-on baggage and could check two sample crates each, while Colby and Ben each had only one checked bag and could check one sample crate each. The other 5 crates would have to be sent as extra bags - for which the airlines charge an additional feed.
So Ben and Colby headed in to town around 8:15 am to resume the wait for Customs paperwork, while Mike and I worked on cleaning the apartment. We washed all of the dishes and packed up the ones that we would put in to storage at the Museum garage, packed up the usable leftover food and threw away the unusable, swept and washed the floors and cleaned the bathtub and toilet. At around 10 am, we got a call from Ben at the Museum that a car would be by to pick us up at 1:30 pm. We were finished cleaning, so we settled in for a quiet few hours of reading, doing puzzles from my puzzle book and even a bit of napping.
We were picked up at 1:30 and taken to the Museum to retrieve Ben and Colby and HOPEFULLY 11 crates of samples....We pulled up at just about 2 and I went upstairs to tell Ben and Colby that we were here while Mike worked on getting the last things into the Museum garage. As I walked up the stairs, however, I heard the sound of large, heavy items being dragged down the hallway. Ben, Colby and Valery Shubin were transferring the samples into the storage closet. :(
Turns out that there have been changes in the procedures and personnel at the Customs office since last year and thus it was going to take at least a few more days for the paperwork that we would need. Since we didn't learn this until it was too late to do anything about changing any of the airline reservations, someone, possibly Jody, Ben or Mike, will have to go back to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in a few weeks and bring the samples back. Even if they only spend one whole day in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, with the 24 hour +/- layovers in Seoul each way, that is a trip of at least 5 days. The bad news is that we weren't able to bring the samples back with us, but the good news is that we will be able to get them to Seattle eventually. There wasn't any indication that there will be a problem with them clearing Customs, just that there wasn't enough time for the bureaucratic process to be completed.
The Sakhalin Regional Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where our eleven 30-kg crates and coolers (that's nearly half a ton!) of faunal, carbon, lithic and sediment samples will be stored until they have the proper Russian Customs paperwork to leave the country.
So, with much lighter baggage loads, we checked in at the airport and caught our flight to Seoul.
We arrived in Seoul a half hour early, at about 5:30 pm, and speed walked about 1 km to the transfer desk to see if we could manage to catch the 6:40 pm flight to Seattle that day instead of waiting, but learned that there wasn't time. So we cleared immigration and customs and caught the shuttle bus to the Best Western - Incheon, where we were staying for the night. When we got there, we learned that they were overbooked and were transferring our reservation to the nearby Hyatt Regency instead! Very posh!
After checking in and dropping off our carry-on luggage in the rooms, we all walked over to a nearby Korean bar-b-que restaurant for a late dinner. I had never experienced this sort of meal before. You order the type of meat that you want, they bring it out and cook it right in the middle of your table on a special grill and then you eat it with various accoutrements like hot sauce, salt or garlic. They also serve a variety of Korean "sides" like assorted kimchi, which are pickled, spicy vegetables, pickled radishes, potato pancakes, and leaves of lettuce. I am not a big fan of spicy food, unfortunately, but Mike and Colby in particular very much enjoyed the kimchi.
Our flight to Seattle wasn't until the evening of the next day. We were scheduled to leave Seoul at 6:40 pm on Thursday, August 23 and to arrive in Seattle at 12:50 pm on Thursday, August 23. Due to crossing the International Date Line in the middle of our flight, Thursday, August 23 was about to become a 47 hour long day for us!
More on that in The LOOOOOONG trip home, 2!
Misty
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