A Scot has traveled 11,000 miles to help run the most southerly post office in the world – and has celebrated by having a swim in her bikini in the freezing Antarctic waters.
Amy Kincaid, 23, from Oban, has taken up the job with the UK Antarctica Heritage Trust for four months and in her first blog from the remote spot said she had taken the plunge in the sea, where even at this time of year the temperature is barely above freezing.
She is one of four staff members manning the office in Port Lockroy, part of the British Antarctica Territory – and with 2,000 penguins for company.
As part of their job, staff have to sweep the path clear of prodigious amounts of penguin poo.
Miss Kincaid, who beat 90 other applicants to the job, worked in an outdoor shop after leaving school, before spending six months in rural Ecuador teaching in a primary school and working on a farm.
She recently graduated from St Andrews with a degree in geography, where she spent her free time pursuing various outdoor activities and travelling.
She said: “Our first full week in Port Lockroy has been incredible – life is not bad at all when the view from your bedroom window contains rugged snowy peaks with penguins waddling past.
“The scale of the scenery is very difficult to describe or capture on camera. At the moment the island is still attached to the surrounding land by fast sea ice, but it is melting rapidly.
“Despite this, we were lucky enough to arrive here in time to walk out over the ice to the nearby Jougla and Lecuyer points. The weather was so cold ice crystals formed in the air, allowing us to see a halo around the sun.
“This week we also managed another excursion, thanks to the Royal Navy who visited in their ice patrol ship, HMS Protector. They gave us a lift around to Damoy Hut on the other side of the peninsula north-west of Port Lockroy. This is another hut conserved by UKAHT and was built in 1973 to provide a stopover for people going south at the start of the Antarctic summer.
“The hut was in good condition, although it was full of marines who had spent the night in snow-holes nearby and were waiting for a lift back to HMS Protector.”