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Well and truly submerged in a deep sleep, both Clark and I suddenly found ourselves being forcibly dragged upwards towards the surface of consciousness by a throbbing, growling noise growing closer outside. By the time we'd wrenched ourselves up into a dazed sitting position a fraction of a second later, the roaring, beating sound was unmistakably that of a helicopter, apparently about to land on the tent.
I ripped open the tent zip and shoved my head out, blinking in the bright light and catching my foot on a lashing strap on the PAC's deck, stumbling slightly as I excitedly extracted myself from the flapping tent and stood up on the PAC. It was indeed a helicopter, buzzing now 100m away but banking around for another pass. I dived for my jacket and stained, crumpled shorts as Clark did the same, suddenly feeling self conscious about our Icebreaker skins and disheveled appearance as figures inside the chopper now waved enthusiastically. "Dammit!" Clark cursed, "Why do we always over-sleep these days?! Wish we were hauling!". I shoved my iiNet beanie over my serious case of bed-hair - its so long that it now gets in the way of my eyes - and we both sprang from the PAC in bare feet, reaching for video cameras and still cameras as the chopper came to a graceful landing about 50m away, just outside our bear tripwire alarm.
White smiles were visible through the choppers glass front even before the door swung open and three figures stepped out and walked towards us, beaming. People! Real people! Our first people in 59 days! Ha ha. Hurrying over to disarm the bear alarm, we greeted them with a hearty "G'day", shook their hands and then Clark said "Well, come in..." ushering them into our tripwire enclosed 'yard'. “We were, umm, route planning” - Clark lied in an attempt to cover up the fact we slept through our morning alarm for the 3rd day in a row! I guess the sleep in our eyes and the fact that we were so bleary eyed gave this away though haha.
It was such a weird experience! They were from the De Beers temporary diamond mining exploration camp on the island - two geologist students and a pilot - on their way to perform a site sample 20km away and decided to pop over and say hi, having noted our latest position from our website while we were still asleep. Still half asleep we found ourselves fielding a bunch of questions, explaining this and that about our cart and the expedition, and then started asking our own about the terrain ahead. "It's really pretty to fly over - dramatic. All these valleys and hills..." Great. Ha ha. They were the friendliest of people, and said they might even drop in again if they were in the area. They then all produced cameras one by one and took group photos of, undoubtedly, them 'with the two crazy Australian nutters'. I then brought out my camera and tripod, and wandered around looking for the best place to set it up, trying to get the PAC, chopper and us all in shot, but the sun made it all back-lit. "If you'd just move the chopper over about.. there.." Clark laughed, jokingly, but the young pilot grinned and said "Sure... We'd best be on our way, but if you direct me where to go, we'll hover wherever - just wave us off when you're done..." Ha ha! Awesome. We did just that. =) After a few more passes and much waving, they swung around and roared off back the way they'd come. "Wow..." Clark laughed, "How weird was that!".
Now wide awake, we packed up, had breaky and set off. TO our immense delight, the SUN came out, and throughout the day we enjoyed intermittent sun and temps as high as +14 deg C. The wind too, died away, but that joy was soon cut short by the flood of mozzies that came back, filling the air as thick as ever.
Our route today was a little arduous, winding around a few lakes, and crossing the odd patch of boulders and even about 100m of ditch terrain, before then swinging around to face an almighty uphill climb to the saddle/pass we are at now. It was a killer of a climb, and we were leaking sweat by the time we collapsed at the top, well past stop-time.
The weather does, at last, seem to be clearing. Ahead looks ok-ish for another km or so and then it looks quite terrifying, hills and escarpments and valleys and cliffs and..hmm.. but tomorrow's another day. Today we got 7.11 km on the PAC-o-meter, not bad, considering as we also had to do serious kevlar cover care on two of the tires today - the covers literally walking themselves off the tubes from all the hillside travel. Our pump is starting to get a little squeaky too, but we don't blame it.
The lighting in this saddle is stunning, a field of grass with what looks like a sea of cotton plants waving their fluffy white tops in the wind, dispersed with a squillion other brightly coloured flowers, and the odd handful of muskox fur (“quiviut”) wafting past in the breeze. Just awesome.
We've had our dinner, (we're still starving - we're hating our new self-imposed ration 'diet'), and after sending this out and checking our email, Clark'll make up our final hot drink of the day - a mug of a vanilla protein drink from 'Aussie Bodies' - which we now call our 'cup of Vasbyte' after a comment from Kerry on our site a few weeks back. ;-)
Only 119km direct to the far side now.
  
Our live expedition updates are written on our tiny ASUS Eee PC 900 laptops, and sent via Iridium 9505A satellite phones from Landwide Satellite Solutions, using email compression software xGate from Global mareine Networks! Thanks guys - it's the perfect set up!
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