Photographs from my day trip to Lyttleton have been posted — look closely, and you’ll spot the historic Lyttleton TIMEBALL, which used to be dropped daily at a certain hour (a visual, manual method by which all the ships in the harbor could set their clocks). Also present in many of the shots of the harbor: a red ship named the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a research vessel used in the Antarctic Program. As I typed this, I discovered that the fellow checking his email next to me at the Windsor Hotel (Sasha, from Italy) will be heading out aboard the NBP on Saturday. He is going to be studying plankton, he tells me, and if he’s lucky, he’ll get to stop in McMurdo. Small world. Plankton-sized, really!
View images of Lyttleton, including a tour of the Nathaniel B. Palmer in harbor:
The Orebody 