Day 55

Nothing of any interest has happened since the last post.  The submarine has been ordered.  It is supposed to take 4 months to be built, and another month or so to get it here, but who knows what we'll run into.

Day 48

We have lost connection with the submarine too many times.  It's coming back, and we will wait until the bigger submarine gets here to continue searching.  We hope it will come faster than expected.

Day 43

No luck yet.  The signals are getting stronger, but the sub is starting to get out of range of the boat.  They will have to come back soon.  If they don't find anything soon enough, we will have to get a submarine with better communication, which will take at least three months to arrive.  However, it will be bigger, so we can have more supplies, an I can go too.  It's six of one, half a dozen of the other to me.

Day 39

Exciting news!  The submarine received some odd signals, which they are currently following.  We are hoping that it will lead us to some as of yet undiscovered bacteria that are eating an ancient carcass.  It is unlikely, but we hope it will be so.  It probably is a stray weather balloon that fell into the ocean.  But, there's always the off chance.

Day 36

No updates.  The submarine still hasn't hit the bottom, so the chasm is larger than we expected.  We hope they hit the bottom soon, as the signals are getting weak due to the distance.

Day 35

We haven't found anything yet.  We have been busy though.  I am the one who stayed up, so I will be able to keep you all updated.

Day 33

We are going to search the underwater area tomorrow.  It appears to be the most likely place now.  We will be going in a boat to the area where the chasm is.  We will bring a submarine to search with.  It is large enough to hold three people, so one of us will stay behind.  We will bring rations for 30 days, and we hope to be there for only ten days, as that should be long enough to find any carcasses that are there, or any traces thereof.  The boat will stay over the chasm so that we will have communication with the submarine.  The area seems perfect for a carcass to have survived. 

Day 29

Wow, have we really been gone this long?  It seems so short...  We have more data that seems to lean towards the site being under water.  Again, the exact reason that we are looking there is classified, so all I can tell you is that there was an earthquake there recently and there turned out to be a large expanse of water that was previously not known about.  We went out on a boat today towards the place that the underwater site is supposed to be.  It is surprisingly large, according to what we can see on the radar.  In fact, we didn't get any results at all, making it at least seem fathomless.

Day 20

We found a fossil of an egg that we have not yet identified. So far, it seems to have been left alone by it's parents, due to the fact that we haven't found any other fossils nearby it yet. It is mid-sized, at about 9 inches long. Timothy is going to study it and hopefully figure out what it is from.

Day 15

Again, I haven't blogged in a long time! I've been busy with other things, like finding the best stores, and finding a house for us to rent. We have also been excavating. There was apparently a possibility of the site being under water, which we weren't told before. Hopefully I'll start remembering to post on the blog soon...

day 11

Wow, I haven't posted in a long time!  I've been busy working out long-term arrangements for our stay.  We've started digging now.  We haven't found anything yet.  We don't expect to find anything for a long time yet.

day 7

We are going to buy our car!  We have a rental, but it continues to cost money. We are looking at a Toyota Coaster.

day 6

We will be starting our excavations today.  We don't even plan to start digging today. We will check out the area and mark some boundaries.

Day 5

We got in at 1:00 am our time.  We got our rental car and went to the motel.  I didn't blog yesterday because when we got in it was still morning, and I didn't think to blog then.  I'm going to try to get in the habit of blogging in the morning.  Nothing interesting happened today or yesterday.

Day 3

We did a bit of flying, but not much else.  We have a long layover here, but our next one will be even longer.  There's not much to tell today.

Day 2

I went to church and did some final organizational things with the rest of the team.  They should start blogging too sometime soon.  I have added them as contributors to this blog.  I still have to convince them it's okay to do this.  Even though this was part of the deal with the museum, they are still worried because of the fact that some of the information we are dealing with is classified.  They had better start someday soon though, or we'll lose our funds.

Day 1

I am Axel Manton.  Timothy Hotez, Matt Green, Alexandria Koffer, and I are a team of paleontologists who have been working together for 6 years now.  We are about to set out on a trip to try to find a fully intact mummy of a dinosaur-age creature.  We are being funded on this trip by the National Museum of Vanuatu.

On the seventeenth, we will set out for Port-Vila, Vanuatu at 1:55 pm.  We will arrive at 6:52 pm at Los Angeles International Airport.  We will be there for about 3 1/2 hours.  We will then leave for Auckland Airport.  Our expected arrival time is 7:15 am the next day.  We will have a 5 hour 50 minute connection, and then will fly to Bauerfield International Airport.  We will rent a car and stay in Blue Pango Motel, Port-Vila.  The day after that we will start our excavation on a hill nearby.

The reason for us searching there and the exact location of the site are classified information.  As part of the deal with the National Museum of Vanuatu, I had to write a blog on our trip.  Our trip is expected to last up to 5 years, but it could take more or less time.  You may think that that is a long time, but what with our goal, it really isn't.  I should post every day, but I might miss a few days here and there.