NOVEMBER: Antarctica's long, dark austral winter has ended and early summer is reclaiming Earth's coldest, windiest, highest, driest, most remote and least understood continent. Time Europe staff writer Maryann Bird joined a monthlong expedition to East Antarctica, the remote "far side" of the frozen continent, in November 2003. The focus of the voyage, aboard the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, was a total eclipse of the Sun believed to be the first ever witnessed by humans in Antarctica. The sky show was only one of the natural wonders that the ship's passengers and crew experienced between leaving Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and arriving in Hobart, Tasmania one month, nine time zones and over 8,000 nautical miles later. Here are excerpts from her log: