Buenos Aires

I awoke a bit early to find us moving slowly up the Beagle Channel towards Ushuaia, so I wandered up on deck to watch the scenery drift slowly past, and found that I was the only one on deck. Seems the tradition on boats with free drinks is to attempt to drink the bar dry on the last night, and I think they must have given it a fair shake. A few bleary eyed passengers emerged for breakfast, but many missed it.

A lovely millpond, and a landing right on time at 7:30. Had some breakfast, went through the departure formalities, paid our bills, collected our passports and souvenir DVDs, and before you knew it we were off the boat and on the bus. A great experience. If only the footpath would stop rocking.

Cloaked the luggage, and went and found a cafe for coffee and wi-fi, but eventually abandoned that because of woeful speed, and instead found a dedicated internet cafe where I loaded up the previous 8 days of blogs and photos. It'll keep some people occupied for ages.

Had some lunch in an Irish Pub (in Argentina! And they didn't speak any English. So I suppose it could have been run by some Irish after all...) Found the crew having their own farewell lunch in there, but didn't interrupt them.

After some lunch I wandered back down to the port, retrieved my baggage, and took a taxi out to the airport. The airport is labelled as "Ushuaia - capital of the Malvinas". Bit like a king without a kingdom really. Took 3 airline staff almost 30 minutes to print my boarding pass. Ah Argentina.

Made it to Buenos Aires on time. There were a few others from the boat on the flight, so we ended up saying goodbye on a number of occasions. BA has two airports. I took a car from the airport which is near downtown BA to my hotel which is near the international airport so it's convenient for tomorrow. Booked and paid for my morning taxi at the same time so that I didn't have to get cash out. We hope it turns up.

The hotel is oldish, and a combination of hotel and hostel. Can't get the A/C to work which is a bummer as it's really humid, but other than that it's a good place to lie down for a few hours.