Day 8 - Flying to the End of the World (Buenos Aires to Ushuaia)

While it’s been fun this last week in Buenos Aires, that was only an appetizer for what is soon to be the main course.

I’m, of course, talking about Antarctica!

And that main course begins today!

A lazy morning

I woke up at 9am and noticed that everyone else in my dorm room had checked out.

It was the first time all week that no one else was in the room and when you stay in hostels you kind of covet those rare moments.

So I just hung out, wrote yesterday’s blog, watched some YouTube and slowly packed up my stuff for the 11am checkout.

It was the calmest, easiest pack up I’ve ever done and it sure beats trying to do everything in the dark during the wee hours of the morning.

Sandwich Redemption

By noon I was feeling pretty hungry and there was only one place to go.

Yup, I was heading back to Il Mandorla which is the gluten free restaurant down the road I had been to a couple of times previously.

The first time I was there I had the Brooklyn sandwich which, simply put, was the best sandwich I’ve ever had.

I followed it up the next day with Pampeana sandwich which, if I’m being honest, wasn’t that great.

So today was about redemption.

I was heading back to have the Brooklyn sandwich again and prayed that it would be everything I remember it to be.

And, oh my God, it was!

Pulled pork with coleslaw, pickles and veggies on pumpkin bread.

Ahhhhh…

I could literally eat this sandwich every day for the rest of my life and die a happy man.

After lunch I headed back to the hostel, got my stuff ready, and headed over to where I had to catch the bus to the airport.

Neo bus to the airport

I lugged my 25 pound bag on my back and slung my daypack over my right shoulder and meandered a kilometer to the location the Neo website had supplied.

When I purchased the ticket, the email said to arrive 15 minutes early to checkin but I wanted to be even a bit more early just because I wasn’t 100% sure where I was catching this bus.

There was no bus stop or stall or terminal located there. The address they gave me was just a literal street corner.

I got there at 2:45 and started asking some of the tour guides standing around hawking their sightseeing tours.

I figured they’d know English and would be familiar with this corner and maybe knew about the Neo bus.

They didn’t.

As I was walking over to the nearby police station to ask someone else, one of the guides waved me over and pointed to a Neo bus that had just pulled up.

What the hell?

It was only 2:55 and this guy was 25 minutes early.

I hopped on the bus happy that I had come early and the bus didn’t leave without me.

Turns out I was on an earlier bus that left a half hour before mine.

Ah, well, that makes sense then…

There was some ticket confusion as I apparently was showing the ticket guy on the bus the wrong QR code I had saved in my Google Wallet.

He kept trying to talk to me in Spanish despite me telling him “No entiendo Espanol”.

Luckily another passenger served up as a translator and mediated the problem.

In the end the ticket guy just said “it’s okay, it’s okay” and gave up on me trying to give him the correct QR code.

Oh my, that was an adventure.

So, after all that, we drove for just under an hour and arrived at the EZE Buenos Aires airport at just before 4pm.

And, as usual, I was in and thru security within 10 minutes so I now had a full 2 hours to kill before my flight.

I really gotta stop arriving so early for my flights but I just know that once I do, that’ll be the time I’m stuck in a ridiculous line to get to the gates.

Flight to Ushuaia

I boarded my 6pm flight and found my aisle seat in row 11 and waited to see who’d be joining me in my row.

Person after person walked on by.

Hmmm, maybe nobody will be beside me.

The number of people started to dissipate, wow, maybe I will have the whole row to myself.

And then a group of 20 or so gymnasts boarded the flight.

And passed on by.

When the door closed I was still on my own in my row – score!

By the way, you read that right – a group of teen gymnasts were also on this flight down to Ushuaia.

I just assumed that everyone going to Ushuaia was only doing so to further head to Antarctica but I’d say that most people on the flight actually weren’t.

Not alot of people live down here so maybe people fly down here and make their way up through Patagonia? I’m really not sure.

Anyway, did I mention I had my whole row to myself?

Ah, heaven!

At the End of the World

I spent most of the 3 1/2 hour flight watching the new Superman movie and before you knew it we were touching down in Ushuaia.

Ushuaia is known at the city at the end of the world and for good reason – it’s the southernmost city in the entire world at the southern tip of South America.

The flight landed at 9:30 and we went from 27C (80F) in Buenos Aires to a brisk 8C (46C) here.

I found my pickup driver waiting for me and while she waited for 3 other people to also join us, I took a quick walk outside the airport’s doors.

After summer like temperatures this last week in Buenos Aires, it was actually kind of refreshing to poke my head out into the brisk cold nighttime of Ushuaia.

The view from the airport is amazing as you can see the city lights off in the distance surrounded by a snow covered mountain range.

The actual cruise doesn’t depart until tomorrow afternoon so everyone spends one night here in Ushuaia.

There are two different hotels depending on what kind of room you have booked on the ship.

Since I’m in one of the cheaper rooms on the ship, a 3 bed shared room, I was spending the night at the Las Lengas hotel in a room with one other person.

And that guy would be an older gentleman named Carlos from Madrid.

I met him and the first thing he said was “I have good news and bad news, what do you want to hear first?”

Well, I already knew what bad news he was going to tell me and, sure enough, it was that he snores.

The good news? He’s a fun guy!

Well, I like fun people and, you know what, I’ve got some pretty damn good silicone ear plugs so I was all good.

I got my stuff briefly set up in the room and as Carlos was turning in for the night, I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant to get a very late dinner.

The place was packed and, oh my God, it was so damn hot in there.