Wednesday 28th December 2011 - Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Argentina - sunny

I managed to get a midday checkout from the hotel so spent the morning out sightseeing.  I walked to the Cementerio de la Recoleta in Recoleta.  It’s a famous cemetery and a very pretty one.  All the well to do and famous Argentinians are buried here.  The whole place is full of statues, marble facades and sarcophagi.  I eventually found Evita’s grave.  From there I walked back into the centre and found a boat travel agent who goes to Uruguay and enquired about prices for when I return at the end of January.  I then returned to the hotel room and packed.  Sarah had already packed her stuff and checked out so I had plenty of room to spread out.  I caught a taxi to the airport and got there quite quickly so had 2 ½ hrs to kill in the airport.  When they finally put up the gate number, there was only half an hour until boarding.  The line through the x-ray machine took forever and I got through and was half way through a duty free shop when a security man grabbed me and ordered me back to the screening area.  When I returned they grabbed my tri-pod and disappeared.  Then a woman who could speak English returned and told me I couldn’t take it on as hand luggage because it was too heavy (it weighed less than 1kg).  So after a few words I stormed off and than had to jostle my way to the front of the line at check in to get the thing checked in as luggage.  I was lucky they took it given that check in for my flight had already closed.

I then raced back up and stood in the really long line again so by the time I got through, I was the last one to board the plane.  The flight left on time and stopped once before arriving in Ushuaia.  The view over Ushuaia was fabulous.  Water, snow capped mountains and a small town in between.  I met Lynette, an Australian doing the same cruise as me at the baggage carousel.  Our bags took forever to unload.  We waited about 2hrs for them to come out.  We were met by the transfer company and dropped off at our hotel.  There were a few people on the bus so we went to all their hotels first, and some of them were very posh.  I was dropped off last…I’m guessing because I booked into a hostel for the first 2 nights.  I didn’t check in until 2130 and basically went straight to bed.  Like all the other places down this part of the world, it doesn’t get dark until about 2330 and is light again by 0330 so cant say I have seen much darkness.  Thankfully the hostel has thick curtains.