After about 30 hours of travel, we finally arrived at our hotel in Ushuaia, Argentina - Fin del Mundo (the end of the world, and it truly is!). All of our travel was pretty much on schedule. We also got all of our luggage both in Buenos Aires, where we had a 7 hour layover, and again in Ushuaia. Our flight out of Chicago departed about 30 minutes late as they held the plane due to some late international arrivals. But we had a 2 1/2 hour layover scheduled for Miami, so it wasn't a problem for us. The longest flight was from Miami to Buenos Aires, which took off about half an hour late, so we arrived around 8:15am Thursday morning instead of at 7:20am as expected and we really didn't get much sleep on the flight, even though we had our excellent exit row seats with lots of legroom. After clearing customs in Buenos Aires, we took a minivan across town to the domestic airport. There we had a lengthy layover while awaiting out 3:45pm flight - it was another 3 1/2 hours from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. So lots of travel and we are pretty much exhausted.
We've already met some great people who are on this trip with us. In Miami, we met a couple from Wyoming who are semi-retired. They were on this same Cheeseman's tour 3 years ago. We also met a gentleman from Birmingham, Alabama for whom this is his fourth trip to Antarctica. He says it's just a magical place which draws him to return. During our layover in Buenos Aires, we met a lot of people who will be on the ship with us. It turns out there are several others who have been to Antarctica before, with or without the Cheesemans, and some who have been on other Cheesemans tours. After we checked into our hotel, a group of us went out to dinner. Lori had excellent, excellent grilled sea bass, while Greg had king crab (a local specialty) with a sauce and some mussels and shrimp. The fish was all really good and fresh.
We have a free day in Ushuaia on Friday. We intend to spend the day checking out the town, which seems to be quite nice. But for now, it's off to bed for us so we can get some much-needed sleep!
Sounds like a great start to a wonderful vacation. I like the description of it as magical and hope you find it thus as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying one more time to gt this comment off to you. I was so impresed last night as I would have been your firt comment. But it didn't go so now Lisa is helping me
ReplyDeleteWell, it worked. this is so much fun--kind of reading a book as it's being written, so keep the blogs coming. Last night I wrote a comment right after I got home from watching Austin ref a hockey game--he did a good job; his first time doing that. Look forward to your next missile.
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