Day 1 - Ushuaia

It's been a rough few weeks since we've been back from Antarctica, just filled with a lot of work and errands and everything but we are hoping that it will all slow down soon and we will have the time to update here on a more regular basis...

And with that said, lets start talking about our Antarctica trip and that first travel day which got us down to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.  The travel started out great in that we received notification that we had been upgraded on the first segment of our trip, Chicago to Dallas, so all was great.

The second leg was down to Buenos Aires, and although we weren't upgraded we did enjoy exit row seating and managed to sleep like babies on the overnight flight.  We landed in Buenos Aires and after the lengthy wait to get through customs we grabbed our luggage and hopped into a taxi to transfer from the international to the domestic airport.

Two days before we had flown down the Argentinians had a strike with their airlines, and when we walked into the smaller airport and saw the lines we realized that they were still struggling to get rid of the backlog.  As we stood in line they would call people up out of line based on their final destinations, we were fine since we had a late evening flight and had about 6 hours that we could wait in the airport, so there was less stress then you could see on some of the other people that looked like they were 15 minutes from missing their flights...

At one point we were called up to a counter for flights to Ushuaia, and when we get up there she looked up our information and said something like "Ah, that flight is somewhat full can you maybe change to another flight?"  You could see this look of disappointment cross our faces, we had time to be delayed a day and still make the cruise, but we really wanted to have a full day in Ushuaia to get out and do some touring, but before we could mutter a response the agent followed up with, "We have a 12:30 flight that is slightly delayed and we can put you on that earlier flight..."

Final Leg - Flight to Ushuaia

So that was it, we were on an earlier flight and would even have a few hours to walk around the town that first night - so far everything on this trip was coming together better then could be expected.

A short flight later and we are landed and excitedly awaiting our luggage and watching what equipment our fellow travelers have brought with them.  A whole French group of downhill skiers, a big group a backpacking kids, people with the bags we were trying to find before the trip.  After coming up to near an hour of waiting the 10-15 of us still waiting on a bag or two realize that there aren't anymore bags coming through.  Another 15-20 minutes of dealing with agents and we are told that with the earlier flight several bags didn't make the plane and they would all come done on the later flight that we had originally been scheduled on.

Okay, no problems, our last bag will come in later that evening and we've a few extra hours of time to see the city, off we go to enjoy... 

View from our hotel - Valle Frio

Our hotel was a great little place, Valle Frio, and the manager took our information and told us he would contact the airport for us and make sure that our luggage would be waiting for us when we returned that evening.

 

We ended the evening like you should anywhere in the world, with a few drinks at a nice Irish pub.  Tomorrow we get to tour the city and see about booking a trip to Tierra del Fuego...

Hello again everyone....

It's only been about 18 months since we last posted something here, so it does feel like it's about time for something new.

A few weeks ago Tina posted the above photo on Facebook with the statement "Reality is now setting in! The 20 year wait is finally over." so now I'd like to take the time to relive the reality that has passed and it still just sinking in...

As several of you that know us are aware, we have just returned from a two and a half week trip of which the highlight was a 10 day trip aboard the M/V Ortelius on an Weddell Sea Antarctica trip to see emperor penguins.  The trip was a lot of fun, and we have thousands of photos that we are itching to get a chance to look at and sort through, and I'm guessing at least 5 blog posts detailing out the trip.  Right now with the return to work and the Christmas holiday fast approaching I can't promise when these posts will be up, but do believe that they are coming and they will probably even be worth the wait....