10th – 11th – Departure

The two-hour flight from Copenhagen to Heathrow went without a hitch as one might reasonably expect. I arrived around 1600 and had about 6 hours to kill until my connecting flight. I spent the time looking around in terminal 5 where I arrived and was to depart from and ended up at Wagamama for dinner. Note to self; Chili Ramen in Heathrow is more chili than in Copenhagen. Much more.

The gate didn’t appear until a little more than an hour before departure and as expected we were a bit delayed departing. It obviously didn’t help that they didn’t start boarding less than half an hour before the scheduled take-off. Apart from the flight being 13 hours long (technically it was probably closer to 12 as we were an hour delayed when departing but still arrived on time) things went quite nicely. I didn’t get much sleep – as usual – but I did get to watch a few movies on the way; Our kind of Traitor, Secret Life of Pets, Legend of Tarzan and Angry Birds (not too proud of that one but it did have some nice – i.e. silly – puns spread out).

Arriving in Buenos Aires the queue through immigration was long but it went, together with the luggage pick-up, without any problems. I was picked up as expected and driven straight to my hotel.

As I arrived around 1100-1130 I wasn’t able to check in yet so I went on a walk for a couple of hours before returning and getting my room. I asked them if they had any information or documents waiting for me concerning pickup tomorrow and flight to Ushuaia but I received the same answer as when I arrived; nope, nothing.

I had a much needed shower, shave and brushing of teeth until I got a bit impatient, put some money on my Skype account (the minimum I could put on was a ridiculously large amount relative to what I needed) and called the G Adventures office. I was put on hold while they conferred with the office in BA (sorry, guys – for some reason I couldn’t find that number but only the US one!) and when returning to the phone I was informed that the hotel had received the necessary information yesterday. We had barely finished our call when my room phone rang and guess what? The reception had “just received” the necessary information for me! We had a briefing at 1700; we are 4 people being picked up at 0700 to fly out to Ushuaia 2 hours later on a 3½ hours flight.

Being in Argentina I couldn’t not have steak for dinner. I was recommended a place by our G contact close to the hotel. I got there and just managed to get a table for one (it was a popular place among the locals, always a good sign) and before even ordering I had already received a bowl of bread rolls, beans in chili, and three dips; olive/chili/garlic/sour, tomato salsa and spinach/green/sour. As it took a while, about half an hour, for the food to arrive I ended up eating more of it than I care to admit. It was a great start. 450g bife de chorizo and what I thought was boiled potatoes with a bit of sour cream drizzled with bacon turned out to be a huge baked potato with a massive glob of cream cheese, a generous amount of bacon bits and grated cheese on top. Vegetable, dairy and protein. Totally healthy.

I had also ordered a glass of wine without specifying what kind. Imagine the biggest glass of wine you’ve had and I can with near full certainty guarantee this was still closer to being half a bottle than any puny glass you have in mind. To my surprise it was a really, really good wine so I was bracing myself to having to face a bill for an expensive wine.

My ½ liter water cost 42 pesos.

My wine cost 38 pesos.

I love Argentina.