Buenos Aires via Ushuaia to Buenos Aires

After six nights in Buenos Aires our next destination was calling us, Ushuaia. With over 60 hours of bus hours on the cards to get us so far South we booked a reasonable flight with Aerolineas Argentinas and were excited to get down there. The flight went from the painfully located Ezeiza airport which set us back a $40 taxi fare as it was an early morning flight and public transport to the airport is not all that accessible. Everything went well and at 12pm the little screen on the back of the seat told me we were basically hovering over our destination, then came the curve ball.

Almost at our destination Ushuaia after a three and a half hour flight from Buenos Aires.

First an announcement in Spanish and then came the English, something about fog, something about not landing, something about being at our destination at 3.30pm and something about Buenos Aires, yep we were heading straight back to where we just came from, Buenos Aires because the plane could not land as the result of fog. At this stage, and for the next three and a half hours we had no idea how we would be greeted at the other end. We, English speakers at least were told nothing until the pilot landed the plane in BA and fondly bid us farewell and told us he hoped we would choose to fly with Aerolineas Argentinas again soon!!!!

Back to Buenos Aires it is

We collected our bags and followed the hundred or so other punters back to where we originally checked in at the check-in desks and formed a line to wait.  The line went relatively fast, and when it was our turn we were told there would be no flights the next day as the entire country was on strike so we had a two night wait in BA ahead of us but we could be put on a flight on Friday. We gladly accepted and then came the news that the waiting wouldn’t be at our own expense, a bus would take us and the other’s back to the city to be put up at a hotel for two nights, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included. Oh the excitement – free stuff!! To a backpacker this sounded like heaven, and we were delighted, even better when the news came that they would push out our next flight that was booked out of Ushuaia.

Once we made it back to Buenos Aires the city was extremely quiet with all public transport being closed as a result of the National Protest

I’ll tell you that when Friday rolled around and we finally hoped aboard our flight, touching down on the tarmac in Ushuaia was a relief, now to explore Patagonia.

Made it to Ushuaia, the Southern most city in the world.