Depending on how you look at it, it took us 37.5 hours or nearly six days to return home from Antarctica.
This morning we breakfasted and then disembarked the ship. It was hard to say goodbye to some of these amazing people knowing we may never meet again. They had shared their enthusiasm and passion with us for all things Antarctic and many of them had a huge impact on our enjoyment of this trip. Travelling with such an intimate team has been amazing, I particularly enjoyed the staff joining us for dinner in the main Dining Room each night, you had an opportunity to really get to know them and really dive into what makes them come back each year to bring visitors to this remote part of the world.
We exited the gangway for the last time and the entire Expedition Team were lined up to wish us goodbye. Some of these guys we had only met superficially, but the zodiac guides who marvelled at the whales with us, Woody who was there to greet us on every landing site, and several of the others whom you just connected with – well it was hard to say ‘goodbye’.
Ema is an amazing young woman – I really hope we meet again one day. I found we had so much in common. Come to Australia, Ema! <3
Weirdly, we were giving Woody hugs nearly every other day – he kept us informed and shared his seemingly boundless passion for Antarctica with us, and I was always wanting to hug him to thank him for sharing with us. Thankfully hugging the passengers isn’t against company policy.
Trish and Annie.
Ema crouching down to be as short as a Cross Girl. 😛 
And then – we were back at the End of the World in Ushuaia.
We found our hotel and dumped our luggage there and went for a wander about the town. Aunty Mary and Lyn went on a tourist tram that runs around the city, while Trish and I went shopping looking for some things for the kids – but only after catching up with everyone on the free hotel wifi first of course!
Had a chat with yale, ‘Where are you now?’ he asked… shared my location for shits and giggles and it looked like this <– God I love the Internet!
We pottered around town looking at souvenirs and mountain equipment shops until lunchtime, grabbed a small bite to eat (which in South America, always seems to mean empanadas) where we ran into – you guessed it, loads of people from the ship – before heading back to the hotel to check in properly and find our rooms. We stayed at the Hotel Albatross which is down near the waterfront. Unfortunately, though, our rooms had even less views than last time! C’est la vie, it’s only for one night and we spent the afternoon relaxing and finishing Trisha’s bottle of limoncello. 🙂
We opted for dinner at the ‘other most recommended’ restaurant in Ushuaia, La Estancia Parilla for some Argentinian BBQ – because they haven’t been feeding us enough on the ship, right? No, not really… but I have grown rather fond of the chimichurri so off we went.
OMG – forgot about the portion sizes. Between that and some language barrier issues, we ordered way too much food. Oh, and guess what? We ran into more people from the ship at this restaurant too… who’d’ve thought?
With full bellies and a few vinos under our belts, we wandered back down to the Hotel Albatross for our last night in South America. Tomorrow the Dread Transit starts in earnest.
Woke up nice and early – dammit, and finalised our packing. Argentina Aerolineas only allows 15kgs in their checked luggage and I got slugged on the way down and I was likely going to get slugged on the way back, but the others were doing their best to distribute their weight between their backpacks and their suitcase so we didn’t all incur a fee. We breakfasted at the hotel and then checked out at 10:15am – yeah, that was as late a check out as they were willing to give us. Thankfully they have a few lovely lounge areas where we could wait until about 11ish before we could call cabs and head to the airport.
Got to the airport without incident and almost immediately we were running into staff and other passengers from the ship – particularly Louise and Jessica (of the Toowoomba Coincidence) who seemed to follow us all the way home. Anyway, the ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ of international travel had well and truly started and we took our first three-hour flight back to Buenos Aires. No hidden stop-over this time so it seemed rather quick in comparison to the way down. Oh and we even had a really happy and chatty check-in guy at the airport who didn’t charge me excess baggage. *wipes away a tear* What a nice guy! Oh and gotta love Argentina Aerolineas btw – your in-flight meal is a sickly sweet muesli bar thing, and there is no milk for your tea, only Coffee Mate (blergh!)… But we were on our way.
As it happened, we had a short three-hour flight, whereupon we arrived in Buenos Aires Domestic Airport which is right in the middle of the city just about, and then we were stuck with an eight hour wait before we were scheduled to fly from EZE, Buenos Aires International (Who booked this shitty transit? Oh wait, that was me). So we had been busy hatching plans before we went ‘Internet Dark’ on how to avoid spending what seemed like an interminably long time hanging around either one airport or the other, and we had decided upon asking Jorge if we could take him out to dinner! Jorge was the driver that Ceri had recommended to run us to the airport when we left BA, so we had contacted him and said “Can we please book for you pick us up at the BA Domestic airport, and take us somewhere for dinner somewhere local before dropping us to the International? If you are free, we would love for you to join us for dinner, and Ceri and his wife too if they are available.” Yeah, it was a little cheeky, but we had plenty to gain (dinner at a local restaurant with a charming Argentinan!) and nothing to lose by asking how he felt about the plan. 😀 Jorge replied almost immediately saying it would be his pleasure, and what sort of food would we like? 😛 Score!
Here are Jorge’s contact details if you need a driver in Buenos Aires…
I had told a few people on the ship about our transit plans to get home and they were quite impressed – Bernadette (from Holland) in particular, literally pouted and said, “I want to travel with you!” She too had some horrid long airport layovers to deal with also. And yes, you’re damn right we’ve done this before! 😉
Anyway, everything went to plan, Jorge met us at AEP Domestic and took us to a – you guessed it, an Argentinian BBQ place! 😀 I have no idea where in Buenos Aires this place is, but the food was fabulous and our hostess, Marinas was wonderfully welcoming. Because we were there so early (Argentinians are rather continental with their dining hours) we pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves, and thanks to Jorge – we didn’t even have to take our bags out of the car – Marinas had blocked off a space right out front of the restaurant in readiness to give Jorge somewhere to park.
We had an incredible platter of BBQ’d meats – lamb, beef, chorizo, black pudding, and something that may have been offal or donkey (not sure). Some wine, fresh bread and a token bit of salad and we were very happily recovered from our airline muesli bars indeed. 🙂 
Sadly, dinner came to an end, and Jorge took us to EZE International airport to await our long-haul flight. We checked in, and ran into Jessica and Louise, again. Then found somewhere comfy to wait for our flight which was just after midnight. The flight is much as these things always are, with extra bonus horrible thanks to the prat in front of me who reclined his seat within minutes of getting into the air, and of course, I’m still coughing from the end of the flu thing I have. Thankfully though, we were able to wave away the horrible airline food as we had been stuffed full of wonderful BBQ meats and chimichurri goodness.
A movie or two later, and I thought I’d have a look at the live flight map (this is a big frequent traveller no-no, and should never be done – it makes the flight seem even longer than it is, if that is at all humanly possible). But I did and discovered this:
We were headed right back to Ushuaia! If there were direct flights we could have knocked six hours flying time off the trip! Arggh! We had heard that the first flight to land at Ushuaia’s international airport was from Melbourne and had come directly over the Antarctic continent – but they don’t do that route anymore – not enough call for it. Nothing to be done but to sit back and take all the drugs.
I managed to get some sleep on the plane, but won’t be admitting to how much of what medications it took to achieve that. And eventually we arrived in Auckland. There we had another three-hour layover (‘Hi, Jessica and Lousie, oh and Mark too) before we were to board to Brisbane. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed by nearly an hour. Fortunately (or perhaps miraculously) they seemed to make up most of that time in the air somehow – I’m not asking questions on that one.
We arrived somewhat bedraggled and overtired and cramped and sore in Brisbane at 10:40am on a Sunday morning and all I wanted to do was collapse in a heap. But, you know, can’t do that – you need to get on local time as quickly as possible. All up our transit time was roughly 37.5 hours door (in Ushuaia) to door (in Brisbane)… but then as we were going through Customs at Brisbane airport, I mentioned this to Louise, and she said, ‘Well, actually, we left our travel destination, Antarctica, six days ago, so really, it’s taken us six days to get home.” Eww… thanks for that, Louise! 🙂
So home again, home again jiggety jig… until the next adventure. <3
Each home has its own little jetty or pontoon as this is a community that thrives on its waterways. They have mail boats, rubbish boats, supermarket boats and even ice-cream boats that service the community. Kids get to and from school by boat.
Houses are varying from grand to dilapidated, some have permanent residents and many are able to be rented as holiday destinations. The guide on the boat mentioned that many of them are weekend homes for people who live and work in the city.
In the centre of the delta is this odd house covered by a glass cube – it is the house of one, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, considered the ‘Father of Argentinian Classrooms’ or the founder of modern Argentinian education. Built in the 1860s, the house has been placed in the glass cube to preserve it from the wind, weather and constant humidity.
The area is well known for its rowers and the Argentinian Rowing Club is located in the delta… leading to the common site of crazy people out rowing at midday… without hats.
Further towards the town of Tigre, you can see large marketplaces where people can come (by boat) to do larger shopping and pick up supplies.
Also nearby is the famous Parque de la Costa, which is like the largest amusement park in Argentina or South America or something or other… I kinda wasn’t paying attention when he said that bit 😛 In my defence, we do live barely half an hour from a handful of theme parks, so I’m not all that interested in them.
After our genteel pottering around on boats for the morning, we got to go visit the beautiful Cathedral de San Isidro which, oddly enough, is located in the centre of the small town of San Isidro. The Cathedral was built in 1898 on the site where a cathedral had stood since the early 1700s. As per usual for South American structures from this period (well, so it seemed from our extensive tour last year), it was designed by French architects and is built in a very aesthetically pleasing, neogothic style. 
It has gorgeous stained glass windows and its spire reaches just shy of 70m tall (which is the same height as Buenos Aire’s Obelisk, don’t you know?). It has recently undergone extensive renovations which is why the entire building looks brand new. It is a truly lovely church.
After we visited the Cathedral we had a quick stop, just long enough for a lemon gelato and then it was time to head back to Buenos Aires. We decided to make like the Spanish for the remainder of the afternoon and have a much-needed siesta.
Anyway, we made it to Desnivel just as the place was opening at 7pm. Argentines traditionally dine quite late and while we wandered into a nearly empty restuarant, the place was getting quite busy as patrons kept walking in as late as 9:30pm to 10pm.
After we ordered some drinks – caipirinha, margartita, and pisco sours… our lump of wax came out like this – well cooked and covered in peppers, bacon, provoletta, and herbs. Absolutely beautiful. Add a tiny bit of chimichurri and Bob’s your uncle.
After sharing some provaletta for an entre, we had steak tenderloins (what we would just call a fillet steak) that was served drowning in delicious mushroom sauce and with pomme noisettes. None a pesky vegetable in sight at this steakhouse 😉 And Ceri was right, I have never – and I mean that literally – I have never had such tender steak in my life. Thanks to Ceri’s advice we ordered one steak between the two of us and didn’t have to be rolled out of the restaurant.
The steak cut like butter and almost melted in your mouth. It was beautifully cooked and so light and tender. Phenomenal… we were all commenting what a shame it was we hadn’t made the effort to come last night as we would have been back for a second meal tonight as well, it was that good!
Eventually our waiter just brought over the damn bottle. 🙂
Finally, well fed and cheerful, we paid for our meal in what looks like a king’s ransom and spilled out onto the street to find a cab.
One of our next stops was the Parque Lezama… where we roundly ignored the statue of Pedro de Mendoza who allegedly founded the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, and went instead wandering the back streets to find a cafe. Being Australian, Ceri thought we’d want to find ‘good coffee’. It is apparently the one thing that Australians want when they get here and so he took us to a cafe- where we ordered one lemonade, one iced tea and one iced coffee, as I don’t drink coffee at all and none of us are big coffee drinkers. It was at this point, he questioned if we were actually Australian.
Random window above the street level near Defensor – makes me feel like the repair work I need to do on my own home isn’t so desperate after all.
The streets on the way to Casa Rosada – the famous Presidential Palace, were increasingly congested with all the protesting that was going on. The Casa Rosada was so busy and surrounded by so much construction, clumps of cruise ship tourists, traffic and chaos that I have stolen… err appropriated, a pic from Wikipedia to include here so you can actually see (and so that I will be able to remember) what the building it is supposed to look like!
We sat on some steps opposite the Palace and had a discussion about the building, and rebuilding of the Palace over the years, the state of Argentinian politics, and discussed some of the different approaches that Argentina vs Australia take to global problems. For example on immigration – Argentina is seeing a lot of Venezuelan immigrants at the moment as a result of instability in that region and rather than take those refugees and ship them offshore to detention hellholes, the Argentinan government is expediting visas and citizenships for these people primarily because they bring skills and abilities to the country, but there’s an added benefit that it is apparently pissing off the Venezuelan government to no end.
The Cathedral fronts directly onto the Plaza del Mayo which is a large open space often used for protesting… most notably it is the site where the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ congregate every Thursday as they have done since the mid-1980s. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been turning up protesting that they do not know what has happened to their children and the tens of thousands of people who were ‘disappeared’ between 1976 and 1983. At that time, anyone who protested against the dictatorial government would find themselves ‘disappeared’. Protesting was outlawed and protestors were kidnapped, tortured and murdered (apparently a favoured way to get rid of political dissidents was to torture them and then to fly them over the River Plata and throw them out of planes) This state-run terrorism campaign of the military dictatorship operated between 1976 and 1983, which is when the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organised and started to protest the disappearance of their children. You see the very Catholic Argentinians adore and respect their mothers above all else and they knew that no Argentinians would stand idle if they saw mothers being beaten and subdued in the streets. So the government just had to let them alone… and while protesting is now completely legal, the Mothers have refused to be silent and they continue to protest nearly 40 years on.
We stepped out of the cafe and ran smack bang into… wouldn’t you know it, a workers union protest. It was at this point I asked Ceri if all this political engagement and protesting ever brought about tangible change to which he replied, ‘Not really, but now they have their right to protest back, they’re intent on using it.’
From here we made our way to 9 July Avenue where one of the famous Evita balconies is located as well as an enormous 70m obelisk. The Obelisco de Buenos Aires was erected in the Plaza de la República on 9 de Julio in 1936 to commemorate the quadricentennial of the foundation of the city. It’s quite a striking monument – you can’t miss it!
The large walled cemetery is similar to one we saw in Punta Arenas in Chile last year, but quite five times the size, and quite ten times as ostentatious in its display of wealth and status. The mausoleums are enormous, and all the materials and workmanship would have been imported from Europe.
People from many different denominations are buried here. The Argentinians are a very cosmopolitan people having come from everywhere – this appears to have been the result of a dreadful policy that encouraged the slaughter of the indigenous peoples in the past, but has created a society that knows they are all from somewhere else, so they appear to be more tolerant of one another… Ceri claims the Argentines ‘are mostly Italian and Irish descent, speaking Spanish, dressing like French and wanting to be British.’
Presidente Alfonsin’s grave site – unlike most of the tombs here, this one is open sided and not locked.
The graves are rich with symbolism – from trees of life, owls of wisdom, anchors of hope and memento mori.
This is a couple who hated each other but who were forced to live out their lives together – Catholics do not divorce – so in death they chose to be buried in the family plot feet pointing towards each other and busts facing away, not side by side as most loving couples would. It’s very honest in its own way.
This is a momument to a woman named Ida – a very personal homage from a grieving husband. Ida fell from a building and this statue depicts a woman helping her into the heavens.
Eva Peron’s grave – the most visited grave in the cemetery. It is the only one covered in flowers and tokens, though compared to many of the other tombs, it is plain, simple and not particularly artistic. Evita was a very divisive figure so it is the only place in the cemetery that is under CCTV surveillance.
The buildings here are old timber and corrugated iron construction, but they have been brightly painted by the bohemian community that lives in the area. Other than these few very colourful streets that are decidedly touristic, the wider area is quite poor and unfortunately known to be a high crime area. It’s a very funky little barrio though and well worth checking out – with lots of markets, cafes, souvenir stores, people dancing the tango at midday, and a cool buzz about the place.
Everything that stands still appears to have been painted in bright colours creating a very festive and cheerful atmosphere. The markets are full of bright and interesting souvenirs as well, with lots of artwork and plenty of toruisty stuff.
