Journey to Ushuaia

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WELL, good morning. Day two begins and I'm still in the hotel having had a very good night's sleep. I got up around 3:00 this morning so I'm not fully adjusted. I find being awake too early is better than waking up too late. Anyway I've just got to finish packing up and head across the road to the airport.

I've got two flights today, one from here in Santiago across to Buenos Aires, and then from Buenos Aires, straight down to Ushuaia - the southernmost city in the world. That assume I'm able to make the connections, so with a bit of luck I'll be down at the bottom of the continent tonight.

I'm in the airport now with my boarding pass and everything having cleared immigration. It is quite different now here in Santiago Airport. Last time I was here this area was the passport control area and now it is a big food court. So while I have a little bit of time I'm going to have breakfast, something nice and simple.

Interestingly they supplied a free cup of coffee as well. For those of you who know me, it's been 8993 days since my last coffee and to be honest I'm going to keep that record going. I'll leave the free coffee here for someone else who will want it. Otherwise I've had breakfast and it's time for me to find the gate and catch the plane to Buenos Aires.

I'm in Buenos Aires Airport now, and to my surprise it was very efficient going through immigration. From the time I left the aircraft, catching a bus across the tarmac, going through immigration and everything, collecting bags and going through inspection, then dropping the bag off at domestic, the whole process from leaving the plane to dropping off my bag only took seventeen minutes which would be a record. It's a nice warm day here around 26 degrees here and apparently going up to about 30 in Santiago. It's still quite warm here, but it will definitely be a lot cooler when I get down to Ushuaia. Anyway I need to find my gate, board the plane and away we go.

Well I've successfully made it here to Ushuaia at the very bottom of South America. This is a very beautiful place. Just scanning around, the wide angle lens isn't doing this much justice but the mountains behind the city are absolutely amazing. It's now about 8:00 PM and they are doing daylight saving here because the sun hasn't set yet. But I am quite dressed up at the moment because the high temperature here today was about 14 degrees which is extremely cold for me where I'm from. To put this into perspective, where I live in Brisbane, we've just had 46 days in a row going over 30 degrees. So a 14 degree day is pretty extreme. Obviously I'm going to have to get used to it because I'm travelling in this area for a little while.

I'm thinking tomorrow I'll have a really good explore around this area because it is really stunning with its national parks up there under the snow capped mountains. Out there is the Beagle Channel. This is a really beautiful little spot. It's a bit busy with the rush hour traffic but otherwise I'm in for a really amazing time here in this essentially last outpost of civilisation in the southernmost city in the world. It's going to get dark pretty soon, so I'm going to head back to the hotel. I arrived at the airport which is in this direction over there about an hour ago and I've already checked into the hotel.

Fortunately my four flights from Brisbane to Auckland to Santiago to Buenos Aires to here were all running on time departing exactly on schedule. All my luggage arrived in one piece as well without getting lost on some other continent. So I'm all ready to explore this area tomorrow.

I'll do a vlog about this area when I learn a bit more about it. But beyond here I do have some very definite plans about what is happening past here. I think now it's time for dinner and an early night because it's going to be very busy from here on in. OK I'll catch you later.