Ushuaia - January 3rd

If you don’t adjust your watch breakfast on our flight is at the reasonable time of 07:30, if you have already adjusted to Argentinian time then it is at the ungodly hour of 03:30.  Still as we are landing at 04:30 there is no choice.  We land fairly on time, and all things considered we are through immigration and baggage claim fairly quickly.  The airport in Ba is nice and modern, although we do have to exit to transfer by foot to the terminal for our domestic flight.  But although it is early in the morning it is bright and warm, so it’s not too bad.  In fact after check-in we have a drink sitting outside before we go through security.

The domestic terminal is quite busy, nearly all with flights going down to Patagonia.  Our flight is stopping in El Calafate before hitting Ushuaia.  This makes it a five hour flight, although the turnaround at El Calafate is actually very quick, under 30 minutes.  It is a tiny airport, but somehow all its flights for the day, ours and two other 737s, all land within 15 minutes, so it seems busier than it is.  With a window seat I also get quite a good view of some of the landscape, although as we approach Tierra Del Fuego we do get increasing cloud cover.

Ushuaia airport is a nice little airport, built in a wooden “Swiss Chalet” style rather than being the usual concrete and glass type you see.  However it is small, our little 737 fills the baggage reclaim, so I’d hate to see how the 747 pictured landing here would have fared.  We get a taxi into town and check into our hostel, which seems nice, although a bit pricey for what we have got.  But as we soon find out the town is quite pricey for a lot of things.

The rest of the day is spent checking out the town, and organising some tours and bus tickets.  And we even get a bit of shopping in, with Dorota starting as she means to go on.  Shopping is quite cheap, as the entire town is a duty free zone, but services, especially those for us travellers, are fairly expensive.  We ended up having such a big meal for lunch that we go to a local take away for some empanadas to eat in our room for dinner.