Day 2 (still a flight day…thanks to the delay!)
Sleeping overnight in the Miami airport is not the ideal start to our adventure. We were so glad to get on the 7:30 flight…. and then they announced a delay. A DELAY?! Thankfully it was only 15 mins. We loaded and finally set off for Buenos Aires, Argentina (aka BA).
Fortunately we were able to get some shuteye during the flight. Sleeping on a 9 hour flight during the day tends to mess up one’s sleep schedule, but that was a risk we needed to take after our rough night.
Touching down in BA was a happy/not-so-happy moment. We were delighted to be back in Argentina, ecstatic that we were one step closer to Antarctica, but really disappointed that we had to miss our personal tour of BA that we’d booked months ago. (Again….thanks to the delay) Our tour guide messaged us and said that he would still pick us up at the airport and take us to our hotel for which we were quite grateful. There is a lot of talk about corruption with taxis/airport shuttles in BA so it was comforting knowing we had a ride!
Our guide, Howard, was a delightful gent from Nottingham, England who moved to BA nearly 20 years ago. He said it was never on his list of places to see, but he now loves it more than he loves his homeland. Perhaps having an Argentinian wife has something to do with that??
On our way to the hotel, Howard kindly took a bit of an indirect route so we could still quasi-tour BA. We saw several well-known buildings, such as the opera house, the government building, and the Eva Peron building. Equally exciting is that we drove down the widest boulevard in the world. 18 lanes of traffic!!
Instead of arriving at 7 am as scheduled, we touched down around 5:30 pm which made our hotel arrival close to 8 pm after clearing customs, getting luggage, and driving through the city. This late arrival meant that we missed Hurtigruten’s “who/what/when/where” introduction session. One of the reps met us at the hotel while we were checking in, mentioning that we had to have our luggage out between 8 and 10. No problem. After traveling 30+ hours we were ready to shower and sack out for the night. But then…. she mentioned that breakfast was at 3 am. Holy cow – luggage had to be out within two hours! We had to shower, eat dinner, and get to bed ASAP. ASAP didn’t work as it was nearly 11 when the lights went out.
This is where Day 2 ends… and Day 3 begins in only a few hours.