After our long winded attempts to fly out of Puerto Iguaçu we arrived in Buenos Aires. I said goodbye to the others and prepared to fly to Ushuaia, via Trelew, to meet a friend on the way back from an Antarctica cruise.
As we left Iguaçu was reaching 35°C, Buenos Aires more like 25°C. At Trelew the thermometer dropped down to 16°C and by the time I arrived in Ushuaia it was all of 7°C. I decided it was time for another jumper. And two layers of hiking socks, a windproof coat, thermal leggings, a hot chocoate and a bed with a large number of blankets.
Internal flights in Argentina are limited to 15kg of checked-in luggage. Having flown across the Atlantic with 22kg my packing required a bit of a rethink. I needed all the heavy clothes for the cold weather so abandoned all my shorts and most of the t-shirts, along with spare flip flops and any non-essential electrical equipment and luxuries. By the time I weighed the luggage at the airport it was down to 13kg and I still can’t see I’m really missing anything, just that I need to do laundry a bit more often. As usual my size 12 hiking boots weigh far too much and I counted the netbook and cables as necessary, but I can easily wander about with everything on my back.
Anyway, back at Buenos Aires airport I had 7 hours to wait for my flight to Ushuaia. I started by going to a local shopping mall and buying some new trainers to replace my rather stinky current ones*. I also found some new toiletries and medicines as I suspect they may be harder to find in Patagonia. Shopping done I sat in the food court and caught up on some writing, then had to sit next to the windows on the upper level as it’s the only place with public power sockets. On the plus side I did get to watch a couple of downloaded episodes of Top Gear.
* Note to self: Buying shoes should be done after a reasonable amount of sleep, not when delirious after 40+ hours awake and full of Lemsip Ultra. That way you don’t end up heading towards a snowy glacier wearing corduroy plimsolls, completely inappropriate for the wet weather…
