Antarctica 2023: Getting to Ushuaia and Hanging out in Ushuaia

The boat leaves from Ushuaia, Argentina, which is roughly the edge of the universe.  They call themselves the southernmost city in the world.  You can even go to the tourist office and get a passport stamp claiming this... which I did, and I'm still mildly concerned it has invalidated my passport.  So it's not surprising that it's a little hard to get to.  We flew to Buenos Aires on American (via Dallas), and then flew Aerolineas Argentina to Ushuaia.  This airline was very difficult to deal with.  Their online reservation system seems to be backed by a non-transactional system, so after going through the reservation flow, you might end up with zero or one (or maybe two, because it failed and you retried) reservations.  There was also a lot of rigamarole about overweight bags, as their baggage limitations are very strict, and a bag just can't be over 50 pounds, no matter what you are willing to pay.  So overall, it was a huge pain in the ass to get our flights sorted out, though once we arrived in Buenos Aires and checked in at the ticket counter, it was no big deal at all that we had overweight luggage (though we did have to pay a small fee).

We flew out of SFO on New Years' Eve, and there was a small bit of drama with getting out of there, due to some issue with our plane, and the fact that it was NYE, so there was not a lot of slack in the system (and/or the ground employees just wanted to get the hell out of there).  After it seemed like we just might not be able to get out of there today, somehow they magically found another plane (or just decided to put us on a somewhat malfunctioning plane after all) and we got out of there only an hour or so delayed.  We had plenty of time in Dallas, so this was not a problem.  Since Dallas is an international hub for AA, they had a "flagship lounge" there; I don't think I've ever been to one of those lounges before, and it was indeed quite a bit nicer t
han the usual AA lounges.  Since it was New Years' Eve, they were plying us with champagne, which didn't hurt.

The flight to Buenos Aires was uneventful, but very long.  It made me call into question my understanding of world geography.  We had a very long layover in Buenos Aires, like 6 to 8 hours, and there was no flagship lounge there :P. We originally booked our AA flight very far in advance, because we were using miles, so I guess that's why the flights lined up terribly.  So we hung out in various places for various periods of time, until our flight finally happened.  The flight was fine, we got to Ushuaia, and amazingly all of our luggage got there too.  There was a crazy long line for a taxi, though it moved reasonably quickly, and we eventually made it to our hotel, the Monaco Hotel (which might sound fancy but is in fact, not).

On the topic of the Monaco Hotel... our room was fine, but very basic.  We even had a view of the water.  John and Clinton's room was facing the hotel dumpsters.  It sounded like their room was substantially less good than ours.  And to add insult to injury, at some point, Clinton (who was, I think, helping us move our bags up to our room) got stuck in an elevator between two floors.  I got the impression this was not at all unusual, and we saw it happen at least once more during our stay.  So we mostly used the stairs (to go to our 5th floor room) for the rest of the trip.

Ushuaia is an interesting town, because people are basically there for one of two reasons... to get on a boat to Antarctica or to backpack through Patagonia.  So, it's an interesting combination of people in the town.  We had a variety of tasty foods (steak, seafood, etc.), we wandered around the waterfront (in torrential downpours), and we went for a hike at Glacier Martial (in a snowstorm).  One cool thing about Ushuaia was that it stays light out until 11 PM or so.  And since we were still on west coast time, we took advantage of that :)

The last day in Ushuaia, we dropped our bags, and then went on an organized tour of Tierra del Fuego National Park.  It was a bit too organized for my liking, as there was a lot of sitting on the bus, and not a ton of time available to wander around the park.  But we had time for short wanders around a few areas of the park.