Yesterday was exciting. We checked out of our apartment in Buenos Aires. It was a bit strange to go from having a nice comfortable apartment to being nomads again in just a matter of minutes. That is the way it is though, the trip must go on! I will post more about our month in Buenos Aires in the coming days.
Our plan was to fly LAN Argentina last night from Buenos Aires to Comodoro Rivadavia – a three hour flight to the south. We jumped on the 160 colectivo from Plaza Italia, snagged some seats and enjoyed the short ride over the Jorge Newbury Aeroparque. We were greeted at the airport by a half dozen or so media trucks. That is never a good sign! Inside we found lines of passengers that would even make the TSA jealous.
A LAN employee informed us that the Buenos Aires airports (both AEP and EZE) were shutdown due to an air traffic control problem. We had heard rumors of there being a strike planned for that day but apparently this was unrelated. They said it was some sort of technical issue and that it may not be resolved for a day or more. We were supposed to depart around 11pm but we were told to expect a cancellation.
After our flight last night, we had a hotel reservation in Comodoro Rivadavia followed by a rental car reservation, followed by a booking at Bahía Bustamonte (much more on this later!), followed by a bus, etc… In other words, we had a long chain of bookings that had just been derailed. We opted to abandon the flight and switch to a bus then try to push everything else back by a day.
It took us about an hour to call hotels, change the rental car reservation, book bus tickets, etc. I worked through some of the issues on my laptop and Amy worked some of the others on the phone. When it was all said and done we had tickets in hand for a bus departure later that evening. I have yet to get a straight answer out of LAN but I believe we will be able to refund our tickets from lsat night.
We departed Retiro station at 8:30 PM and made only one stop during the first twelve hours of the trip. A hot meal was served a couple of hours after departure and breakfast around 9AM the next morning. At about the 13.5 hour mark while crossing a flat eastern Montana-like savanna we had a blow out. Nothing too exciting just a few seconds of buzzing, then a bang and a short while later we came to a stop. Thirty minutes later we were back on the road.
As I write this we are in the 24th hour of the trip. Due to a few other delays here in there we are still about four hours from reaching Comodoro. I just finished my fourth consecutive bus meal (roughly equivalent to a airline coach meal) and I am really longing to get off this thing. The good news is that the gaggle of cackling old ladies as well as a crying baby disembarked a couple stops back. Hopefully we are only one or two dubbed movies away from arrival!
Update: We made it! 27 hours and 8 minutes to cover just short of 1300 miles.