Day 5 – Iguazu to Buenos Aires

It looks like not much and it is only a two-hour flight, but there was an undescribed mechanical issue with our plane that started with an announcement that they were “rebooting the system” and that would take about 20 minutes. That announcement was followed by radio silence for about 3 hours – except for the occasional announcement calling individual passengers by name to join other flights to Buenos Aires that left every hour. We had a guide from the tour company with us and we were a group of 23, so it was difficult to accommodate us on another flight. After 3 hours, Max, our guide went down stairs to book us on the next flight. About 20 minutes before that flight was to leave, he came back up to the gate and said he had tickets for “some of the group.” Our names were the first called. The one hiccup at that point was that we had checked our small bag (it was over the 11 pound limit for carry ons) and we had to go downstairs (outside security) and claim and recheck our bag. The funny thing is that they did not retag our bag with the new flight number, so I don’t know what the reclaim was all about – except maybe to identify our bag. All but two of our group and Max got on the flight.

Once back in Buenos Aires, we were bussed to our prior hotel to retrieve the luggage we had left behind during our excursion to Iguazu and were taken to our new hotel. The Hilton was a beautiful property and it would have been nice to enjoy it, but we arrived there at 8:45 pm and received a notice from Viking that our luggage was to be outside our rooms at 8 pm for pickup to go on a truck for our 5:40 am flight. We have to be on a bus tomorrow at 3:30 am to get to the airport for that flight to Ushuaia, where we will board the ship.

So, we quickly moved things around in our bags so that we have clothes for tomorrow and set our bags out before going down to the grab and go cafe to get something to eat. Lunch was a shared empanada and a bag of chips from the Iguazu airport “market.”

I have to say that the shower at the Hilton is a solid 8 or maybe a 9 – if we could have enjoyed it. Tomorrow is another day…let’s hope the travel is a bit smoother.