Today is a 3-hour flight on Aerolineas Argentinas from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Argentina, to board Ponant’s Le Lyrial for the South Atlantic crossing to Cape Town. The flight departs at 6 am, so it’s a 3 am departure from Legado Mitico to get to Ezeiza (Pistarini) airport. The airport transfer can take anything up to 90 minutes in heavy traffic, but this morning the taxi driver weaves his way along the cobblestone streets of Palermo onto the highway, arriving at the airport in 40 minutes. We are departing from Terminal C, which seems to be a ‘domestic’ arm of the international airport, and again requires a bus across the tarmac to the plane. It’s a nearly full flight by the look of it, with the economy class cabin in a 2-4-2 seating configuration on the Aerolineas Argentinas flight. It’s a relatively new plane by the look of it, full of bleary-eyed passengers. Despite 3 hours of sleep, it’s still hard to doze off on the plane, but thankfully the flight lands 3 hours later in Ushuaia to a sunny day.
The charter flight (it’s not really, it seems Ponant has bought a lot of seats on a commercial flight) passengers are bused to the Hotel Arakur for lunch and a walk around the forest at the back of the hotel. Set high up on a hill overlooking Ushuaia, the hotel has had a lot of money spent on it, and the buffet lunch is perfectly fine. I’m not sure I’d stay here, as even though the view over Ushuaia is spectacular, it requires a shuttle bus to reach the town, or anywhere else. I suspect it does well as a ski hotel in winter, and based on comments from passengers from other cruise lines, it seems to be the hotel of choice for lunches and short hikes while waiting to board Antarctica bound ships.
