On the vast majority of our cruises, there tends to be a flight involved to reach the ship. This trip has followed that trend with us flying with British Airways on their direct service to Buenos Aires. We departed from Heathrow at 10:30pm on Thursday which was 20 minutes later than scheduled and flew through the night. It was quite a bumpy ride and I found it difficult to sleep, I did manage doze on and off for 5 hours so it wasn’t all bad. I also found there wasn’t space for my carry on case near my seat so it got upgraded not to Premium Economy but to Business! I firmly believe that I should have gone too but it wasn’t to be.
Flying is a necessary evil if you want to see the worlds far flung places and fortunately it’s something we don’t mind doing as for us it’s all part of the cruise process. No pain, no gain as they say. And talking of no pain, we were met in arrivals by Pip who had travelled from Johannesburg to join us and she had arrived Thursday evening just as we were leaving the UK. Her journey involved first flying to Dubai with a 2 hour connection before catching the the flight to Buenos Aires. The last leg taking 19 hours where there was yet another stop, this time at Rio De Janeiro and unfortunately she had to stay on the plane to whole time. The whole trip taking over 30 hours. That’s dedication for you!
Today is also Nicole’s birthday so it was nice treat for her to have her mum, eldest daughter and me together for the start of this adventure.
We arrived 10 minutes behind schedule which was due to 4 other large planes all converging at the same time. This had a knock on effect with immigration which took around 30 minutes to clear. Once through we picked up our cases and went on search of our transport to the hotel. We have booked in at the Intercontinental for 2 nights and have plenty of ideas for things we want to see but will maybe decide when we have had some proper food and a good night’s sleep laid flat in a bed.
We are all feeling the effects of getting here and to be honest will all grab an early night.
After a really tasty lunch we spent the remainder of the afternoon sat out in hotel terrace while partaking in some liquid refreshments. I think the temperature hit 30°C which is in complete contrast to what we left behind.
At the time of writing we have still to make our minds up what to do tomorrow.
Everyone else turned in really early but I decided to go for a wander just to help stay up just that bit longer. I managed almost a length of the Avenue De Mayo before returning to the hotel for just a couple of beers. Time for some shut eye.
