Saturday Jan 17 - Ushuaia
After our final breakfast on the Orion we disembarked and found our lift to our hotel for the next 2 nights - Arakur. We checked into Arakur at 9am only to find our room would not be ready until 2pm. So we dagged about the hotel a bit checking out the bar, restaurant and pool area which was totally amazing.
The Arakur is a new hip-hop and happening hotel in Ushuaia, about 6k’s from the center of town and up on a hill with commanding views of the harbour and Drake Passage. We took the hotel’s shuttle back into town and walked around checking out all the high-end sports shops and trying to locate a car hire place that would rent us a car for the following day, Sunday. This turned out to be very problematic as most were closed on Sundays and/or had no cars available. We finally found one, Budget, who would let us pick up a car at 6pm that day (Saturday) and return it to the airport on Monday AM. So we locked it in even though it meant coming back into town at 6pm.
We had an OK lunch at a cafe in town - bumping into a couple of our fellow Orion travellers who were also staying over in Ushuaia - most had left directly from the boat for the cruise’s charter flight back to BA.
Back at the hotel we tested the hotel’s pool which was really amazing - indoor/outdoor; however, it was so windy that the water was literally being blown out of the outdoor pool. After showers etc we went back to town to collect our hire car - a bit of rent-a-wreck. We had a nice dinner at the hotel in an almost empty dining room - quite surprising as the hotel was pretty full (of other Antarctic expeditions heading out the following day).
Sunday Jan 18 - Ushuaia
We spent the day driving around the surrounding area - very beautiful scenery - there is even a ski resort close by.
The only place we could find for lunch was fully booked so we had a coffee and went back to our hotel for a late afternoon bar snack. We stayed at the hotel for dinner again.
Monday Jan 19 - back to Buenos Aires
We headed to the airport for our morning flight back to BA (city airport) - the manager of Budget was supposed to meet us at the airport to collect our hire car (as they did not have a depot there) - well surprise surprise he did not show up - so we asked the guy at Hertz to call him and eventually left the key this guy - so far no further charges have shown up on the AmEx card so I guess he got his car back.
In BA we took a taxi to our hotel, The Park Hyatt - booked using the last of my Hyatt reward points. The hotel is super luxurious - we were upgraded to corner room with views for $39. We had a late lunch at one of the hotel’s cafes.
We walked around in the arvo sort of killing time as we were pretty travel weary. We had dinner at the hotel.
Tuesday Jan 20 - Buenos Aires to Santiago
We spent the day walking around and finally caught our early evening flight to Santiago - the penultimate leg of our trip. We left BA from the international terminal so we could go business class on LAN’s new 787 - well worth the extra hassle of departing from EZE instead of AEP. We overnighted at the Holiday Inn at SCL.
Wednesday Jan 21-22 - Santiago to home
We took the QF direct flight to Sydney on Wednesday - our preference, as it is a day-flight. We met up with some of our new friends from the Orion in the lounge - Denis and Susie who were heading home to Adelaide.
We walked in the door around 7pm on Thursday evening - worn out.