Antarctica: Getting There

I'm sorry for the delay in posting more about my trip, but the day after I arrived home I came down with THE worst cold I've ever had in my life and I could barely think straight (let alone sit up straight during my seemingly endless coughing fits...). Today is the first day that I feel like I might actually be turning the corner on this bug, so I thought I'd better begin posting again before I forget everything. (Yeah, like THAT could happen! :) So here goes...

The jumping off point for the boat trip is Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. The mandatory day of arrival was Thursday, December 20th (the ship sailed on the 21st), but I had planned my itinerary to arrive on the 19th to give myself a buffer in case of a major delay with the flights. While that didn't happen, I did have one close call...

My itinerary was San Jose -> Los Angeles (1 hour) -> Santiago, Chile (11 hours) -> Ushuaia (3 hours with one stop en route), so I was prepared for a long, uncomfortable trip. My first flight was at 11:15 a.m. and I made a point of getting to the airport REALLY early, since the last time I flew American Airlines during the holiday season, they were so understaffed that I ended up missing my scheduled flight and spent the entire day at San Jose airport. That would have been the last thing I needed!

Fortunately, that wasn't a problem. I got through check-in and security within about 20 minutes and then had an almost 2-hour wait at the gate for my flight. At one point, they announced that our flight would be delayed because LAX had been shut down due to a problem on one of the runways (I LOVED hearing that, of course...), but we actually ended up leaving pretty much on time.

I don't actually remember anything about the time spent at LAX, and we left there on time as well, a couple of hours later. I was now flying on LAN Chile, an AA codeshare partner, and the flight was uneventful. Because of the time difference (Chile was 5 hours ahead), we ended up flying through the night. One nice thing was that each seat had its own video console, so we could pick and choose our own entertainment during the flight. The choices were somewhat random (two options were Ratatouille and Die Hard, for example), and I ended up watching I, Robot (so-so, but it killed a couple of hours). Then, as we got closer to the end of the flight, I decided to watch The Bourne Ultimatum. I hadn't seen the first two films in the series, but I found it easy enough to follow and I was really enjoying it. Unfortunately, just when it got to the climax, the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent and the screens were being shut off! I could only hope that I'd be able to watch the end of it on my return trip.

We landed in Santiago at around 6:30 a.m. and I had around 3 hours before my final flight to Ushuaia. So I was just hanging around the terminal, trying to get some rest, and waiting for the Internet cafe to open up so I could send my folks a note that I had made it that far safe and sound. After an hour and a half or so, I noticed that my next flight was not coming up on the Departures board, even though later flights were already listed. So I headed to the Information Desk. That's when I found out that, because my flight would be making a stop in Punta Arenas, Chile, it was considered a domestic flight, so I would have to go to the domestic terminal AFTER going through Immigration to enter the country!

That wouldn't have been so bad, except everyone I asked about where I was supposed to go kept giving me different information, pointing me to elevators that didn't exist, etc. I finally made it to the Immigration area where I got my next lovely surprise... Because I was “entering” the country, as a Canadian national I would have to pay a “reciprocity fee” (apparently the equivalent of what Canada charges Chilean visitors) of—get this—$132! Thank goodness for credit cards...

By the time I paid the fee, went through Immigration and Customs, and re-entered through security, I got to my gate with about 10 minutes to spare before boarding. Whew! The only other incident was that when we landed in Punta Arenas, I had to disembark the plane to go through Passport Control again to get my exit stamp... Sigh.

It was in the airport there that I ended up chatting with another couple who were headed to Antarctica as well. They were going on a different ship than me, but this was the first time that it really hit me that I was really on my way, and my energy level started to pick up again.We reboarded the plane after half an hour for the last leg of the flight. And less than an hour after that, we were descending into Ushuaia. Here's a first view from the above:

Next installment: The city at the end of the world!

Comments

[Anne Murphy]

I'm glad you're starting to feel better. I'm hanging onto the edge of my seat waiting for your next installment. Kind of like waiting for next week's episode of the Amazing Race!