Back in Puerto Natales after the W Trek, we were back in our corner room at the Captain Eberhard Hotel looking out at the Bay of Hope. The view was nice, but gale force winds kept us awake. Somehow we had slept better in the tents on our trek.
Our itinerary had us backtracking through El Calafate to catch a flight back to Buenos Aires.
We woke at 530am and headed for breakfast at 6am. Bleary eyed, we fueled with coffee and carbs and were ready to board bus at 650am. A public bus was making a special stop so we all had to be ready. We waited in the lobby of the hotel until 710am, and heard the horn blow from the bus, urging us to get outside and board the bus.
We travelled 65km north to the Chilean border crossing, arriving at 750am. It was scheduled to open at 8am so we waited a few minutes, then learned that the border was without power (not surprised given the winds). We would have to go back to Puerto Natales and try another border crossing. We are shocked at the lack of communication for these things (border closures, road closures due to races.) Do they not have Twitter in this country?
We crossed the other Chilean border and after a drive thru “no mans land” we ended up at the Argentinian border, near a ski hill… and it started to snow! Go figure! After about 30 minutes of processing documents, we were on our way to El Calafate. We napped on the long, flat, lonely Patagonian roads and arrived in El Calafate at about 330pm, about 2 hours later than expected. No problemo.
BUT, as we were leaving the bus, Rodrigo was asking for the times of our Buenos Aires flights, as the Argentinian airlines had gone on strike across the country with over 100 flights cancelled. Oh my Jesus! (Rodrigo’s version of OMG!) Our flight at 730pm tonight was one of the cancelled flights!! As we could do nothing in the interim, we headed into town for some eats, leaving Rodrigo to work on the problem. We ended up back at La Distelleria and had drinks, pulled guanaco and lamb burgers, and comforted ourselves with gelato!
Rodrigo went to the airport and was in constant contact with G Adventures on our behalf. He stated that the airport was crazy and people were screaming and really upset at the employees! Yikes! We had constant changing information – initially were we given rooms at the Posta Sur and not expected to get on a flight. Then after a call from the G office, we were told to be ready in 30 minutes to board a bus for another airport four hours away, where we were booked on a 2am flight to Buenos Aires.
We set out as the sun set over the patagonian plains. We looked back and saw Fitz Roy and the mountain range once more. The drive went fairly quickly with one stop for a Banos break. We arrived with our driver, Mariano, at the Rio Gallegos Airport at 11pm, but our flight was not on the board!! This was a challenging and confusing situation. After trying to get information, texting Rodrigo, and Mariano connecting with G Adventures behind the scenes, we were miraculously on a flight with a different airline departing at 245am to Buenos Aires. We arrived at about 6am in the hot, smoggy city, shocked that we made it. Went to bed with plans to meet for breakfast a couple hours later.
Strange and full day that took us places we didn’t expect, but all’s well that ends well. Glad we had Rodrigo and his team at G Adventures working for us today!