Adam's diary of the holiday: the journey home

We were at the airport shortly after 12.30 pm, in plenty of time to check in for our flight, scheduled to leave at 2.23 pm. The helpful chap at the check-in desk asked if we would like our luggage checked in all the way to London. We took him up on the offer somewhat nervously, considering that the increased risk of the luggage going astray was a small price to pay for avoiding the hassle of collecting and checking in the luggage at Buenos Aires.

The German couple from the boat who had been staying in Ushuaia were also at the airport. They were on a slightly later flight than ours, travelling on for a couple of days in El Calafate. They had a even longer journey home to look forward to than they did, as their flight back to Frankfurt arrived too late in the evening for them to continue on to their home town the same day, so they were going to have to stay overnight in Frankfurt. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky we live so close to two major international airports.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do at Ushuaia airport, but we passed the time by ordering a drink and a bowl of chips at the cafe. Our flight was delayed, but not seriously, and we left at about 2.50 pm. We were served lunch of prawn salad followed by lamb stew, which was OK if nothing special. This time, we had to eat it with plastic knives (as opposed to the metal knives we had had on the way out), so I guess Aerolíneas Argentinas must have spent their festive season doing a risk assessment and realised what a terrible terrorist threat metal knives represent. I still think you could do more damage with a fork though, and they were still metal. Amazing that no-one has hijacked one of their planes yet using all the dangerous cutlery. I slept through much of the rest of the flight, which got into Buenos Aires slightly ahead of schedule at about 6.00 pm. It felt really strange getting out of the plane into the heat of a Buenos Aires summer after all the cold weather of the last couple of weeks. Despite having boarding passes issued in Ushuaia, we still had to go to the check-in desk, where we asked nervously if our luggage was really on its way to London, and was assured that it was.

After checking in, we passed through passport control and security (which would have proceeded slightly more smoothly if I hadn’t lost the immigration form we filled in on arrival to Argentina, but it was easy enough to fill in another one) and had a brief look at the shops. I bought a Buenos Aires T-shirt, but failed in my attempt to find a bottle of pisco in the duty free shop to take home. We went to find the executive lounge, which it has to be said was rather more upmarket than the one at Gatwick. I left Carolyn there while I went to search for pisco at the other terminal. I failed, but returned with the consolation prize of a bottle of Tanqueray. It was cheap anyway, but as it was effectively free given that we still had some pesos left and no means of changing them back, I felt that the hassle of carrying it back was probably worthwhile. In fact, on returning to the executive lounge, I decided that perhaps I should get a second bottle, so I did.

Our plane left pleasingly close to its scheduled departure time of 10.10 pm. We had seats by the window this time, and even had reading lights that worked, so a great improvement on the journey out. We were served our customary glass of indifferent fizz while waiting for take-off, but this time no-one came to collect the empty glasses before take-off, so we had to keep a tight hold of them to stop them running around.

Dinner was served shortly after we were airborne: a very pleasant salmon pate followed by an acceptable steak (although not up to Buenos Aires standards). All this was served with a complete set of metal cutlery, so either the airline’s risk assessment had deemed the Ushuaia to Buenos Aires journey to be a greater hijack risk than the Buenos Aires to Madrid leg, or perhaps they’d just run out of metal knives in Ushuaia. Was a bit too tired for in-flight movies after dinner (getting on for midnight local time, and 4.00 am Madrid time), so reclined the seat and went to sleep.

Woke up to the pleasant discovery that I’d had a pretty good night’s sleep, as it was about 11.00 am Madrid time. Shortly afterwards, breakfast was served. Once again, the cooked breakfast looked horrible. I have no idea what it is. I was beginning to think that someone had told the chefs at Aerolíneas Argentinas that British people like a cooked breakfast in the morning, but had failed to give any further details, such as passing on helpful hints about bacon, eggs, sausages, that sort of thing. I stuck to the pain au chocolat and fresh fruit salad.

We touched down in Madrid at about 1.30 pm, slightly ahead of schedule. It didn’t seem like we should have too long to wait until our 3.20 pm flight. Although our flight was showing on the screens, there was no mention of which gate it went from, so there was some confusion about where our flight left from. We tracked down an information desk and confirmed that we were in the right place, although there was as yet no information on the gate for our plane. Rather distressingly, the executive lounge was in another terminal and involved going through yet more security checks, and as we only had an hour to wait it hardly seemed worth it.

If only we had known.

In fact, it would have been well worth it, as our flight ended up being delayed by about 3 hours. While we were waiting, Carolyn decided she wanted a coke. I had a little scout around, and discovered the choice was between a vending machine that took euro coins, which we were lacking (rather foolishly, as we had plenty of euros at home that we just didn’t think to bring with us), a cafe that had coke from one of those fountains that invariably dispenses distressingly flat coke, or a couple of other cafes that looked like they might have had bottled coke but also had queues going half way round the airport. I found a currency exchange place and changed a £20 note into euros, only to find that the vending machines didn’t work. I went back to the cafe with the flat coke, only to find that it had also now developed a healthy queue of its own, albeit not on the same grand scale as the queues for the other cafes. The coke was indeed distressingly flat, although this was somewhat compensated by the rather excellent ham in the ham and cheese baguette I got with it.

Eventually, we were able to board the plane at about 5.30 pm. Boarding seemed to take forever, and it was about 6.30 before we took off. The seats in business class were exactly the same as the ones in cattle, with spectacularly little elbow room. They clearly couldn’t use this plane in America, as no doubt at least one in four Americans wouldn’t fit into the seats at all. At least we were in the first row, so we had plenty of leg room. We had to stop a rather dim fellow passenger in business class from crushing our luggage: he seemed to think that he could fit his luggage in the same bin as ours just by pushing ever harder, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Eventually he was persuaded to use a different bin.

We were served the same disturbingly pink salami that we had had on the outward flight to Madrid, but without the consolation of good ham to go with it. We had a deeply inferior ham in its place. Once again, we had a full metal set of cutlery, so I briefly toyed with the idea of hijacking the plane to get them to serve the decent ham, but decided against it.

We touched down at Gatwick at 7.30 pm, but had to wait until 9.00 pm before we had retrieved our luggage. I’m not sure whether there was some terrible problem with the luggage handling at Gatwick that day or whether Aviance (Aerolíneas Argentinas’s ground agent) are just intrinsically crap. At least our taxi driver was still waiting for us when we finally got through. We had phoned from Madrid to warn of the delay, so he hadn’t been waiting too long. Got home at about 9.45, and judging from the amount of mewing, Hobbit was pleased to see us.