South to Bariloche – Onward!

Iguazu Falls, Leaving for Buenos Aires and Bariloche

Being an expert planner, I had previously selected a flight at 12:40pm.  This is important because we have learned to get up no earlier than 9:00am or so because no restaurant even THINKS of opening until 8:00 pm.  This allowed us to have plenty of time to pack and get ready and enjoy an additional portion of bacon at the standard complimentary breakfast in the elegant dining room downstairs.

We found the same taxidriver who had returned the bag with Carol’s camera — by now we are old buds and are doing what seems to be the standard handclasp/handshake around here, bro’, with fingers up instead of down.  He knows the tip is going to be good.

[cmamad id=”1141″ align=”center” tabid=”display-desktop” mobid=”display-desktop”]We will be flying back south 1.5 hours to Buenos Aires, and then southwest 2.0 hours to Bariloche.  This seems like a relaxed day coming.  A quick taxi trip to the aeropuerto through 20 feet of jungle on either side, no lines anywhere, baggage right on the mark weight-wise.

There is a greased slide through the ersatz “security checkpoint”, basically a place where you demonstrate that you have a piece of paper of some sort on your person, and that you can lift your bags 2.5 feet to place them on a conveyor.  Soon, we are on the plane, for another ever-present dry ham and cheese sandwich.   This is great.

El Capitan dise despuedes una hora:  “Buenos tardes, senores y senoras.  El aeropuerto domestico ‘Aeroparque’ de Buenos Aires es cerrado.”  <subtle dramatic change to English here…>  “Therefore, because the domestic airport is closed in BA, we will be landing at the international airport instead.

[cmamad id=”1140″ align=”center” tabid=”display-desktop” mobid=”display-desktop”]First, we will fly in circles for an hour probably over Bariloche (note that they do not serve liquor on flights) because there are probably a few hundred extra planes trying to land here.  Please do not be alarmed by the fact that we will park in the middle of nowhere in a driving rain and make you descend a roll-up stairway to board an unmarked bus to the terminal.”

Basically, we took off from sunny Iguazu, and in the intervening hour, the rain got so heavy in Buenos Aires that the airport was closed.  No problem.  I have to say that to have two buses waiting to take us to the terminal, get our baggage to us so we could board other buses to go to the other airport was darn well executed.  Maybe it rains a lot here and this is normal.

Of course, the other airport is almost exactly on the other side of the city, and it is 4:00pm or so, rush hour.  But, they manage to get us there in 45 minutes, the next flight is delayed maybe 1 hour, and Merry Christmas, we made the connection.  Carol would like me to note here that we stowed our luggage underneath the bus and then climbed on to find that we got the last two seats – not together.

Other people got on after us and were standing in the aisle, but 5 minutes later, they were made to get off and we left.  The seats had leg/foot rests and were very comfortable – Carol went to sleep and didn’t wake up until we pulled into the other terminal.

So now we’re at the domestic airport, which has been closed, and we’re going to try to figure out how to re-arrange our flights and get out of there to Bariloche.  Long story short – we simply went up to the check in window, checked in our luggage (which we were going to do anyway) and ended up on the same connecting flight we would have had originally.  Even down to the same boarding passes – go figure.  It was 13 minutes late – that’s all.

We arrive at the Bariloche airport.  Have you ever arrived somewhere and they don’t have your rental car reservation?  Did they speak only Spanish at Avis?  Voucher?  What voucher?  I don’t got to show you no stinkin’ voucher!  I can say, however, that the fellow at Avis did seem to respect Carol’s “Preferred” card, and made about 10 phone calls.

Though it took 30 minutes, amazingly he did find someone who regurgitated a sequence of numbers and dashes that was sufficient to land us in the cutest little thing — sort of a car – a Chevy.  On to Bariloche!

Carol took the honors, and remember what happens when you have it in gear and turn the key?  Ha!  Thanks for that parking brake!  Needless to say we were not going to go back in (it is now 9:15pm) to swap for an automatic and electric windows.  Our little chariot was just fine, and here we are in Bariloche.  Not tired yet because we are now spirited nighttime warriors used to the wild Latin American party life.  (Yeah, Carol and JB!)

We are in Bariloche, formally known as San Martin de Bariloche (I hear), near the West coast of Argentina, about in the middle, on the southern shore of the Nahuel Huapi Lake.  It looks and feels exactly like region of California near Lake Tahoe, except there are more lakes, the surrounding Andes mountains are higher and covered with snow even in the summertime, the cars are smaller and the people are Argentinian.

We’ll be encamped here for our remaining two weeks.  Welcome to Northern Patagonia!

For more on Bariloche, see the Bariloche entry on WikiTravel.

Our next Bariloche blog post is at Bariloche Day of Rest.

Iguazu Falls, Leaving for Buenos Aires and Bariloche