March 4-6 getting there – painful!

You know that sinking feeling?!

And indeed we made it to Santiago BUT our luggage didn’t arrive with us! Sacre bleu. The airline that took us out of Melbourne to Auckland - mentioning no names - wiped us out of the system. You’d wonder how that could happen hmmmm. And when we arrived in Buenos Aires the next day we were still without luggage. Anyway… after a few days and multiple hours of reporting and anxiety etc etc they delivered our cases to the hotel at the witching hour the night before we were flying to Ushuaia before dawn. Hoorah!

In spite of our low spirits we did enjoy a little nibble of Buenos Aires and reckon we’ll have to return to see it properly - and drink more of the delicious Argentinian Malbec.

Our hotel was on the banks of the Rio de la Plata in the area which was once a busy port complete with swing bridges. It was hot and muggy, exotic and quietly dazzling. We spent time in amongst what I think were kurrajong trees bedecked with giant blousy flowers and birds; you can guess that Lindsay was happy! The birds that captured my eye were green Monk parakeets and little puffs of the Glittering-bellied Emerald - a humming bird weighing in at barely 4g and only around 8-9cm long. These minuscule power houses were buzzing, literally, around the flowers as were big black bees.