Our Worst Journey in the World
This is an account of our worst journey in the world, not the worst which I’ll mention at the end.
On Friday, January 4th of this year, we were scheduled to fly out of San Francisco. Our first flight would be to Dallas, then the same day we would fly Dallas to Buenos Aires, arriving in Argentina early on the 5th. We would then cross the city to the domestic airport and catch a flight to Ushuaia, which is at the bottom of Argentina, and is where the ship was leaving for our trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Antarctica. As we would be setting sail on Monday January 7th, that gave us a day in Ushuaia to take photos at Tierra del Fuego National park, enjoy some great Argentinian steak, papas fritas, and one or two glasses of red wine. That was the plan, and we were pretty excited about sailing the Southern Ocean again.
Friday morning came and we awoke to wild weather conditions. Torrential rain and strong winds. The news was all about the “Winter Storm”. It was the worst I had seen it in ten years. To make matters worse, before we left for the airport, our lounge ceiling started to leak by the window. It must have been coming in from upstairs. Well, nothing we could do about it and we had to leave it to my parents who were visiting to sort it out (thanks Mum & Dad!). We jumped in the taxi and headed down the 101 to SFO. The driving conditions were atrocious, and I was getting really worried.
Once we got to the airport, check in went pretty smooth, although they said there would be a thirty minute delay; not bad as we had a reasonably long layover in Dallas. However, once we got to the gate area we started to see all the delays piling and we began to get anxious. The flight departure kept on getting pushed back further and further. It got to the point where we were sure that we wouldn’t make our connecting flight. Speaking to the American representative (who did a great job under the pressure), she re-booked our flight to Buenos Aires for the next day, which was fine as we had a spare day. We decided to still fly out of San Francisco that day as the weather was forecast to be bad the following day.
I called Expedia who I had booked out flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuia. For some reason, I started to loose my voice which made traversing though the automated calling system complete hell. After being on hold for ages, I eventually spoke to a representative about re-booking our internal Argentinian flight. After a long time, he told me that all the flights were fully booked for the next four days! He tried speaking to the airline directly but they kept on cutting him off. We then found that we could get a flight which stopped at every airport on the way down to Ushuaia, so that looked promising, until we found that due to the daylight savings that had just been introduced in Argentina, we would not be able to cross the city in time to make our flight from the domestic airport. Our only other option was to see if we could get a flight to Santiago (Chile), then to Punta Arenas (bottom of Chile) and then to Ushuaia. At this point, our flight to Dallas was called and we boarded knowing then we hadn’t any guaranteed way of getting to our final destination. We had been staring at oblivion and it looked like we had lost the whole trip.
We got to Dallas around 9:30pm and immediately spoke to the AA representative. We then saw one of the managers who booked us for a flight the next day from Dallas to Miami, then onto Santiago, then Punta Arenas, and finally, Ushuaia! We were extremely happy and didn’t mind the fact that our bags were impounded as they were checked through to Buenos Aires (for the flight the next evening). All we had to do was get them the next morning and recheck them.
We decided to get up early the next morning, get to the airport, get our bags and recheck them before the terminal got busy. We had to wait an hour for our bags to be found, they were rechecked, and we waited at the gate, nervous in case the flight was delayed. We left on time and arrived in Miami without any problems. At first we couldn’t see our flight to Santiago, as for some reason they weren’t putting it up, but eventually it did and we boarded without any problems. We left about fifteen minutes late and I was twiddling my thumbs, anxious for us to get off the ground as I didn’t want to miss our internal flight in Chile. As were taxiing for take off, I was looking at the monitor which gave information about the flight and was horrified to see that we were arriving in Santiago much later then planned. What was the issue? Was it due to the daylight savings?
I stressed about it for over an hour on the flight. I also heard other people talking about it. Then, all of a sudden, the arrival time completely changed! It was back to the originally scheduled time! I was so happy. I can only guess that the wrong information was out into the computer.
We arrived in Santiago and I decided to hang around the baggage claim for a little bit, even though our bags had been checked through to Ushuaia. After a while, the lines through the customers started to get longer so we left the baggage claim area and went through to our gate. No worries as our bags were checked through.
Our flight left Santiago on schedule and we arrived in Punta Arenas. We had to get off the plane to get our passports stamped to show we had exited Chile and we then got back on the plane. When we arrived in Ushuaia it was an immense relief; it was late Sunday afternoon, with the ship leaving the next evening.
As we were at the back of the plane, it took a long time to get through Argentinian immigration. By this time, all the bags had come off and the baggage carousel was stopped. I found one bag, but where was the other one? Well, it hadn’t made it. Speaking to the customer service people, they didn’t know where the bag was but they would find it. The big problem was that there are only three flights a week from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia. So, even though they said the bag would arrive on Wednesday, the ship was departing on Monday!
We got to the hotel in a mixed state of mind. One side was elated as we’d reached our destination after stirring into oblivion the days before, but we were frustrated that one of our bags was missing! This meant that we only had one tripod between the two of us!
Once we got to the hotel, we quickly opened the bag that had made it and did a quick check of the contents to see what we needed to buy. We found that I had packed so carefully that I had no clothes from my waist down! That’s right, instead of dividing the clothes between the two bags, I had somehow managed to put all my below the waist clothes into the bag that was missing. We also had no toiletries. We quickly went out shopping. Even though it was a Sunday, we were lucky that several stores were open, which allowed us to get ski pants, underwear, socks, gloves, hats, toiletries etc. We still managed to have a late evening meal – steak, papas fritas and wine.
On Monday morning we discovered our watches were an hour behind, so we had to quickly get our bags out of the room and ready for them to be taken to the ship. We did some last minute shopping which included getting contact lenses, renting boots, and buying the best tripod I could find in Uhsuaia (this doesn’t say much). Actually, I was very unhappy about the tripod situation, and was cursing in the camera stores when I was trying the various tripods out and seeing how clunky they were. We had spent a lot of money for this trip and one of the most important pieces of equipment was missing (I also didn’t have polarizers, cables releases etc). In fact, I was pretty jealous when I met the other passengers as they were bustling with excitement and the all had tripods! Still, we had made it down so we would have to make the best of the situation.
On boarding the ship, we found that one of the passengers had had his camera bag stolen at the domestic airport in Buenos Aires. A number of people from the group had been standing around, waiting to go through security, when they heard someone shouting. Everybody turned around to see what the commotion was, and in a split second, someone came in and stole one of the backpacks on the floor. Obviously, the thieves worked as a team where one would cause a distraction whilst the other stole something. I can’t imagine how that must have felt. At least they had a spare body (although not as good as their main body) and passengers on the ship had spare lenses for them to borrow.
As we departed Ushuaia, heading down the Beagle Channel, I was talking to one of the passengers and found that they had brought a spare tripod with them, together with a small ball head! They were kind to let me use it on the trip (thanks Jason! I owe you one). I never used the tripod that I had bought in Ushuaia; in the end I gave it to the girl who worked behind the ships bar as she was really keen on birds and interested in photography.
The rest of the trip turned out to be great, and I came back with some fantastic s. Check out the photos via the Galleries page, under Antarctica 2008.
When we checked in at Ushuaia for our flight home, we picked up the missing bag that had been sitting there for over twenty days!
So, the lessons learned on this journey to the bottom of South America:
If you are going on a big trip, make sure that you leave plenty of time to get there in case of delays. Next time I go to Ushuaia, I’m getting there at least two days early. This also gives some time for your bags to arrive if they get lost.
Make sure your cell phone battery is fully charged. Ideally, take several phones or at least a charger.
Make sure you have all the travel contact numbers in case you need to call around.
Book all your flight at the same time. This makes it much easier if flights need to be re-booked.
Ideally check before hand what other routes you might be able to take if your current route is fully booked. In our case, we were very lucky that we could catch a flight via a different country.
Carefully pack your suitcases. If you have two cases, make sure you split the clothes between the bags. For example, one pair of socks in this one, one pair of socks in the other one.
You can actually get by with much less clothes than you think!
Pack your polarizer and cable release in you camera bag.
For us, this was our worst travel experience, with a lot of stress. However, it pales in comparison to “The Worst Journey in the World” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. This book is an account of the authors trip to obtain Emperor Penguin eggs in the middle of winter and also Scotts tragic journey to the South Pole. This book is an incredible read and highly recommended.