March 18, 2005
El Calafate to Ushuaia
Aerolineas Austral Economy Class
DC-9-80 LV-WGN Seat 4E
450p-603p Travel Time: 1:02
Following a bumpy six hour bus ride through lots of road construction zones and detours, I was dropped off at the El Calafate airport. This came as a surprise to both the driver and myself. The airport is 20km from town, so being dropped off there saved me a lot of time as well as taxi fare. Unfortunately, since I was unaware that the bus actually stopped at the airport, I’d simply had my baggage tagged to El Calafate and thrown in with everything going there. Unfortunately, retrieving it required the removal of about ten other backpacks. The driver didn’t seem too happy about this but I pitched in and helped him out, then tipped him $5.00 for his trouble. Still friends? Si, senor. Buen viaje!
Like Puerto Natales, El Calafate is a touristy gateway town, in this case to Los Glaciares National Park. Of particular allure is the massive Perito Moreno glacier, one of the few advancing glaciers left in the world. Hikers are also quite taken with the Fitzroy range and its spectacular granitic spires that rise sharply into the sky. While I don’t mind missing the town, I’ll certainly have to come back and spend some time in the National Park.
The El Calafate Airport is a surprisingly modern and pleasant facility. Built in 1995, it employs an attractive combination of stone, glass and steel while sporting a restaurant, bar, VIP Lounge and a single jetway. Set along the beautiful azure waters of Lake Argentina, it is an exciting airport to fly into or out of.
Given my earlier than planned arrival at the airport, I had plenty of time to check in and then visit the restaurant for lunch, beers and some much needed work on this report. Any of you who’ve written a trip report of any detail know how much time can go into the creation of these things. During the non-flying portions of my travels, I really don’t spend much time dealing with these reports because I’m busy getting out and about and enjoying my actual destination. However, give me an hour or three in an airport lounge or restaurant or onboard a long flight and there’s nothing I’d rather do than work on a good Trip Report.
At 4:00pm, an announcement was made advising Ushuaia bound passengers to head for security and on to the gate lounge. No problems there, and I especially enjoyed not having to remove my boots or laptop. As an added bonus, a bar was set up at the far end of the gate lounge so I had another Quilmes Lager while watching a Fuerza Aerea Argentina F-28 fire up its little Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans and taxi off to the far end of the runway. Surprisingly, this attracted a fair amount of interest amongst the assembled passengers, many of whom gathered at the windows with their cameras at the ready to catch a shot of the take off. I haven’t seen anything like that in America since the 1970s.
Finally, our Austral MD-80 landed and parked at the jetway. Rest assured the event was well chronicled. Once an independent airline, Austral is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Aerolineas Argentinas. While this no doubt helped ensure the future viability of Austral as an airline, it unfortunately resulted in the repainting of the Austral fleet in the relatively drab blue and white livery of Aerolineas Argentinas. Ironically, back in the 1970s, AR sported a very attractive two-tone blue and white livery. After the airline ran into financial troubles and sold a controlling interest to Iberia, the color scheme was modified to something simpler and less expensive, though decidedly less attractive.
Boarding was an orderly affair, though there was no preferential boarding by class or row number. As I entered the aircraft, I was immediately impressed by the attractive Business Class cabin. It offered two rows of eight well-padded blue leather seats. The seats were arranged in a proper 2-2 configuration, not the chintzy 2-3 configuration favored by some otherwise good European airlines. Why European business travelers, who pay high fares for those Business Class products, tolerate such poor seating is beyond me.
The load down to Ushuaia was about 50% with nobody sitting up in Club Condor. Flight time was announced at fifty-five minutes and minutes later we were climbing away from the airport and banking beautifully over Lake Argentina. I fired off a shot of the airport below and then reclined my seat and enjoyed the interplay of sun, clouds, blue sky and snow capped peaks.
Before long, the beverage cart made an appearance and I asked for a Coke. Imagine my surprise however when just a couple of minutes later a Flight Attendant began distributing small plastic trays of that old Argentine staple – ham and cheese sandwiches. Thankfully I keep a good supply of Grey Poupon mustard packets in my pack, so I enjoyed the sandwiches even more.
Soon, we began our descent into Ushuaia Airport. The views of the water and surrounding snow capped peaks were stunning. As we turned for our final approach over the Beagle Channel, we flew right past downtown Ushuaia and its busy waterfront before finally touching down smoothly on the single east-west runway. After two weeks and almost 14,000 miles of travel in just about every class of service imaginable aboard planes, busses and a big boat, I’ve finally arrived at the bottom of South America. The south side of Tierra del Fuego. As they say down here – “El Fin del Mundo”. And – El Fin del Trip Report. Thanks for tagging along.
Til next time…