We've arrived!

 

After 36 hours of lugging bike boxes and luggage about in buses, taxis and trains, and flights from London to Atlanta to Buenos Aires to Trelew and finally to Ushuaia we've arrived safely. Which is more than can be said for our luggage, thanks to Delta Airlines...

All was going fairly well until we tried to check in and were told by Delta that our tickets were invalid. Eh?! You what?! You sold them to us via an agent! Anyway, why, what the hell are you on about?! Well, sirs, US policy dictates that you cannot be in the United States more than 180 days unless you have an appropriate visa. What?! We're going to *South* America! I'm sorry, but we cannot let you board with those travel dates. We can change the return date to be within the 180 day limit, and for that we will be forced to charge you £100 pounds each. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! In the end we had to pay the cash and get on the flight as we had spent about 2 hours arguing our case and the flight was about to leave!

Basically someone has screwed up here big time! And we've had to pay for it. It seems Delta consider that we will be in the US for more than 180 days because our outbound and return flights are both VIA the US. Frankly this is ridiculous and we will be seeking legal advice to rectify the situation. Our agent, JustTheFlight.co.uk, aren't going to escape our wrath either as they proved absolutely no help and fobbed us off despite selling us tickets which were invalid. To make matters worse, we'll be charged the same fee when we change the dates back to their original ones! Yeah right.

Anyway, enough b!tching. Oh, hold on, I haven't mentioned the baggage...

We got off at Buenos Aires Eziza Airport and collected our baggage. One of our bags came off with basically the arse end of it torn off. Obviously angry, we searched the airport for a Delta representative for a solid hour and found no-one. Having another flight to catch from the other airport in BA, we were forced to leave. On opening the bag we found that a pair of once-waterproof trousers had a hole in them, a cycling jersey with a hole in it, a pair of socks with no heel, and last but not least a cycling helmet which was completely smashed and crushed. Total damage about £250. Add that to the £300 we've paid for flights and I'm sure you can imagine our mood... A stern email has been sent to Delta and hopefully we'll get 100% compensation - all the goods were 100% new, not even having been used!

Ok, b!tching done. Ushuaia is a really cool place. It reminds us of Alaska in the US TV series Northern Exposure. The Beagle channel is just out the window to the South as I write and there are snow-capped mountains rising straight out of the sea surrounding us on all other sides. Weather was very chilly last night but today was beautiful - blue skies, sunny, and it must have been in the high teens. We've spent our time building our bikes and stocking up with items that we forgot (or have been damaged). We're staying in a great little hostel with Hilda and Pedro who are taking great care of us. We've met a German dude who's been doing some cycle touring already and is waiting for a friend to join him here before they cycle all the way up to Canada/Alaska (dependent on time of year and weather). After a brief spell of slagging off our choice of cycling hardware and telling us how great his rig was he invited us to drink German beer with him in a local bar where we had just had lunch. We didn´t make it...

About an hour ago another German dude and a Spanish lady checked into our hostel with their bikes. They're doing basically the same trip as us. As we expected, we're far from the only people doing this trip!

Right, it's past ten o'clock and we have only had one beer all day. About time we corrected that with some commitment...

Hope you're all well.
Col