As there was nothing booked for the morning and the flight was in the afternoon we chose to have a late start to catch up on some of the sleep missed over the previous 48 hours. Breakfast was a continental style which was predominantly carbohydrate based, but they did have fruit juices. By the time we’d finished and prepared luggage for the day’s flight it was almost 10:00 so we headed off to see if we could get a tour of the opera house.

When we arrived the board said tours were every 15 minutes, although apparently English tours are only once per hour. This meant we had missed the 10am tour and there wouldn’t be one for a while; we decided to queue for the 11am tour. As their power was out though it meant standing in the dark waiting for the power to be switched back on – an apparent victim of the power outages across the city. By the time power was restored it was it was just after 11am and they weren’t willing to start that tour late. This meant the next available tour was at 12noon – too late for us as that was the check-out time for the hotel.

Instead we headed back to the hotel to cool off, check out, and wait for our lift to the airport. As it was a domestic flight it meant travelling to a different airport, this time it was located on the seafront with a view of the South Atlantic Ocean. Due to the baggage limits it meant we had to pay an excess of $39 between us, but it was expected and was a necessity.

Once through security there isn’t a great deal, but there was a place to get some lunch. I went for a beef sandwich, unfortunately though this came with fries as well. I hadn’t really wanted them as this meant all three Argentine meals so far included fries, so wasn’t eating particularly healthily.

We boarded the plane to Ushuaia at 15:40, and thankfully it was cooler than the airport. Though put my hand against the window blinds they were almost too hot to touch – you could even feel the heat radiating from them. We were slightly late leaving as a couple of passengers hadn’t turned up at the gate. During the flight they served a snack and drinks, which was nice as they hadn’t done this on the London to Madrid flight. The snack was a lemon cream biscuit, a chocolate cream biscuit, and some savoury crisps.

At 19:30 we landed, signalling the end of our flights for a few weeks as our time to travel by boat grew closer. The baggage claims was amazingly quick as we both saw saw our bags as we entered the collection area. The airport itself looks like a ski resort with a backdrop of the snow-capped mountains of the Andes. It was only a 10 minute drive from the Albatross hotel, which itself is next to the seaport we’d be leaving from.

At first there was some drama as the driver seemed to think we weren’t staying at this hotel. However everything turned out okay once he got confirmation that our booking details were indeed correct. You could tell this hotel had a couple of stars less than that of the five-star Euro building, but it was still a nice place with a Christmas tree in their lobby.

Once checked in we went for a wander around the southernmost city in South America in a much cooler climate of 8 degrees to look for somewhere to eat. We did come across several places before eventually deciding to use the restaurant closest to the hotel. I went for chicken in a Dijon mustard sauce. Finally a meal was served with something other than fries – it came with an assortment of grilled vegetables, about half of which were ones I liked.

We then wandered around the city for a while with the intent of photographing the sunset at 23:00, but alas the clouds came in and it started to rain. Defeated by the weather we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before what we hoped would be an eventful day.