Buenos Aires - Dog walkers, meat and cemeteries.

(next page: Tierra Del Fuego. Cycling north from Ushuaia to Rio Grande)

Here are some photos of Buenos Aires for you to peep...

We took a little stroll down to Jorge Newbery airport to sort out our tickets to Ushuaia.


We stopped off for some roadside choripan.

Feral Colombian football fans by the coach load. There was a massive convoy of them going wild. as there was a big cup final between River Plate and Atletico Nacional.

Vijay doing some serious rooftop chilling.

Hanging with my man Beau who I know from my days in Seoul. He is an exceptional host and took us out to some good spots and gave us plenty of advice about the city.

I love all the trees in Buenos Aires. It's a really green city, despite being quite polluted.

DOG WALKERS...

Dog walking is serious business in BA.


I have no idea what this sign means.


Ford Sierras still exist. They are still clearly hot property as the car alarm was blaring. Everybody wants a piece.

BARBEQUE

I wash my clothes with Zorro.

Cemeterio de la Recoleta 
We stumbled across this vast and fascinating cemetery while looking for a bike shop.

Selfie Action

That's a pretty detailed bicycle sign.

That's it for Buenos Aires. It was nice knowing you but Patagonia calls.

(next page: Tierra Del Fuego. Cycling north from Ushuaia to Rio Grande)

Buenos Aires - Landed safe and sound.

Vijay and I have finally made it to Buenos Aires after a very long journey indeed.  It took over twenty four hours, but it was a pleasure to fly with Turkish Airlines.  We set off from different airports - Vijay from Birmingham and myself from Gatwick - and met up in Istanbul.

I had no problems getting my stuff on the plane. I only had a one way ticket, but no questions were asked about having a ticket for onward travel from Argentina. The bike only cost €90 to take on as checked luggage (€30 for the first leg and €60 for the second leg). They were initial going to charge me €120 until I corrected them on the prices. I didn't come anywhere near my maximum luggage allowance, which was two bags of up to 23kg each.



After a three and a half hour to flight we had an incredibly long overnight layover in Istanbul airport. I think it was about ten hours. It felt like forever and neither of us managed to get any decent rest. Fortunately on the second leg of the flight we were booked into "comfort class" which meant that we got incredibly spacious seats so that made up for the layover. Check out the leg space below.


The Sahara desert.


First sight of South America - Brazil. It was a comfortable ten hour flight to Sao Paulo, where the plane stopped for an hour or two as a load of passengers got on and off and the flight crew changed. The food on Turkish Airlines was far better than most airlines that I've travelled with. Next stop Buenos Aires! We descended down towards the city in a celestial electrical storm with an unhealthy serving of turbulence on the side. The lightning show was amazing although I was slightly worried that I might not actually get to ride my bike in South America! Fortunately we didn't plummet into the ocean.


The bike arrived in one piece along with the rest of our luggage. Vijay negotiated our way through immigration smoothly and booked 4 nights in the Palacio Chic Hotel in Palermo. As we're going to be living in tents for the next few months, we were more than willing to drop a few dollars on a decent hotel. We ordered a taxi large enough to carry all of our gear for $50 USD. It's quite a journey to Palermo from Ministro Pistarini International Airport so I don't think it was bad value.


This is the view from our balcony. That's as much of the city as I have seen so far. Why? Because I'm just getting up. So that's enough typing for now. Time to do some exploring.

Air Europa and Travelpack. DON'T DO IT!!!

When looking for flights to Patagonia, Vijay and I settled on a great deal we saw through Travelpack. It was excellent value, approximately £500 each for a one way flight from London Gatwick to Ushuaia, via Madrid and Buenos Aires. We checked out the bicycle policies and everything seemed perfect. A look at Air Europa's special baggage policy and you can clearly see that it costs just €75 to take a bicycle as extra baggage. We thought this was perfect, so booked the tickets.

Closer to the date we emailed Air Europa to book our bicycles onto the flight. They told us that they were not accepting any extra luggage between 15 November 2014 to 15 January 2015. This information was detailed under "checked baggage", however it wasn't even clearly displayed on the page, you had to expand a link saying check the exceptions for your destinations (see below).

Why would exceptions for excess baggage be displayed on the "checked baggage" page? Why is it on an expandable link? Why wasn't it simply there on the page for all to see in the first place? I am very disappointed that Air Europa have created such unintuitive set of information on baggage. The really sad thing is that the sole reason we booked with them was because their site gives the impression that bicycles are accepted. It would take some serious digging around to find those excess baggage exceptions. There wasn't even an asterix(*) to bring it to your attention that there were exceptions.

So unfortunately we have lost our £500 (each) because travelpack has a no refund policy. We contacted Air Europa to see if they might be able to give us special dispensation to carry these bikes despite their rules, but they refused to make any exceptions for us. This is a dream trip for both Vijay and myself and we felt hugely let down by both Air Europa for the deceptive information on their website and travelpack for their policies. We have lost £1000 between us, which is a massive sum of money to us, but very little to companies like Air Europa and Travelpack.

I asked a member of staff at Air Europa why they weren't accepting excess baggage. They replied that it is a very "busy" time. Personally, I don't accept this excuse. Most airlines carry excess baggage during even the busiest times of the year. It is possible that and Air Europa plane could be full outside of this busy period, yet they would still carry excess baggage in those circumstances. It seems clear to me that Air Europa must be making additional income during this period by carrying commercial packages and post. This is something that they denied over the phone.

I would not recommend flying with Air Europa. They have a lot of negative feedback online, yet stupidly we decided to give them a chance because the deal seemed so good. That has come back to haunt us. I don't like to pay too much attention to online negativity, but this has shown me that sometimes you really should!

In the end we have just had to wave goodbye to £1000. I am pretty bitter about this. We have made alternative travel arrangements and have booked directly Turkish Airlines. They are more expensive, but a great airline to travel with. I previous flew with them from London Gatwick to Seoul in 2013 and I took my bicycle with me. It is going to cost just €90 to carry the bikes from London to Buenos Aires. I regret that we didn't simply book with them in the first place. It's worth paying a little extra to fly with a reputable airline. Booking with a shoddy company like Travelpack just leads to tears.

Nonetheless excitement levels are high. We are still about to go away on an epic trip, we just happen to have haemorrhaged a shed load of money in the process thanks to Travelpack and Air Europa. I'm looking forward to flying with Turkish Airlines and filling my belly with Turkish food at Istanbul airport during the layover.

***UPDATE***
I received an email to say that we would receive a refund, but that there would be a £150 cancellation fee each. The refund should take 5-6 weeks. Watch this space!