An unscheduled return to Buenos Aires

At the Art Museum!

We had our third canceled flight, now an hour before heading to the airport. El Calafate is small enough that there isn’t daily service to the Puerto Madryn area, so we decided to come directly to Buenos Aires, our following stop anyway.
We are both cynical, and think the airline canceled due to a low number of bookings. Craig knows this happens at least at home. 2 days wasn’t enough time to visit Puerto Madryn - seems I shouldn’t have booked things ahead this time.. Had hoped to see whales for the first time, but guess we now need to book a whale watch at home instead.

link to pictures from our 2nd visit to Buenos Aires





Lesson learned: don’t call the airline even if they tell you to - between Craig’s sister’s industry contacts, and me, we separately spent 2x1 hr on hold, and were told we’d need to pay $500 extra. I was cut off, and understandably June & her friend had to get some real work done that day, too.
Rather, walk to the local office in town, and the nice (this time English-speaking!) woman there will rebook you for no extra charge in max 5 minutes, and you will get a voucher for 3 meals and a night at one of the nicer hotels in town. Unexpectedly a free taxi will also appear to take you to the airport for the rebooked flight.

Now we’ll just need to see if we in some 3 months get a refund for a flight we won’t need due to this change of plans. At least I now have an email to try after spending yet more time on hold.

We enjoyed our brief return to Buenos Aires. Many jacarandas were now in bloom, we both liked the Modern Arts Museum better than the Fine Arts one, our apartment was in an even nicer part of Palermo, and our hostess paints. Craig thought we should ask if we could buy one of her pictures. But then we realized the answer likely would be affirmative, and the picture wasn’t good enough to warrant all the hazzle involved with shipping it.

Wish we had researched options for touring the Tigre Delta ahead of time - seems spring is an ideal time to visit. We walked around Tigre instead.
We now used both the metro and the buses in Buenos Aires. One bus driver had to tell young people sitting in the front, reserved, seats to get up for an elderly, clearly frail woman with an elbow crutch. People here are apparently no better than at home.

We are now on a ferry to Montevideo, and plan to spend maybe a couple of weeks touring Uruguay. Unfortunately you cannot get out on deck at all, so won’t have any skyline pictures of the two cities.