Groundhog Day

Well strictly speaking it is not Groundhog Day, but we do get two goes at Saturday 5th January.  The first version was really "chilling out" with family on the balcony at home before heading off at 4.00 PM.  Pleased to report that everything went well and we took off at 8.30.

It is a 12 hour flight to Buenos Aires and the plane is full.  Probably only 10% English speaking, the majority are returning South Americans.   We were surprised at the number of children and babies on board, even in the PE section.  An unexpected bonus from Air New Zealand is that inflight WiFi is free for January & February.  However only managed a quick email & Facebook post before we lost satellite connection. 

Our flight path takes us down towards the bottom of South America before heading up to Buenos Aires.   As I write this entry, we are just over 3 hours away and should reach land shortly.  The flight has been relatively smooth & the food delicious.

We landed just after 4.00 PM and it was a cracker afternoon, cloudless skies and 32 degrees.  Our progress through the terminal was *slow*, particularly as other aircraft arrived around the same time.  As "others " we were processed by Immigration,  who had obviously been trained by US Homeland Security!  Fortunately we caught our bags from the carousel just before they started their 2nd loop.  

All was going well until I decided that I wanted local currency - mainly because tomorrow is Sunday and then we were on the ship.   Well I had read that there was always a queue, but this was something to be seen.  We barely moved as we would our way into the bank.  There was a strange security system and some people obviously took forever.  My actual transaction was to change USD100 and actually only took a minute but the queuing was close to an hour.

That done,  time to get a taxi to the hotel.  This was very efficient and although perhaps not the cheapest at USD32, was stress free.  We eventually got to the hotel just after 6.00 PM and had a smooth and pleasant check in.   The hotel manager actually brought our bags up to the room.

The Howard Johnson Boutique Recoleta Hotel is, as the name implies, a boutique hotel with just 29 rooms (4 per floor), and is quiet and personal.  The area, Recoleta, is the dead centre in Buenos Aires (more explanation when we return from the cruise) and is substantially residential with largish apartment buildings.  We felt very safe walking around in the early evening, reassured by the prevalence of security cameras and patrolling armed security guards/police.  And all the residents were walking their dogs - very "doggy" area.

We thought it appropriate to reset our body clocks, given that we were served breakfast at 2.30 PM,  so we walked the block around the hotel.  There are many eating places but it was still quite early - particularly as the locals don't generally start eating until 9-10.  There was however a pizza place which had a number of people both inside & outside.  We liked the look of the food one couple were eating and asked what it was.  Short story - they live in a apartment just around the corner and he (the man) was rugby mad - Richie McCaw was all he could say. 

They were very sweet and helped us order basically what they were eating - platter of meats & cheeses and pizza bread.  We added a half bottle of Malbec to our order and the end result was less than NZD20.

Our good night's sleep was only disturbed by a malfunctioning air conditioning unit.  Well it turned out that I was the one malfunctioning, as when we woke just after midnight, I had another look at the remote, pressed the button twice, and yes, it roared into life, and *we* went to sleep. 

The End (of Groundhog Day that is).