The story of our two week trip to the Argentinean Andes in January 2010. A trip not without both difficulties and highlights. The overall itinerary is given here, and the details are given place by place on the following pages.
Fri 15 Jan Fly from Alicante on the early flight to Madrid on Iberia and a few hours later are aboard another Iberia plane non-stop from Madrid to Buenos Aires. Well it was meant to be non-stop, but somewhere over the Atlantic a passenger had a heart attack, and we had to divert to Tenerife North. The aircraft was still laden with fuel for a 14 hour flight, so we flew in circles for half an hour, whilst it jettisoned aviation fuel in a spectacular stream behind the plane.
We landed, heart attack man was taken away by ambulance, and the aircraft was refueled. At that point, having sat on the ground in the plane, they announced that we could not take off for Buenos Aires that day - no reason was given, but I think it was that the crew were out of hours. They then had the problem of putting up 400 odd passengers in hotels. Luckily we got put in a 5 star hotel - but... it was fairly nondescript, the Iberostar Mancey Hotel. We had a nondescript meal there.
I had to phone to cancel our reservation for that night in Buenos Aires.
Sat 16 Jan: Fly Tenerife to Buenos Aires. They got us up by 4am, and after breakfast took us to the airport before it even opened, result being queue to get in to the airport, and then a massive queue to check in baggage as all passengers arrived at the same time. Anyway after many delays we eventually took off at 9am and had an uneventful flight to Buenos Aires. However, it did take 10 hours and by the time we got to BA, it was too late to catch our booked flight to Salta.
With some quick thinking we re-booked last nights canceled BA hotel, Hotel Boutique Raco, Yapeyu 271. We also had to go to LAN desk to re-schedule today's Salta flight to tomorrow. We then took a taxi in to the hotel. Once there we had to cancel Salta hotel for tonight, rebook it for tomorrow, and reduce booking for following night from two days to one. Quite a logistical exercise. Luckily I had all the necessary phone numbers with me.
Sun 17 Jan: Buenos Aires to Salta
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Depart Buenos Aires on a flight to Salta. The late morning flight got us in to Salta at lunch time. The bad news was that although we got to Salta, our bags did not. After much huffing and puffing, LAN discovered that our bags were still in BA, and that they would attempt to get them on the next flight to Salta, and deliver them to our Salta hotel.
So we took a taxi to Salta and the Hotel La Candela, Pueyrredon 346, Salta. One bag arrived that night but the other had apparently gone to Baraloche, and could not arrive at Salta before 3pm the next day.
Dinner in Salta, and time to review our plans for the next day. We decided to pick up car as arranged, drive to airport, then on to Cachi. The timing would be fairly tight as it was a 4 to 5 hour drive to Cachi, and if the bag did not arrive till after 3pm, we would be pushed to get to Cachi before dark.
Mon 17 Jan: Salta to Cachi
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