Shaking Through

Sunday 11 April
Buenos Aires, Argentina – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I wake up at some devilish hour like 8 am and get dressed and leave. I say one last goodbye to the guys and head out. I get the taxi to the airport and it’s actually the smaller airport near the centre of the town and just off the Rio de la Plata. It smells of fish and sea water which is unusual for an airport.

I go to check in and they tell me that the reservation I made has been cancelled. Which is strange. When I check later they I discover that they sent me an email that my request has been received and that they will send a confirmation later. Of course they never sent me a confirmation so that’s why I didn’t notice. Importantly, they didn’t also send me an email saying the reservation had been cancelled and in addition, they took my payment details when I made the booking so the whole thing seemed to be set up to cause confusion. That’s what you get for booking with a Uruguayan airline I guess. But it all was sorted out in the end.

Once on the flight it was interesting to note that the planes were neither Boeing nor Airbus. They were in fact Bombadier. I don’t remember having flown one of the them before. I’ve flown a DC-10 and a jet-prop ages ago but never a Bombadier. What was interesting about them it that they had two jet engines on the tail, there were four seats across the cabin, and that they were very quiet and smooth. It felt like you were gliding unlike most Boeings. Maybe due to the engine position. But it was a nice flight.

Montevideo airport was very modern and swish and clean too. When I arrived in Rio the hostel I had booked was very nice as well. Just the right mix of clean and sociable. I hung out at the hostel for a bit having some drinks with the people there. There were three English kids from Oxford on a mini gap year who were good fun, and some random others. I went out that night for a few drinks at a bar a few blocks away with a few of the people from the hostel. It was a pleasingly international group and though I was tempted to go to a club I decided not to. Not surprising really as I’d spent the whole day hungover and tired from the lack of sleep and the travelling. So getting to bed was a relief.