Saturday afternoon and I found myself back at the Vienna Airport waiting to board a flight again. This time it was the start of a 2 week mission to Argentina, Brazil and Peru. The first leg of the trip took in a flight in an Airbus319 of Iberia from Vienna to Madrid. Good flight, on time and service was fine.
Madrid airport is vast but seemd to be well organised and I found the change to another terminal pretty easy, if a little time consuming. The Business Class lounge was calm and well equipped and my time there was very pleasant. The flight to Buenos Aires was also with Iberia and the Airbus 340-600 seemed to be pretty new; and they had a weekend FT paper to read which was very good. The flight to BA was about 12 hours or so and the plane seemed to be pretty full, certainly Business Class was full. I am not sure about all these airline stories about struggling to fill premium seats as I have not seen an empty Business Class seat on any long haul flight this year . Any way I arrived in Buenos Aires Ezeiza Ministro Pistarini International Airport on time, paid my US $100 "reciprocal" fee for being an Australian wanting to enter Agentina and went out to meet my local friend and counterpart Luis. This airport is about 34 km from the centre of BA. We drove off to his flat to sit out the time before our flight up-country to go to Salta which is where I shall be working this week.
Luis and his wife and 2 children live in a smart place,a top flooor apartment on the ourskirts of the centre of BA. We had a coffee or two and then a lunch before heading back to the in-town airport for our flight to Salta. This airport, called the Jorge Newbery AeroPark is alongside the River Plate and right at the edge of the centre of town, less than 15 minutes from the real centre of downtown BA.
Sadly I did not have a window seat on the LAN Argentina Airbus 320 but even so the takeoff from the cebnter of town from what seemed to be a relatively short strip and an immediate turn out over the water was very scenic. The Airbus had a very basic fitout but as we flew only 2 hours this was no real problem.
On arrival the mountains around the town were wrapped in clouds and the sky was very threatening, but the weather was cool. we were met by a local colleague of Luis's and driven to our hotel. The city is at about 3600 feet with a population of about 4-600,000 people I was told and is certainly quite spread out. The main town is a grid of narrow streets with many old buildings and plenty of traffic.
After checking in we met up with another geologist mate of Luis's called Juan, who will be working with us this week, and had a stroll around town . An old place with colonial buildings and churches and a lot of character. After awhile we stopped off ata bar overlooking the main square and sat down for an empananda and a couple of the local dark beers by which time it was 2000 and I decided that bed would be a better bet than waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive and go out for dinner at 2200! I do have to start teaching in the morning.....
The room is vast,clean and comfortable but bit noisy as the street outside is a one way through route from one side of town to the other and the traffic seems never to stop! The hotel is called the Hotel Ghala - and I working out if that should be interpreted as "Gala" or "Galah" ; Australians will understand that one!
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