We had booked the Transportes Las Lengas shuttle to take us from our hotel in El Chaltén to the airport in El Calafate. It was supposed to pick us up 9:30am, but they were 30 minutes late. Once we were seated inside and set off for the next pick up, we discovered the reason for the delay. We must have driven up and down every street in El Chaltén at least twice as the driver searched for the address. Luckily we had given ourselves a bit of spare time for the trip, because it took another 30 minutes to get out of town. As it turned out, the trip itself was a lot shorter than expected, instead of the 3 hours we were told it was going to take, we arrived at the airport after only 2 hours.

We were a bit worried about the weight of our luggage. Argentinian Airlines domestic flights only allow 15kg in the hold and 5kg of hand luggage. We've been traveling pretty light the whole time, but both of David's bags were a bit over the limit. Check in went without problems though and there were no complains about the weight of bags, which as a combined total were actually under the limit anyway.

There was still heaps of time to kill before our flight. We bumped into the Australian couple who we had met in Torres del Paine, they were also going to Ushuaia on the same flight. There was free WiFi at the airport, which allowed us to upload blog photos while we had a coffee.

The Aerolineas Argentinas flight took just over an hour to get to Ushuaia. We were given a little snack on the flight, which wasn't anything to write home about. There were some views however as we left El Calafate and as we approached Ushuaia. It was very windy and rainy in Ushuaia, but we still managed to see the mountains, sea and town from the air.

We grabbed a map from the airport tourist information desk and headed for the taxi rank. As soon as we stepped through the doors, we felt the 6 degrees celcius cold that the pilot had warned us about. Fortunately we had taken our jackets out earlier in anticipation of cold weather. The taxi didn't take long to deliver us to the door of B&B de las Artes, our hostel for the next few days. Marcos checked us in quickly and showed us to a room at the back. It was a reasonably good sized room, but it felt somewhat small after our fancy, big room in the hotel in El Chaltén. It was fine though, very warm with the heater on full blast and better than some of the other places we have stayed on our travels.

We took a wander around the town and asked a few places for information on the Beagle Channel boat trips and walking in the National Park. Ushuaia has definitely set itself up as a tourist destination. There were loads of souvenir shops, and there was even one with loads of statues and models of local wildlife and others depicting early life in the area. It was a bit early for dinner, Argentinian time, so we went by the harbor to see if we could book a boat trip, but they had all closed for the day.

Chicho's was a seafood restaurant that Marcos had recommended to us so we slowly walked there, hoping that it would be open by the time we got there. It was open, but there was only one other couple in a place that seated over 100, we wondered whether to go in or not. In the end we decided we would, it had been recommended to us. By the time we had read the menu, the restaurant was suddenly half full and by the time we placed our order, it was completely full. Turns out we were lucky that we arrived a bit early after all. Black Hake and King Crab were the two dishes recommended by the waiter. The fish and the crab were both excellent, but the side dishes were a bit simple and the bread seemed to be yesterdays. That is where the food differed from Chile, but perhaps it has something to do with thousands of tourists flying in, spending a night or two either side of their Antarctic cruise and then heading straight back home again. Chicho's did have Don Pedro on their dessert menu and we thought we ought to take one to share, if only just to compare to the others we have had elsewhere in Argentina and Chile. It was good but not the best we've had, that title still sits with La Marca in Puerto Varas, Chile.