I just completed the middle part of my Southern Hemisphere Expedition 2016 (as I am calling it), and it was nonstop travel from the eastern-most to western-most islands of the trip: South Georgia to New Zealand. It involved ship, auto, airplane and foot travel, and took six days. Here is how I traveled from one of the most remote spots on the planet to the big city of Auckland.
The only way to/from South Georgia is by ship, there are no airports here and it's too far from land to helicopter. Our ship took 3 days to cross to the nearest island with an airport, the Falklands. This means non-stop day and night motoring, which gets quite boring after the sights and action of the first part of the trip.
After clearing customs in Stanley, Falklands, we immediately boarded a bus to the military/civilian airport at Mt. Pleasant, an hour away. After waiting in a crowded room for three or four hours, we eventually get on a plane to Punta Arenas, Chile, near the southern tip of South America. There we went through a security check/immigration station and back on the same plane. They did not instruct is as to the procedure (not even in Spanish) so it was highly confusing. BUT, it worked out, as these things usually do despite a great gnashing of teeth by many of the passengers.
From there we go on an amazingly bumpy flight to Santiago. We land around midnight, now traveling since 8 am. After mass confusion at the airport (again), I get to my hotel for a well-deserved one night layover.
The next day I hang out at the Santiago airport until my flight at 6 pm to Buenos Aires, note that this is the opposite direction to where I am headed. I wait in the Buenos Aires transit area until my flight leaves late at 1:30 am. This is not terrible, the transit area is very nice. But finally we all get on a big, crowded Air New Zealand flight and are off.
Almost immediately we run into severe turbulence. I've never experienced that much bumpiness on an airplane before, I was wondering if the plane would break apart. I was actually thinking that it would be a very interesting and unique way to die. It went on and off like this for the first two hours while flying over land. But eventually it calmed down and many more hours later we landed in Auckland. It's very easy to get around here, got to my hotel to recover after almost a week of multi-mode traveling.
Total distance: 10,000 long miles. Now I'm more than ready to hike for a month.
More Antarctica stories coming next.
Beer in Santiago
Latte on the Waterfront
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