It felt like forever on the airplane from Toronto, around 12 hours I think with a short stop in Santiago, Chile to drop a few off and pick a few up.
Here we are standing around the airport in Chile waiting to get back on the plane to head to Buenos Aires.
A shot over the wing looking toward Santiago, Chile
It was around a 2 hour flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires, which seemed extremely short in comparison to the marathon that we had just completed.
A shot over the wing as we approach Buenos Aires
A shot over the wing as we approach Buenos Aires
At this point my camera batteries decided to let me down and I didnt get any more pictures until after we were safely in the hotel today. However I will grab the ones that Xavier and Dez took tomorrow and paste them in here. Until then a story will have to do!
Once in BA at the airport, after grabbing our luggage we quickly cleared customs and security and proceeded to grab our rentals. The rental office was a brief 5 minute drive from the airport, and one of the staff came to pick us up and took us to get the cars. We left my dad and Xavier to fend off the porters trying to load our luggage and planes into every taxi that drove by!
A missed exit leaving the rental office cost us a few minutes of time trying to find out way back to the airport, however we made it back and jammed all the boxes etc into the cars and off we went.
We let Dez take the lead on the trip to Santa Fe since he had a GPS and Xavier had maps...what could go wrong! Well we ended up in downtown BA traveling some fairly busy streets and getting first hand exposure just how exciting driving down here is. A few years ago I spent a bit of time in Venezuela so I had a bit of understanding what to expect (I didnt actually drive in Venezuela myself), but nothing makes up for experiencing it yourself!
Long story short (well not really) we made it out of BA an hour later on the road to Rosario.....awesome its all downhill from here! (literally!). So I knew that there was a bypass around Rosario, unfortunately it was night time at this point so we pretty much missed the exit to take the bypass and into Rosario we went. Ok, long story short (this time I mean it), we spent two hours trying to navigate our way back to the highway. A gas station and a few more maps later (to hell with the GPS!!) we were back on highway 9 and hit Santa Fe and quickly found the hotel (Holiday Inn) at about 2am local time.
So we slept in a lot today, and while most of the crew went out walking around I stayed in the room and got my gear all charged up, assembled etc etc etc.
A shot of our hotel room with parts scattered about during the assembly of the planes
The plane survived the trip without even a scratch on them, which is always a great thing. Once of my boxes had some minor damage to it on arrival so I was quite happy to see it unscathed. All the other equipment like batteries and chargers were as we packed them in the luggage prior to leaving Calgary.
Before we went out to supper we hit the Esperanza practice site and had a chat with the locals flying out there. This looks like a really nice site and we will be out there tomorrow AM after we hit the local Wal-Mart for a couple of cases of water and some chairs! You can always count on a Wal-Mart and McDonalds to be nearby where ever you go in the world to ensure you feel right at home! We can actually see the McDonalds sign from our hotel window (I will get a picture of that tomorrow)....and no we have not been there yet.
Tomorrow we should get all the pictures sync'd up and now that my batteries are charged I can continue to get more!
Thats it for today!
Once in BA at the airport, after grabbing our luggage we quickly cleared customs and security and proceeded to grab our rentals. The rental office was a brief 5 minute drive from the airport, and one of the staff came to pick us up and took us to get the cars. We left my dad and Xavier to fend off the porters trying to load our luggage and planes into every taxi that drove by!
A missed exit leaving the rental office cost us a few minutes of time trying to find out way back to the airport, however we made it back and jammed all the boxes etc into the cars and off we went.
We let Dez take the lead on the trip to Santa Fe since he had a GPS and Xavier had maps...what could go wrong! Well we ended up in downtown BA traveling some fairly busy streets and getting first hand exposure just how exciting driving down here is. A few years ago I spent a bit of time in Venezuela so I had a bit of understanding what to expect (I didnt actually drive in Venezuela myself), but nothing makes up for experiencing it yourself!
Long story short (well not really) we made it out of BA an hour later on the road to Rosario.....awesome its all downhill from here! (literally!). So I knew that there was a bypass around Rosario, unfortunately it was night time at this point so we pretty much missed the exit to take the bypass and into Rosario we went. Ok, long story short (this time I mean it), we spent two hours trying to navigate our way back to the highway. A gas station and a few more maps later (to hell with the GPS!!) we were back on highway 9 and hit Santa Fe and quickly found the hotel (Holiday Inn) at about 2am local time.
So we slept in a lot today, and while most of the crew went out walking around I stayed in the room and got my gear all charged up, assembled etc etc etc.
A shot of our hotel room with parts scattered about during the assembly of the planes
The plane survived the trip without even a scratch on them, which is always a great thing. Once of my boxes had some minor damage to it on arrival so I was quite happy to see it unscathed. All the other equipment like batteries and chargers were as we packed them in the luggage prior to leaving Calgary.
Before we went out to supper we hit the Esperanza practice site and had a chat with the locals flying out there. This looks like a really nice site and we will be out there tomorrow AM after we hit the local Wal-Mart for a couple of cases of water and some chairs! You can always count on a Wal-Mart and McDonalds to be nearby where ever you go in the world to ensure you feel right at home! We can actually see the McDonalds sign from our hotel window (I will get a picture of that tomorrow)....and no we have not been there yet.
Tomorrow we should get all the pictures sync'd up and now that my batteries are charged I can continue to get more!
Thats it for today!
1 comment:
Hi Chad
We are right behind you... well a couple days beind you anyway. We hope to get to the hotel a little earlier than you as we are not following DeZ :-)
We do have lots of maps and three GPS units with us.
Cya soon.
Dave
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