I should have blogged about this before, but I was still gathering information. Before we left for this trip, we had heard stories about the Argentine Airline. Not just about how they like to lose luggage, or that they steal stuff out of your luggage, but also that they only allow you 15kg of checked luggage total. That´s about 33 pounds, which is not a whole lot of stuff if you are trying to pack for a trip where you will experience temperatures above 105 degrees F and way below freezing. But we managed. Between Cindy and me, we were able to get our checked luggage down to 27kg (which allows us to buy a few very light things on the trip!). Apparently they are merciless about the weight limit, and charge $5 per kilo for anything overweight. Since we have a bunch of flights, overcharges would really add up for us.
Then, when I got my final confirmation from the airline, it not only repeated the 15kg limit for checked luggage, but also said that there was a 5kg limit for carry-on luggage. Yikes! I´ve already mentioned my camera equipment, and you can bet that weighs more than 5kg. We though the 7kg limit on our flight several years ago to NZ was insanely low, but 5kg? No way.
Meanwhile, several people had warned us that there was very little space on flights for carry-on luggage, so they might make you check some stuff. Check my camera equipment? Over my dead body maybe.
So I was worried. But I need not have. Nobody ever cared about our carryon luggage, and we have been on 3 different internal flights and there has always been about the same amount of carry-on space as on a typical flight in the US. So no problem with that.
Speaking of flying, today was our big day of flying. We left Iguazu Falls, up in the far north of Argentina this morning, flew to Buenos Aires, then flew from there to El Calafate and finally to Ushuaia. Way too many chances for them to lose our luggage. This is why we booked our flight to Ushuaia a day early — to give our luggage a chance to catch up with us if necessary. We´ve heard at least two stories where people had to buy a bunch of clothes (including expensive parkas) the morning before the ship left because of their luggage not making it in time.
Again, not a problem. We arrived in Ushuaia about an hour late (which seems about normal here) and our luggage was there too!
Of course, we have two more flights on Aerolineas Argentinas, so they still have a chance to lose something for us…