Disembark very very early in the morning

[deadzone1003]

I'm looking at a South American cruise where the ship will overnight in Buenos Aires before disembarkation. However, I looking at a flight to Rio which leaves at 7:15am which will require us to disembark at around 4:00am. Carrying our luggage off the ship will be no problem. The question is will there be any problems with the ship or immigration? Will there be a taxi available? (I guess I could arrange ahead of time)

[jtl513]

I can't answer your questions, but I would suggest debarking the night before and staying at a hotel near the airport.

[dakrewser]

Why so early? There's any number of flights later in the day. Note that customs & immigration will be a REAL problem at that time of the morning.

[DeeniEncinitas]

Dakrewser aka (Dave) is right! There are a lot of later flights that you could take.

The heart ache with immigration at that time is sorry not going to happen! You could get off the day before as suggested.

Denise :)

Good Luck and hope everything works out for you!

[Btimmer]

We're taking that cruise starting 1/31/2016 from Valparaiso to BA and based on my past experience, I wouldn't even attempt what you suggest. There's generally pretty tight security around the ship at night for ingress and egress and I don't know HAL's policies, but they will have very formal disembarkation times. The only real alternatives are to disembark the night before or take a later flight as has been suggested.

[jtl513]

There's generally pretty tight security around the ship at night for ingress and egress and I don't know HAL's policies, but they will have very formal disembarkation times.

My experience with three overnights is that you can leave and come back easily all night, but not with luggage for a final debarkation requiring customs/immigration clearance.

[deadzone1003]

Thanks for your help.

[StartrainDD]

You can leave the ship at 4:00AM but you can't take your luggage. We just disembarked at B/A on Jan. 10.

 

Every piece of luggage has to be put through a scanner in the terminal. I assume they are looking for food/plant materials. Disembarkation began at about 7:15 AM for those "Carrying their luggage." Also, you HAVE to take a shuttle bus as the ship is docked in a working container port, so you will have to carry your luggage onto and off of the shuttle bus.

 

I know there were guests who disembarked on Jan 9 but do not know the details of exactly how this was handled. Seems I recalled 'hearing' that they needed to leave by a certain time, likely due to this scanner situation.

 

A more relaxing later flight sounds like a good idea. Lots of taxis available at the terminal (they are not cheap - at least double the real rate) but this is a 'taxi mafia' situation as only certain taxis can enter the terminal area.