Day 41 - 11/16/23 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Day 1

 Because it was such a short distance from Montevideo, Uruguay, we easily arrived before 8am into the very large container port.  We were eating breakfast and watched the approach and the final 90º left turn into our docking position.  Because we had visited another couple of countries since our last visit to Ushuaia, Argentina, the clearance process took a bit longer.  But shortly around 8:15 am were cleared to disembark the Zaandam.  Our group had met in the Ocean Bar and we headed off the ship and boarded a bus to drive us to the Terminal Building.  There, we easily found our Signature Tours representative, Miriam and our van with its driver, Pablo.  We had 8 persons in our group and we drove to a hotel and picked up 4 more people including 2 flight attendants who were on a layover from a flight from Miami and a couple from England who were heading to Ushuaia to board an Expedition ship to Antartica and the Falkland Islands.


The drive out to the estancia was around 2 hours due to heavy traffic and at one point we were significantly slowed by a wreck we never saw. Our route out to San Antonio de Areco was largely on Route 8 or the Pan American Highway. Miriam provided lots of commentary along the way.  At San Antonio de Areco, we visited a family silversmith (Mariano Draghi) and the local Cathedral before heading out to the estancia, El Ombú de Areco.  This estancia has been in one family since the 1930's.  Our first activity upon reaching the estancia was to go on a 1/2 hour horseback ride.  It was fun and the last time I was on a horse was probably 7 years ago where we visited another estancia in Argentina.  While my horse was a bit twitchy, it was a fun experience.  Afterwards, we were served a multi-course lunch topped off with 5 different types of meat:  lamb, chicken, beef ribs, beef brisket, and beef tenderloin.  Ample quantities of wine and/or sodas washed it down.  It was a lot to eat.  Our time there was concluded by a "horse whisperer" gaucho who did a demonstration of his affections for his horse and it definitely responded.









We then drove back to the port and got there around 6:30pm.  We had another very light dinner before attending the folkloric show, BRUTAL which was a high energy drum, dancing, and singing show.  It was really good and Angela went back to see it a second time while I took care of some administrative items for our upcoming return trip to South America.  I was once again in bed early before 10:30pm as the early morning wakeups are really making me tired.




Tomorrow we have a boat tour which should be interesting.  Half of today's group are on that tour and half are new.  

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