Day 42 - 11/17/23 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Day 2

 Day two in Buenos Aires found our tour group for today meeting once again in the Ocean Bar and we left the ship around 8:15am and boarded a bus to the terminal.  We only had to wait a few minutes and our guide for today, Hernan (Herman in English) was there with a motorcycle helmet in hand.  I showed some pictures of my motorcycles and we had an instant bond.  Roman, our driver, drove us to another hotel where we picked up a couple from Pennsylvania who had been on a Viking ship.  We headed over to what was the old port area and boarded a large flat bottomed boat which took us up the bay and into the river system that feeds the bay.  

Our boat 


Headed up river


Our route for the day


We saw lots of houses on stilts, and a few birds.  At Tigre (Tiger), we disembarked the boat and enjoyed a snack of 3 empanadas which were quite good.  We continued our tour using the van and stopped at a local market (not touristic at all), and then visited the nearby island with the noteworthy large and ornate former casino built in 1877 which is now a fine arts center open on weekends.  It's an amazing structure to be built at the time "out in the middle of nowhere".  Afterwards we were driven back to the port using the same Pan American Highway as yesterday, except that there was not nearly as much traffic because we were back around 2:45.  We shopped in the Terminal at bit and purchased a bottle of wine that was recommended by our guide.  I had to surrender it at the security checkpoint and will generally it back at the end of the cruise. Otherwise I'd have to pay a $20 corkage charge.








Former casino built in 1877


The terminal bus then whisked us back to the ship well ahead of our 5:30 onboard time.  I used the time to update this blog for the past 3 days. Just before our departure the Captain came on the PA system and announced that we would be skipping our stop at Punta de Este as the port is closed due to high winds.  He did indicate that we would be stopping at Santos which is a new port for us.

Our evening entertainment was the movie Golda about her leadership during the Yom Kippur war.  It was then an early to bed for me.


Tomorrow will be a welcome sea day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 72 - 12/17/23 - At Sea to FLL - Day 1

Image
 All good things must come to an end.  It's now the first of two sea days before reaching Fort Lauderdale and the end of our 73 day cruise.  Given that it's Sunday, our first activity was to attend the final interdenominational church service.  It was good and we celebrated the 3rd Sunday in Advent. A light breakfast followed before we attended the well attended. ASK THE CAPTAIN session.  Captain Smit was his usual charming self and answered many questions from the audience.  A few key questions were asked.  First was about how efficient were we in conserving water on the trip up the Amazon.  Amazingly we conserved around 100 tons of water per day which totally astonished him.  Consumption went from 350 tons to 250 tons per day.  The second question was what was his favorite ship.  Without hesitation, he responded, "MAASDAM!"  It's also one of our favorite ships.  He also added that the Zaandam is his new "Maasdam". His 3 ...
Read more

Day 63 - 12/08/23 - Exiting the Amazon River - Day 1

Image
 We're now in our final two days on the Amazon.  It's a bucket list type of itinerary and we've totally enjoyed it with the variety of stops and nice excursions.  And the very good news was that we were actually able to reach Manaus despite the record low water conditions.  The river was muddy all day and we had sun with broken clouds.  In his noon announcement, Captain Smit said, "This is the Captain speaking from the bridge with the latest nautical information and weather.  We are on the Amazon and it is HOT!"  The latter was said half jokingly, but all too true. Our morning had a shore excursion presentation for Devils Island (none there but Debbie had lots of photos and information about the place) and the next few ports.  Jeremy followed up with his Port Essentials talk about several upcoming ports. Andy Fletcher was back in the afternoon for his World Stage presentation on Albert Einstein, Special Relativity, Space Time and Weirdness.  ...
Read more

Day 05 - 10/11/23 - Puerto Límon, Costa Rica

Image
 What a day!  We were up before 7am as we needed to meet our shore excursion group at 7:45.  Overnight we left the flat screen TV on the bow camera and it gently introduced the day's light to our windowless cabin.  As we ate breakfast, we watched our arrival in Puerto Límon (named after the tree of the same name). After breakfast we gathered up our belongings and joined our group led by Beth in the 5th floor Ocean Bar.  Shortly after 8am, we received Jeremy's announcement over the PA system that the ship was cleared to disembark passengers.  This is our first time in this port, but we've visited Costa Rica a number of times on the Pacific side.  We made our way off the ship and walked the long pier to the port exit where we easily found our small excursion bus. Ricky, the proprietor, was there to greet us.  He had driven 6 hours from the other coast the previous day to do this tour.  He's a jovial person, ready to share information.  The...
Read more