Hello from Buenos Aires! — Destination: Global

Tuesday, 13 February 2024

It’s good to be in Argentina, although having landed on Saturday evening, and then going out on an excursion on Sunday (in 37°C heat), I’m definitely well and truly ready for the cool of Ushuaia and the Antarctic.

I’ve seen various parts of Buenos Aires – the monuments and gardens are definitely eye-catching. On Sunday I took an excursion by road and boat in the Tigres area north of the city. Our guide explained that one of the major sports in Argentina, and one they take very seriously, is rowing. As we made our way around Tigres, we saw people out on their sculls – some single, others 2-up and 4-up.

There were two disconcerting aspects to this: the waterways are very narrow with large boats (including the one I was in) creating huge wash that the rowers need to manage, and the water is an amazing shade of brown. I kept thinking that the Yarra is clear in comparison! Our guide explained that the colour is from mud coming from the inland as well as pollution, and despite the “no swimming” rules, people were in amongst it all, escaping the heat.

At least it cooled down on Monday with rain and thunderstorms restricting my intention to get out and about until later in the afternoon. And then it transpired that both Monday & Tuesday are a public holiday – consequently the area around the hotel I’m in is very quiet. So I Uber’d to the centre of Palermo and wandered around there for a while, having a suitably late lunch at a café before taxi’ing back to the hotel.

I’m ready for the south now – and tomorrow (Wednesday) Phyllis & I will be landing in Ushuaia late in the afternoon. We have 2 excursions planned – a day trip into the Andes and the lakes, and the following day, a boat ride down the Beagle Channel to see local penguin colonies.

On Friday afternoon, once we’re back from the penguinos, we’ll transfer to the hotel used by Quark and on Saturday we board the World Explorer! And off we go – first to the Falkland Islands, then to South Georgia and onwards to the Antarctic Peninsula.

We won’t be going south of the Antarctic Circle this time, but John assures me that I flew south of 66°33’S on the way from Melbourne to Santiago! Phew!

One big question is the weather that we’ll be sailing through over the next 3 weeks. It’s always possible that we’ll get to “enjoy” some rough seas when we’re away from the land. If you’re at all interested in the weather in the area, the BOM shows these via the following LINK.

The image shown is from 13 Feb looking “down” on the South Pole. The weather patterns go clockwise, and the closer the lines, the stronger the winds – those black tightly bunched circles indicate ferocious winds! I’ll let you know!

And if you would like to know where we are, you can track our location via Cruise Mapper: LINK