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Published: February 28th 2017
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Hello from Buenos Aires. This is an early report (just the first half of the day) because we have evening activities which will prevent us from posting later tonight, so here’s what we did.
We got up this morning about 6:30 because we have an 8:15 meeting time for our excursion today. We got what has become our usual excursion-day breakfast – tea & juice from the Horizon Court and breakfast biscuits with donuts. Janet says they are better than Egg McMuffins but the chocolate donuts are not as good as Chocolate Long Johns at home. But we got ourselves down to the lounge about 8:00.
We got off the ship and the bus left promptly at 9:00. We drove through Buenos Aires city and into Buenos Aires province, heading for a place called Tegre. The city has a population of 4 million and the province has another 14 million more, with the total population of Argentina being 40 million. We drove through some nice looking areas and along a very wide expressway, eventually arriving in Tegre.
The skies were nice and clear with lot of sunshine, which made the temperature in
the high 80s at 9:00 and it was about 90 when we got back from this morning tour. Buenos Aires is located the equivalent south of the equator that Santa Barbara is north of it. Except in Santa Barbara there is more of a sea breeze whereas this is actually quite a way from the ocean and basically on a really large river heading past Uruguay as kind of a bay, but not really on the ocean. So there is no sea breeze to speak of.
Tegre is a nice area where the people of Buenos Aires go to get away from the city. This is the last week of their summer (school starts next week) and there were a lot of people enjoying the waterway. According to our guide, inflation in Argentina has been extremely high (averaging 20% per year the last 20 years) and it is now cheaper for Argentinians to go to Brazil for a 2-week vacation rather than go in-country. So the people down in Tegre were either owners of the houses or day-visitors just enjoying the last day of Carnival.
We arrived by bus and had about 15 minutes to use the bathrooms and to look in the little shops. Then we boarded a large catamaran and cruised down the river and through the delta area called Tegre Island. There is a huge amount of sediment which washes down from the mountains in the west, and much of that sediment settles in this area. It is great for the builders who dredge the sane from the river and use it in new construction. However the water is definitely brown in color. It is not polluted so many people were swimming along the banks, water skiing, or rowing. Our guide said that if you got a glass of the water and waited a few minutes, then the sediment would settle to the bottom and you could drink the water.
We cruised for about an hour past many nice vacation places. One element of this “island” is that there are no roads or cars. Arriving and departing has to be done by boat. If you don’t have you own boat in one of the marinas, there are essentially water buses which continuously cruise a route around the island which people here use as their mass transit. There are even a couple of “supermarket boats” which cruise around. If you need something from this “store” you place an empty box on the end of your pier and the store stops for you to come out and buy what you want.
There are a small number of school-age kids living here year round, so they have a school for them. It is only in session from 10:00 to 2:00 but apparently that gets the job done (maybe they get a lot of homework). On a nice day like this, nobody was thinking about school work as they were all having a lot of fun on the water.
After about an hour of cruising we returned to the starting point and boarded our bus again. We then were driven through some of the nicest areas of town and came to the Parroquia de la Catedral de San Isidro (a Catholic Cathedral). We went inside for a while and then looked around outside before boarding the bus again. Janet said it would have been better if we’d been there tomorrow since it is Ash Wednesday, but we were just a little early.
We were driven back to town and delivered to the cruise terminal about 1:00. Unlike most other places, we were NOT driven to be ship but were let out and had to walk through the whole terminal like a newly boarding passenger. Fortunately it was not very crowded and the line moved as fast as we did, but it was more walking than we had anticipated. When you get to the end of the walk you go through the metal detector and then board another bus which drove us through the pier complex and out to out ship. This is going to be much less fun tomorrow when all the new passengers are trying to board at the same time, but we will have to deal with it when the time comes. But for future information, Buenos Aires is not very passenger friendly as far as being able to get from our tour back to the ship.
We went directly to the Horizon Court and got some lunch. We have another excursion planned for tonight which will include a dinner, but not until probably 8:00 or later, so we will need to slip in another meal before we leave the ship again. It is against the Cruise Passage Rules of Conduct to allow more than 3 hours to pass without having a meal to eat.
After lunch we returned to our cabin and started packing. This is the 3
rd time we have done back-to-back cruises, but it is the first time we will move from one cabin to another. We have been told that we just need to pack the loose items back into suitcases and the clothes on hangers can stay where they are. Sometime tomorrow (after our new cabin is cleaned) the stewards will move all our stuff into the new cabin and have it waiting for us when we return from tomorrow’s excursion. At least that is the understanding that we have. Otherwise the new people in our old cabin are going to find a lot of clothes already waiting for them when they arrive.
We were able to call Stephanie today and she is doing better. She has 2 more weeks of being off work and then 3 weeks of half-time, but she is getting along alright. She has weight restrictions on what she can lift, but she has a big strong son to help with those things.
That about finishes this “early report” about Buenos Aires. We will provide another posting about the evening activities, but not until sometime in the future. We do have some pictures to post from this morning, but the blog tool is not cooperating so we will add them later.
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