Buenos Aires

 Buenos Aires has been given the reputation of the Paris of S.America.  It has enormous areas devoted to green-space.  Beautiful buildings.  A vibrant nightlife and restaurant scene.  We did not go tango as we had two different shows on the boat. We took the hop on hop off bus on a tour of the city which occupied several hours and ends up in LaBoca which is home to a street fair known as Caminito. We did however eat the specialty of Argentina, steak.  I mean it's really something different.  First of all, the meat is raised differently.  All natural feed on the range.  No antibiotics, cereal or other additives that you can’t get away from in the US.  Then its cooked over a wood embers flame and severed without salt or seasoning.  Just  chimichurri sauce on the side.  “Filete  de Lomo”; what a fantastic piece of meat.  

Buenos  Aires has the look and feel of Madrid.  More parks and monuments.  Too much to see in 2 1/2 days.  This calls for a return trip in their winter.  Just a nice hotel and tour service next trip.

So I board my overnight flight back to Houston somewhat disappointed at the cruise line for many reasons.  I possibly had too high of expectations of this cruise and it basically was a typical cruise with lots of noise.  Heavy on the cruise and short on the history ,terrain and culture of the area. A real disappointment, but definitely a new continent partially explored.

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MONTEVIDEO

is the capital of Uruguay.It sits on the northern bank of the channel from the Atlantic to Buenos Aires and beyond.  The history seems to be that it was settled by the Spanish from Buenos Aires in a blocking effort to keep the Portuguese from traveling from Brazil down the river.  There is a rather large Jewish community there as it was one of the earliest settlements of the Jews leaving the middle east and Europe.  I took a tour with a lady who is of the local Jewish community and learned some interesting facts.  We visited a Holocaust memorial that the city erected on the beach and two different synagogues.

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S.ATLANTIC and PUERTO MADRYN

We sailed northward from the Cape of Good Hope for the next 48 hours.  The seas were not bad.  I 've experience worse on a southern atlantic crossing but I guess the weather is really the determining factor and we had good weather.  We pulled into Puerto Madryn which is a small fishing port halfway up the Argentinian Coast. Not much going on here. I am now realizing that S. America is really the third world.  It just hasn't made it to the rest of European and N American standards. We walked around and found a local restaurant where we order Steak!

Boy do they butcher meat differently down here.  We each were served what looked like 3-4 pound slab of cooked meat.  There was no bone, just a huge chunk of fat.  After slicing off the meat.  It was really delicious and fresh tasting. There was really nothing else to see, so it was back to the ship after lunch.  This time we took a leisure walk down the pier.   No Tenders. 

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Beagle Channel and Ushuaia

There is a 150 km long totally navigational channel on the southern tip of S.America which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.  Named after the HMS Beagle which carried Charles Darwin to this are in the 1830’s.  Midway along this is the Argentinean port ofUshuaia, a port town of a couple hundred thousand.  This is the launch point for all Antartica explorations.  Tied up in port are numerous seagoing exploratory vessels from Linblad, Huntigren and National Geographic.  Also seen was the ill fated Viking Polaris.

I  boarded a enclosed cabin catamaran with a 150 fellow Celebrity pasenges for a 4 hour tour of the Beagle channel.  We saw seals sunning on a big rock.  Multiple flocks of birds and the highlight of the morning, one of 3 different colonies of Penguins.  Theses are the middle size.  We ended back in town and I walked for a couple hours, had a quick lunch and went through the ordeal of lining up for a  tender back to the ship. I felt a cold coming on, so I had a small dinner and went to bed. 

As advertised. We sailed out the Beagle passage to the Atlantic, turned south and arrived at the Cape of Good Horn  @ 6am the next morning.  This is the southern most piece of any continent on earth, Antarctica excluded but thats all ice.  Beyond this is the Drake Passage which before the Panama Canal opened, was the only way to sail from the Atlantic to The Pacific.  The Drake Passage reportedly is the home to more shipwrecks than any other location on earth.  If you have studied the California gold rush and the development of San Francisco, you will recall that the trip from the East Coast to California in the 1840’s took 3 weeks. I was expecting the worse but it was actually quite calm and temperate. A really inspiring site.  There is a metal monument on top of the rock to celbrate "the end of the earth".  Look carefully in the photos and you can barely see it.

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Strait of Magellan and Punta Arenas Chile.

We entered the Strait of Magellan from the S.Pacific open waters about 4 PM and the weather immediately cleared.  The wind died and the sun shined through.  John and I made it to the top deck, open a bottle of wine and enjoyed a good cigar while the mountains of the strait went by.  Dinner was marred again with bad service on the part of our restaurant crew and we vowed to take the remainder of our meals in the Oceanview Cafe; the buffet.  Will see how long that last.

The next morning we pulled into the harbor of Punta Arenas about 7 am.  I was on a tender to the port at 7:45.  Expecting a circus, I had no problems getting to and exiting the terminal onto the streets of Punta Arenas.  The problem was that this little port town was completely closed.  I mean not even a coffee shop.  So I walked a mile or so to the city square where sat looking at a  statue honoring the founding of the town in the 1850’s.  With nothing else to see or do, I walked back to the terminal, boarded  a tender and was back on the ship by 9:45.  What I have realize by now after 4 different cities in Chile is this country is not ready for US tourist.  The cities just completely shut down on Sat and Sun. Of course I am referring to downtown areas but this is where tourist stay and congregate. 

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Puerto Montt

Our first port was this seaside town of 250,000. It was settled in the late 19th century by German immigrants.  It is now a fishing center with no real passenger terminal which meant we “tendered” to shore and our excursions.  We had between 1000-2000 passengers to take the 20 minute ride to shore in 4 different tenders which meant it took about 3 hours from start to finish to get everyone ashore.  Not good planning.  So our excursion was a 90 minute bus ride to Lake Todos 

Los Santos and the Petrohue waterfalls it created.  Beautiful scenery but not sure it was worth the 3 hour ride on a bus, 3 hour wait and round trip on the tender.  The captain and cruise director got an earful all right.  His comment was “this is S America. They don’t build nice passenger terminals here. If you demand nice terminals, stay in the Caribbean”.

With that we opened a bottle of wine and forgot about it.

We then had 2 days of sailing thru the fiords' of Chile.  Very interesting scenery.

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