A Voyage to Patagonia and Antarctica
This is a contemporaneous account of an expedition to Antarctica led by Lindblad Special Expeditions. January 5-28 1999. This will be our third voyage with Lindblads (Lars and Sven), our second with Sven's Special Expeditions. We've previously gone with them to Galapagos and Baja. "We" are Paul and Rosemarie Birman. E-mail:76526.444@compuserve.com
Tuesday, 5 January 1999
We've signed up for the extension to Patagonia so we're leaving a week earlier than the bulk of the passengers for the Caledonian Star. We joined 13 other members of the tour at Miami Int'l Airport for an 2315 departure for Buenos Aires. We've met Steve Maclean who'll be the extension leader. He's a naturalist, working for Special Expeditions whose job it is to baby sit us.
AA 901 was on time and was a comfortable 9+ hour flight. American's MD 11 averaged 525 mph (maximum speed 582.2 mph) at 37,000 ft. altitude, all tracked out the window of seat 26A by our handheld Garmin GPS III.
Wednesday, 6 January 1999, Buenos Aires S34° 45"; W58°31"
Arrived at 1000 Wednesday and were met by Special Expedition's local meet and greet lady, Georgiana. It was fun to see her identify the Antarctic Expedition passengers as we cleared customs in ones and twos. She claimed to have a sixth sense about who we might be. I guess we DO look rather different. We took a comfortable bus into downtown to the Libertador Hotel on Avenue Cordoba y Maipu. Buenos Aires is a big (11 million) city that seems dominated by all sorts of radio and cell phone antenna on top of all the buildings. We spotted many ham tribanders, VHF Ringos, and dipoles strung across the avenues from building top to adjacent top. Actually, the overall effect is rather ugly. There seems no rhyme or reason to the profusion of towers and wires but they dominate the skyline. The Ave "9th of Mayo" has 9 traffic lanes in each direction and, according to our guide, is difficult to cross. ( A friend, Alan Kahn, points out that I am probably confusing the Avenida de 9th de Julio with Avenida de Mayo. We were probably trying to cross Avenida de Mayo. They are both wide, though the 9th of Julio is wider according to my guide book) She recommended crossing with a group too large to be run down by one of the city's 400,000 taxis. (Paul has employed a similar strategy to cross some Parisian streets.) We lunched privately at a nearby sidewalk restaurant sharing a "grande" beer (cervesa) and caliente ham and cheese on croissant. The peso is exchanged one for one with the dollar. We got $50 pesos just to have some local currency. Showered, and got a couple of hours of sleep before meeting our expanded group of 21 at 1700.
Note: The water drains from our sink clockwise here in the southern hemisphere.
The afternoon was spent in a city tour, led by Georgiana, that included Eva Peron's mausoleum, the presidential palace where both Eva Peron and Madonna (as Evita) entertained the masses. Dinner was at a steak house, Asador Parrilla Nueva de Julio, with unlimited wine. By 2200 we were seated at Casa Blanca for a Tango show that featured dancers, pan pipe players and a magician until midnight. By then we were all ready to hit the sack.
Thursday, January 7 1999
After breakfast we attempted to access our Compuserve account via the Equant International Telecom service. The local number in Buenos Aires would answer, and sometimes, with great difficulty, allow the log-on procedure to go just so far before disconnecting. E-mail connections in Argentina, it seems, are not quite ready for prime time.
After mailing a card to Sylvia and Barry, we boarded a bus for a 2.5 hour trip out of the city to the Pampas region. We visited a ranch called Los Patricios. A greater Rhea (ostrich-like flightless bird) was a center of attraction, stealing meat from a luncheon plate, leading a bird-watching forest walk and posing for the cameras. The Rhea led the procession. Paul got to ride a horse called Elegant a couple of times around the polo field and Rosemarie went on a buggy ride.
The Rheas' name is Romeo. When she started laying eggs (12 times the size of a hen's egg)
the owners decided she really ought to be called Juliet, but Romeo stuck.
Tonight, the connection to Compuserve worked and we were able to receive and send our mail.
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