Pat and Norm's World Cruises and other adventures

February 27, 2023

Before I post about Montevideo, here is the beautiful sail away sunset from Buenos Aires.

For our day in Montevideo, we chose the Jewish Heritage of Montevideo tour. This was our second visit to this city and last time we covered the most important buildings in the town and learned about the culture, so this time we wanted something more specific. Our first stop was the Holocaust Memorial. Our guide was Beatriz and she talked about her own Jewish heritage.

The memorial is on the coast and it is really very well done with lots of symbolism. There were originally about 60,000 Jewish people in the city, many escaping Russia and the czar and others fleeing from the Turkish Empire. Now there are only 8 – 10,000. There are several synagogues in the city and we will visit two of them. The one we won’t visit is the most beautiful, but visitors must submit their passports three days in advance to visit, obviously not possible for us.

The memorial is about 120 meters long and is mostly made of pink granite, with a central window looking out at the sea. A pair of railway rails are at the approach and the central part of the memorial has two wooden bridge crossings. It opened in 1994 as a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. The memorial was renovated after several acts of destruction with anti-Semitic slurs.

We had about 45 minutes to walk around the site. There are several placques present, including one by Elie Weisel. They are all in Spanish but you could find a few words that gave you the intent.

After this visit, we went to the Yavne synagogue and school. A young woman from Israel who is doing one year of volunteer work here gave a talk about the synagogue and school. She described it as a place of joy – and the joy radiated in all she said. Everyone is welcome here, which she said is very different from the one she attends in Israel.

There were many students and families there. We were told not to take pictures of the children, and I wanted the picture of the dog. Since this student’s face wasnt in the picture, the young volunteer said it was OK.

Our second visit was to a conservative synagagogue, Tehilat-David. This one was more modern.

Sfter this visit, we went to Independence Square. Beatriz told us more about the country. There are 3,400,000 people in the country and half live in Montevideo. Voting is obligatory and you lose citizen privileges if you don’t vote. The presidential term is 5 years with no second term. There are lots of homeless people and the minimum wage is $500/month. Inflation stands now at 9 %. They, like many other places, have had months of drought.

After our tour and lunch, we went out for a walk in town and went to some of the shops that we remembered from our last visit. No purchases this time. We wanted to visit the Carnival Museum but it is closed. Here are the window decorations.

On the sail away, we saw this group of abandoned ships. And here is one of the tugboats that we depend on to get the ship in the right position to leave the harbor. Amazing to watch.

February 25 and 26, 2023

This is our third time to visit Buenos Aires, so we decided to try to do much needed updates to all of our devices and to try to solve an email problem with my iPhone and my iPad. We intended to go to a hotel but found that the WiFi in the terminal, while not really fast, was good enough to get things done in about an hour and a half. By then lots of passengers for the other two cruises that started here were coming into the terminal so we returned to the ship and spent the rest of the afternoon before preparing for our evening world cruise event. The iPhone issue was fixed but not the iPad – that is still a mystery.

Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina. It is the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the Americas, with a population of around 15.6 million. There is a lot of European architecture here, one area is mostly French architecture. The city is a melting pot – considered one of the most diverse cities of the Americas.

There will be 5 Around the World special events during this 6 months and today was the first. We traveled by bus to a place called La Rural. Here is the description of the event. It was a wonderful evening and really gave us a taste of the culture of Argentina. There were stations spread around the huge pavilion that featured body painting, puppetry, tango lessons and photos in tango accessory costumes.

Here are some photos of the evening. There were wonderful musicians, traditional gaucho acts, singers and amazing tango dancers. I don’t know how those women wear the 5 inch heels and dance in them too! The lighting wasn’t good to capture most of the tango scenes but I did get one of the opening which depicted the early days of tango when settlers arrived. The later ones with the wonderful costumes and groups of dancers didn’t come out well enough. I might be able to get some from others who sat closer to the stage.

We had a dinner that was served throughout the entertainment – way too much food – and they did have some non meat items for those who had requested it in advance – like me! It was a great evening.

On Sunday, we met with one of colleagues from ICF, Ines Colle. She picked us up at the terminal and took us all around the city, pointing out lots of things of interest, and we had a walk in one of the parks. There are a lot of open areas and parks with beautiful trees. Some of the wide streets have trees that almost form a canopy over the street. We enjoyed a nice brunch together at the lake and overlooking the golf course. What a pleasure to meet people all over the world and share time together.

A wonderful two days in Buenos Aires. On to Montevideo, Uruguay tomorrow.

February 24, 2023

Here’s a picture of 2 Normans. The “other Norman” is one of our favorite sommeliers on board.

This is a new port for us. The entrance to the port is the widest estuary in the world. The city has been referred to as “the Monaco of the South”, “the Pearl of the Atlantic”, “the Hamptons of South America”, “the Miami Beach of South America” and “the St. Tropez of South America”. And, yes, it is that pretty and has lots of beautiful hotels, beaches and open air restaurants. We heard that there are many Americans living here. The city has a year round population of about 12,400 but during the summer season the number of visitors and residents average 450,000!

Our tour today was a boat trip to Sea Wolves Island where there is a colony of sea lions and fur seals. The scientists confirm that there are over 200,000 animals here, the second largest colony in the world. First is in Namibia.

This is a port that we needed to be taken to by tender, then we boarded a bus for the short trip to the boat that would take us to the island. Our guide was Marcello and he gave the same information both on the top deck and downstairs on the bottom deck. I happened to sit in the area with the very young and opinionated captain who thought he knew everything about the war in Ukraine, US and world politics, etc and he was very polarizing. Some passengers tried to give some other opinions but he would have none of it. His comment was “it is my boat, I can say anything I want, get out of here if you don’t like it”. I guess he never heard of customer service.

Otherwise it was a pretty calm trip and we sailed around the island for about 45 minutes. It was hard to get photos because we couldn’t get close enough, but I did get a few. There were hundreds of young seals playing in the water – they were fun to watch.

There is a lighthouse on the island, one of the brightest in the world according to Marcello.

The island is called Sea Wolves Island because early explorers hears the sounds of the sea lions and thought they weere wolves, so they didn’t go onto the island. Now the sea lions are referrred to as “sea wolves”.

After the boat trip, we wanted to visit La Mano, which is a sculpture of fingers emerging from the ground near the beach. It was originally part of an open air sculpture exhibition in 1982. At that time it was meant as a warning that the beach was rocky and could be dangerous. Now it is a big tourist attraction!

We got back after 2 so we had lunch in Waves Grill. They make a delicious veggie burger. Tonight will be an Indian Buffet in the Terrace Cafe and it will be nice enough to finally sit outside.

February 23, 2023

We had a very calm crossing of the Drake Passage and still weren’t sure that the conditions would allow us to visit the Falklands, a place we have never been and really want to experience.

Before I get to the day, I got another 4 of a kind in the casino last night. Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice!

We were scheduled to be at anchor at 8 am and in fact, we were right on time.  Our tour was also scheduled at that time, but by the time we traveled to the port in the tender, it was about 8:20.  Our tour today was to Bluff Cove Lagoon to see the penguins.

We were in a small bus which held only 20 people and our guide was Len.  He is a 5th generation Falkland inhabitant and was very knowledgeable. 

The Falkland Islands are a self governing British country.  The population of the entire country is only about 3000 people. There is free medical care and free education here.  The top three industries are squid and Chilean sea bass fishing, tourism (over 43,000 visitors a year in the season between October and March) and farming. 

To my surprise, there are no trees on the Falklands, it is mostly rocky with white grass plains.  They are very much into sustainable energy and have 6 wind turbines which produce 35-45% of the electricity consumed in Stanley and they have reduced their diesel fuel use by 1 million liters.  They also have a solar farm under construction.

We passed by an area that had 30,000 land mines left after the 1982 war, but the area  has now been totally cleaned – it took 5 1/2 years to do so.

The place we visited is the Bluff Cove Lagoon which is part of a 30,000 acre farm.  They raise sheep and cows and of course there are the penguin colonies along the water.  The two types we saw today are the king penguin, the second largest after the emperor and the Gentoo which is the third largest.

There were lots of guides around the area to answer our questions.

I got many pictures and will post some with explanations.

The king penguin is later into the breeding season than the Gentoo.  We got some great pictures, including the ones here that show one of them feeding the chick.  The chicks and the eggs (which are all hatched now) are well hidden under the feathers and on the feet of the adults. The chicks are hard to spot so I was lucky.

The colony of king penguins was much smaller than the Gentoo colonies. Here, the chicks are already about 6 – 8 weeks old and are molting.  They lose their feathers and the new ones grow in during this time. You can see the feathers all around them on the ground. They basically just stand around since they can’t swim in the molting state.  They don’t eat much either unless an adult brings them some fish, but they have stored fat from when they were fed by the parents. If they even try to swim, they would quickly become a snack for the seals. The adult Gentoos do swim and many of them were moving along the shoreline as well.  Hopefully I will be able to upload a video for you to see. I will try it in a separate posting.

We were scheduled for 2 hours here and it was warmer temperature wise but VERY windy.  At times, I couldn’t hold the camera still.

We walked all around the area and were simply delighted by these beautiful birds.

After our walk, we went to the Sea Cabbage café where we were treated to hot drinks and our choice of two of the many homemade treats offered to us.  There were a lot of posters with information about the area and the country.  And the treats were delicious. They have it set up like a mini museum.  The most current picture was the one of Zelensky!

The above picture is the wallpaper in the rest room!

Next to the café, there was a charming gift shop where I made some purchases.  And we got to meet the owner of the farm – Hattie –  who also baked all of the goodies. She held up her paper sign “Hattie the baker”.  Norm dropped a photo bomb from the window! The lovely woolen goods here are made from the wool from their own sheep which is sent to Scotland and then back here.

Due to the winds, the tenders were delayed so we were there an hour longer than scheduled.  Near the café it wasn’t quite as windy.  I did take another walk for some pictures.  I also learned what Sea Cabbage is and it is nothing to eat – it is a plant that gets yellow flowers in season.  Here is a picture.

The cows are mostly the Belted Galloway which they call Oreo cows since they have the black and white areas. There are still some sod and stone walls standing. These were constructed to keep livestock in specific areas.

We didn’t see any whales although the southern right whale is here this time of year.  Whales were endangered here for years, but they do a census every 2 years and there has been a 51% increase since the previous census, good news indeed.

We returned to Port Stanley and had some time to walk around the town.  They have a huge display of photos depicting “The Essence of Our Community.”  Here are some of them and some others of the two churches, interesting historical buildings, the whale bone arch and yes, the red phone booths!