Going South from Buenos Aires

South America  Update 2#

At last writing we were just about to set sail from Buenos Aires Argentina to Puenta del Este Uruguay. Uruguay lies immediately north of Buenos Aires and Argentina, just across the estuary of the River Plate. You might think this is a short distance but in fact the bay where the River Plate flows into the Atlantic is so large it took us all night to cross! 

Unfortunately we can't say we set foot in Uruguay because the swell coming out of the Atlantic was too great to allow going ashore. In many interesting coastal communities like Puenta del Este, the harbour may not have the docking facilities for deeper draft ships. In cases like this the cruise ships ferry passengers ashore in their 'tenders' (covered lifeboats). The tenders are lowered into the water off their davits and you step through an opening in the hull of the ship into the tender. With  the mother ship and tender both in the water and the chop frequently dictating them going in opposite directions you can see how this can be a challenge to load. On this occasion it was simply too rough. 

So we turned south and proceeded to our next port of call, Puerto Madryn. Interestingly enough as we left the estuary of the River Plate, we sailed very close to where the German dreadnought battleship the Graf Spee was scuttled during the Second World War. 

Puerto Madryn was founded by Welsh immigrants and there are still communities nearby that continue to speak entirely Welsh. We are now in Patagonia. 

The region of Argentina and Chile referred to as Patagonia is huge. It covers more than half (geographically) of their respective land masses and encompasses not only the Andes Mountain range but also the deserts, steppes and grasslands more typical of the area around Puerto Madryn. 

From Puerto Madryn we zigged out into the Atlantic and headed for the Falkland Islands aka The Malvinas. After visiting the Falklands we will zag back to Argentina and the southernmost tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, and the city of Ushuaia.

We are now down near the 40th latitude, more infamously known as 'the roaring forties'. It comes by that reputation honestly. At the bottom of South America it's where the Atlantic meets the Pacific at Cape Horn. With the world's two largest oceans to the north and Antarctica and the South Pole to the south it has every reason I can think of to be a nasty piece of water.

This made it all the more unique for us to have made landfall in the Falklands. We spoke with a fellow passenger that informed us this was his 5th attempt. He was in luck this time - but only by a whisker. We are very lucky to make it on our first try.

The cruise across to Port Stanley the capitol of the Falkland Islands was very pleasant with a moderate sea and sunshine. Similarly the full day we had in Stanley was gorgeous. The Falklands (population 3000) is a self governed protectorate of the UK. The islands which have been occupied by France, Britain, Spain and Argentina over the past 500 years, occupy a strategic position in the Southern Hemisphere for vessels that prior to the opening of the Panama Canal were obliged to travel around Cape Horn in their passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice versa. Not only commercial shipping but whalers and military ships used the Falklands as a refuelling and re provisioning stop in this long journey. It was critical to Great Britain securing control of the seas in the Southern Hemisphere during the First and Second World Wars.

Most people are more familiar with islands being the site of the Falklands War of 1982, or Maggie's War after then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Argentina, which was then ruled by a military junta, invaded the Falkland Islands but within the space of a couple of months British forces retook the islands at a cost of 659 Argentinian lives and 258 British.

Two paragraphs earlier I mentioned the seas around the Falklands are notoriously rough. We were to get a taste of that first hand on the way back across the Atlantic to Argentina. Our first hint was as we returned from Port Stanley and boarded the Marina Margaret and I noticed the crew were securing everything that could possibly move in rough seas; deck chairs lashed to railings similarly, carvings, large plants, and crystal were either removed or tied to something rigid, our cabin stewardess came in and lashed the deck chairs to the balcony railing. Hmmm.

The transit back to the mainland would take all night and the next day (today). As soon as we were out of the lee of the islands the winds went to a steady 40 knots and gusting up to 50 knots; that's roughly 46 mph or 74 kmh and higher with the gusts. The seas (waves) were in the 5.5 to 6.1 meter range (15 to 20'). We were rockin & rollin. 

I spoke with a fellow at breakfast who has a 42' sailboat. We were looking out a window from the 12th deck at what he called a 'big ass lumpy' sea. When waves look big from that high up you know they are big. I don't think I have to translate big ass but lumpy I gather means the waves weren't evenly spaced rollers but were coming from all different directions. His parting words were 'be very glad you're in here and not out there'.

We are currently just traversing into the Le Maire Strait from the Atlantic. This is pretty much the bottom of South America. I guess Cape Horn is a little further south, but not much. The ship is moving very slowly and deliberately. The sea is quite calm but it's reduced visibility due to fog. Within the next few hours we will enter the Beagle Passage and work our way up to Ushuaia. The Beagle Passage is of course named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed in on his trip that took him from England around the Horn and up to the Galápagos Islands. I am literally pinching myself right now to make sure this is real. 

One more thing before we send this update; we were watching that VERY significant sea last night and earlier today from the comfy confines of a 650' long cruise ship. In April 1916 Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 6 men sailed a 20' jury rigged lifeboat from Elephant Island in the Antarctic 1300 km in 2 weeks to South Georgia Island (the Georgia & South Sandwich Islands are sister islands to the Falklands and lay due east of the Falklands). If you are unfamiliar with the Shackleton saga get ahold of one of the books documenting it. You will come away amazed and inspired. Now that I have seen that water up close I find their feat incomprehensible. 

Never Stop Exploring

M&H

Sent from Harry's iPad