Wednesday, January 13, 2010
It has been a slow day at sea. Overnight the seas got rougher, not really rough, but rough enough to bother many of our fellow passengers.
Today was another lazy day; reading (Chasing Che, A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend by Patrick Symmes), eating, attending a class on tapas, more reading, drinking, more eating, a lecture on Argentina, still more reading…
We have continued south along the coast, leaving Brazil behind about noon. By 4:00 the cliffs of Uruguay could be seen to the west. By 4:00 the seas calmed. By 5:30 the ship turned due west as we entered the wide estuary of the river Plata, where Uruguay and Argentina meet. We are much closer to land, and can now see individual buildings along the shore… The water is changing color from a pure cobalt blue, gaining a touch of green as we begin to see the affect of the shore and river…
Having read more, we are now thinking of eating again… this will be dinner so we should change into something better than shorts and a tee shirt.
We will take on a pilot for the passage through the estuary soon… We will take on a second pilot, the harbor pilot about dawn. These are shallow waters, the channel is narrow at times. It was in these shallow waters of the Rio de la Plata that the Germans scuttled the pocket battleship Graf Spee when cornered by the British Navy in World War 2. We should see salvaged parts of the ship Thursday in Montevideo.
9:49 pm… we just took on the estuary pilot… there are 12 ships nearby…
Tomorrow we visit Buenos Aires
Bye for now, Randy
No comments:
Post a Comment