Buenos Aires – January 30-31

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024 ~ admin ~ 1 Comment

For me, I start to relax when I’ve got the l get the carryons in the overhead bins and we’re ready to push back from the gate. All the prep work is what makes me nervous, but when we’re on the plane all that’s behind us and, sure, unexpected problems will arise, but that’s part of the challenge and fun of adventuring. BTW, thanks, Marilyn and Steve, for the stress-free ride to c.

No sooner had I slammed the bin door shut at Tampa International, but the pilot came on to say that President Biden was landing at Miami and the airspace had been shut down. Expect a 30-minute delay. Thirty became sixty became even more and, when we eventually got to Miami, it was a two-hour hold up. Enough to make a guy pull the elephant lever next November for sure.

That caused us a serious issue. Our expected four-hour stay at the Ambassador Lounge was cut to two. We had to gulp down our food and have a quick conversation with Rebecca (we’d talked with Jeff earlier) and beat feet to the gate. Time to spare? Go by air.

Not only that, our flight from Miami to Buenos Aires was delayed by 45 minutes but the wind gods must have been blowing in our favor because we landed right on time, 8:05 AM. That’s Argentina time, two hours ahead of EST, which we’ll be observing for the entire trip.

We cleared Argentinian formalities, found our Viking representatives (it took five Viking folks to herd us from the customs hall to the far end of the mostly deserted terminal. An hour’s bus ride got us to the Hilton Buenos Aires by 10 AM or so. Our room became available almost immediately and, after a departure briefing from another Viking rep (7:20 AM bus call tomorrow, bags out by 8 PM tonight) we were in our room and ready to start exploring.

Buenos Aires is suffering from an unusual 95 F heatwave. And we’re talking muggy heat, not that dry heat from the Australian Outback we experienced last fall. But that didn’t stop us. We set off with four objectives: see the Casa Rosada (Pink House); change a crisp $100 bill into pesos; find some empanadas for lunch and; buy bathing suits.

Wait a minute. Aren’t you guys going to Antarctica? Sure, it’s summer but really. Swimming?

Our problem is that we unquestioningly do what people tell us to do. Yesterday evening while waiting to board the plane, we met two ladies going on our trip (Viking luggage tags was the giveaway). They said, “Hope you brought your bathing suits. We were on the Octanis on the Great Lakes and it has a marvelous swimming pool. You won’t want to miss it.” Hence the swimming togs.

The Casa Rosada is the building where the President of Argentina has offices. The site started out as a customs house, fort and post office, which were amalgamated by 1898 to more-or-less its current state. It faces the Plaza de Mayo, which commemorates the May 25, 1811 victory that kicked the Spanish out and left Argentina as an independent country. The left balcony of the Pink House is where Evita Peron made her “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” speech that Andrew Lloyd Webber made famous.

So check the Casa Rosada off the list. We actually remembered well our previous visit in 2019 with cousin Sharon. You can read about that, if you want, at https://jonandjudy.com/day-4-1-9-19-buenos-aires/ and the following day.

We’d been told that Florida Avenue is a pedestrian street full of shopping opportunities. And sure enough, it was. I had my eye out for a cambio where we could do the exchange when much to my delight a random guy said, “Cambio señor? Best rate? 1,190 to the dollar.” Later, I discovered that virtually every Argentinian on Florida Avenue had the same come-on. “Cambio? Dolares?” But whatever. I was feeling a little like a tourist about to be taken for a ride, he led us into a nearby building, up the elevator to a small hole-in-the-wall office where his compatriot made the change, not however, without first casting a dubious eye at my pristine pure $100 bill. Task two accomplished.

In my broken Spanish, I asked Señor Cambio where we could find empanadas. He told us where, and then led us to the street level of the same building where there was a small shop selling “the best empanadas in Argentina!” I ordered two empanadas suave. The total bill, including two bottles of water, came to 4,300 Pesos, or $3.61 U.S. at our newly established exchange rate. I’m not sure if they’re the best but they were pretty darn good, right up there with what we had in Santiago.

Speaking of exchange rates, Argentina recently elected a new progressive-right president. Some call him the Donald of Argentina. One of his first acts was to devalue the peso. Our guide driving from the airport said the current official exchange rate is 800 pesos to the U.S. dollar. Before devaluation, it was 300. That makes the “blue” rate that we paid on the street attractive but not as attractive as it was a few weeks ago. They’ve been holding strikes here in Buenos Aires in protest. Hopefully that won’t cause problems for us tomorrow as we travel to Ushuaia.

Traje de baño is the Spanish term for bathing suit and it took us several stores to score one for each of us. Actually, they were running a BOGO at my store so now I have to figure out how to cram two suits into my already overloaded suitcase. In Judy’s case they had a buy two get one free deal, so she ended up with a two piece and a one piece with the same packing issue.

So now it’s siesta time, catching up on our sleep (we each got about five hours on the plane last night) and getting ready for our night out at the tango show. We’ve booked dinner and the show at the same place as we did in 2019, El Viejo Almacén. We looked at a number of other venues but they all looked like tourist traps styled after Las Vegas shows. One of the Viking guides told us, “Good choice. It’s my favorite and the only one that does the real traditional tango.”

After our nap, we went for an helado (ice cream) run to a food truck kind of place along the river. Turns out, our hotel is in the trendy Puerto Madero district, an eating and shopping complex on either side of the Rio Darsena Sur. The Punte de la Mujer (Woman’s Bridge) connects both banks of the river. We had dulce de leche cones. I dropped my double scoop on the ground just like a five year old. The nice guy gave me a new one, just like he’d do for any little kid.

Wikipedia says of dulce de leche: “Dulce de leche, caramelized milk, milk candy or milk jam is a confection popular in Latin America, France, Poland and Philippines prepared by slowly heating sugar and milk over a period of several hours. Next time you’re in Buenos Aires or any of those other places, try some. That’s an order, not a suggestion.

They’re picking us up at 7:30 for dinner, the show starts at 10 PM so we’ll be back in bed by midnight, ready for the morning trip down to Usuaia and the good ship Octanis. Rather than staying up past midnight, I’ll post the report on the tango show tomorrow.

Antarctica, Here We Come!

January 23, 2024January 23, 2024 ~ admin ~ 4 Comments

Rememberer when we swore, “No more wild and crazy trips? No 12-hour plane rides? No extreme activities? We’re going to act our age!”

Fergitabouit. We’re off to Antarctica, a place we took off the bucket list back in 2018 when we toured Patagonia. The seas are too rough, the weather too cold and who needs to see a stinkin’ penguin, anyway? Someone said the other day, the trip to Antarctica starts smelling like vomit and then smells like the poop of 1,000 penguins.

But . . . It will be our seventh continent (depending on how you count ‘em) and everyone we met on our last trip said, “You gotta do it. The incredible wildlife and scenery make the pain and suffering worth it.”

So here we go, flying on Tuesday, January 30 to Buenos Aires, overnighting there (tango show, anyone?) and then to Ushuaia, Argentina where we board the expedition ship, Viking’s Octanis. From there we sail to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Both are sub arctic locations with their own characteristics and wildlife different from what we’ll see on Antarctica. We’ll spend five days on Antarctica, most days making landings via zodiac boats.

Then the dreaded Drake Passage, said to have the most violent water in the world. The currents from the South Atlantic and South Pacific meet here in the narrow slot between South America and Antarctica. Each ocean has several thousand miles without intervening land mass to build up a good head of steam before they crash into each other. The Southern Ocean, which circulates around the globe at the 50th parallel with no intervening land, contributes to the mayhem. “Hasten, Jason, bring a basin. Never mind Jason, bring a mop,” as Judy’s father used to say.

My erstwhile traveling companion, Judy, having read the above, said, “I don’t want to go!” Never fear. She’ll be there holding the basin for me, in sickness and in health.

I’ll post a couple of maps to give you the lay of the land. As you can see, we, like most cruise expeditions, visit only the northern most tip of Antarctica and set foot on the continent proper on only one landing. Pray for good weather that day!

As usual I’ll be doing daily blog postings, stomach condition and Internet connectivity permitting. If you received daily email reminders from our previous trip to Australia, you should get the daily reminders this time too. If not, and if you want them, shoot me an email or text and I’ll add you to the list.

By the way, I think I’ve fixed the problem where some of you didn’t get daily reminders on our trip to Australia. Seems some of the email providers, like google, blocked my blog emails from even reaching your spam folder. Other providers didn’t. With any luck, I’ve figured out how to get around that problem.

Here’s the world view of our trip. See what I mean about seeing only the tip of Antarctica?

Here’s a closer view of Ushuaia, Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica.

And here’s detail of the three destinations:

We’re Home

December 13, 2023December 13, 2023 ~ admin ~ 4 Comments

We’re home, safe and sound. Return trip went like clockwork.

See you next time!

Jon and Judy

Sydney – December 12, 2023

December 12, 2023December 12, 2023 ~ admin ~ 2 Comments

As great as the chorus performance was last night, today’s city tour was a bust. We rode around town in a van with a half-dozen other tourists. The guide stopped at a park and a couple of viewpoints and told us some stories about the history of Sydney, but if I hear about Governor Phillips and the 11 convict ships, I’m gonna choke. That’s not the guides fault, I suppose, and maybe we’ve just got gethomeitis, but it didn’t work for me. Other than the stops it was difficult to see anything and to appreciate what we were seeing.

Our guide did drop a few interesting tidbits. Metropolitan Sydney has 300 Km – 180 miles – of shoreline. It’s a big bay with lots of nooks and crannies, giving it a seemingly impossible statistic. There are only 57 private homes in that entire stretch. Sydney is blessed with lots of public parks and, I think he said, over 50 swimming beaches. It’s a good place to live.

Twenty nine years ago, after several mass shootings, the Australian government appropriated enough money to buy back everyone’s rifle and other firearm capable of holding more than two cartridges. Possession of such a weapon now is treated as an act of attempted murder, with a fourteen-year prison sentence. Since the buyback was put in place, spanning 29 years now, Australia has had zero cases of gun violence. He hastened to point out that direct comparison with USA isn’t appropriate, given the different histories of the two countries. Australia has never had gun-slinging cowboys, nor has it had revolutionary or civil wars. Australia just rolled over and played nice with the Brits.

Christmas isn’t as big a holiday as it was when he was a kid (I’d guess he’s 60). He says that scandals in the Catholic Church have decreased attendance. Further, Australia has had a big influx of Buddhists and Muslims from Asia and the Middle East. Parents have complained about Christmas in schools. Times they are a changin’ in Australia as everywhere else.

Sixty five percent of Australia’s federal revenues come from royalties on mining production. That means they can be generous when it comes to providing education, health care and pensions.

The tour ended in The Rocks, a neighborhood right next to our hotel in the Circular Quay. This whole area – Circular Quay and The Rocks, is where Governor Phillips set up the first penal colony in 1888. For the first two years or more the convicts and their guards alike lived in near starvation conditions until they figured out how to grow crops. Virtually none of the convicts had any practical skills such as farming or construction, so the going was tough. Now, it’s a place of tourism. The average visitor probably consumes enough calories in a day to feed a convict for a month. We’ve each been good for two convicts for a month.

We toured the Rocks, a fairly compact neighborhood and, as is our custom a) got an ice cream cone to hold us until lunch time; b) bought souvenirs to take home to the Fam and c) went back to the hotel for a 30-minute nap. After the nap, we hit the Executive Lounge here at the hotel for cookies to complete our lunch. Sufficiently fortified, we caught the ferry across the bay and almost to The Gap – the entrance to the harbor from the South Pacific. Our final destination was the beach town of Manly.

Manly is indeed a beach town – think Old Orchard Beach, Maine. T-shirt and souvenir shops, fast-ish food restaurants and lots of kids parading up and down the sidewalks and the beach. Being old folks, we found a comfortable bench in the shade and watched life pass by. An old guy sitting next to us did Sudukos. The next old guy on the beach read a newspaper.

Back across the bay we went, and back to The Rocks for dinner. Having no plan, we found Le Foote, advertising itself as serving mideastern cuisine with a modern twist. Judy had a very nice pork dish and I had Barramundi, a South Pacific fish. The waitress apologized that today’s catch produced 500 gram filets – that’s more than a pound. I gulped, gave it my best but couldn’t eat the whole thing, no matter how good it tasted. “Nice try,” complemented the waitress.

We’re back in the hotel, pretty much packed and planning on a 6:30 AM alarm, breakfast in the Executive Lounge, and an Uber at 8:00. Flight time is 11:50 AM. We change planes in Houston and get to Tampa at 3:18 PM the same day. It’s actually 18.5 hours travel time but the International Date Line gives us back a day.

Judy has put together another video, this one dealing with our time at Uluru. Here’s the link:

https://judyrick.zenfolio.com/australia_videos/hcb496d10#hcb496d10

So, this is the last blog posting for this trip. If I think of it, I’ll make a posting confirming our safe arrival, but don’t get concerned if I forget. ↓

Thanks for traveling with us and we’ll look forward to posting again when we start our trip to Antarctica January 31, 2024.

Sydney Opera House, December 11, 2023

December 11, 2023December 11, 2023 ~ admin

I don’t know where to begin. Last Spring, when we planned this trip, we wanted to include the Sydney Opera House on our itinerary. And what better way to see it than to attend a performance? There were two rock performances, one outside on the steps (Guy Sebastian, if that means anything to you), for December 11. A ballet that had been sold out since last March. And some kids’ choir performance. Kids, yes, but it’s in the main venue and any music is OK as long as we get to experience the Opera House firsthand.

What a mind bending, awe inspiring and inspirational show it was. The show, titled “Gondwana Choirs presents Voices of Angels 2023 – Mystery of the Stars,” turned out to be a Christmas concert put on by kids from, I’d guess six years of age through high school.

The Gondwana Choirs are teen singers, 56 of them, from all over Australia who are selected to come together for two weeks of choir study. They were the foundation of the performance, accompanied by an eight-piece orchestra (adults) and a piano. There were other choirs from around Sydney made up of 34 middle schoolers, and another “training choir” of 221 and 34 grade school kids. Close to 400 in all.

The singing was phenomenal. The program ranged from traditional religious carols (O Holy Night, We Three Kings) and secular choral works to modern (Blackbird by Paul McCartney). Each piece was song by some combination of choirs. And each change of music – uninterrupted by applause – involved a complex choreographed movement of kids from one position to another, all in seemingly random order, no one standing in a line. Changes in lighting accentuated one choral group or another. Middle schoolers in upper ranks of seats would suddenly appear and start singing.

There were two songs performed by the SCC Young Men’s Choir. They were joined by other members of the Gondwana Choir to perform intricate, multi-harmony pieces. One especially effective piece was sung without a conductor. All 56 kids, spread across the entire stage, sang as their adult leader walked off to the wings. They never missed a beat.

The show stealer was the performance by the grade schoolers along with all the other choir members. They paraded in, again in a complex maneuver, wearing holiday hats, to sing Frosty the Snowman and Sleigh Ride. Frosty was reimagined by the pianist to be “Frosty the Snowman-An Inconvenient Truth,“ and included lines, written by the pianist Luke Byrne, such as:

Bad luck Frosty Snowman we’ve got

Different plans you know

We’re gonna put you in the squishy machine

And make a Frappuccino!

But who cares about climate change, we

Like our SUVs.

Just put the air conditioner on and turn it

Down a few degrees.

Ah! That’s better.

Sleigh Ride included a snowball fight among the middle schoolers. As if these kids had ever seen snow before.

The other amazing aspect of the evening was the quality of the acoustics in the Opera Hall. Someone at intermission told us that the hall had recently been modified and that the acoustics are much better than before. To me, every note and every voice was crystal clear and projected throughout the hall.

For Blackbird, the Beetles song, the Gondwana group formed a circle around the orchestra. Half the singers had their back to the audience. The other half were blocked from view by the kids in front. And of course, the orchestra was completely surrounded. Nonetheless, the music they produced was perfectly projected by the hall’s acoustic design.

The hall was packed, not just with adoring parents and grandparents. It’s an annual event and deserves the great reception it received.

Earlier, we had a successful flight up from Melbourne that was smooth but maybe 20 minutes late. No worries for us. We’d been booked for business class, so we enjoyed the Qantas lounge and a nice meal on the two-hour flight. The views of Jackson Harbor (erroneously called Sydney harbor by many) were spectacular and demonstrated the urban sprawl that is Sydney. The Harbor Bridge was constructed to allow Sydney to grow, mostly residentially, on the north side of the harbor. Our taxi driver, a guy from Pakistan who’s lived in Australia since 2014 and who has a girlfriend in Orlando, Florida, was a lot of fun to talk with.

We’re checked into the Marriott Circular Quay hotel and Jeff, our much-traveled son, got us upgraded to the Executive Level with a great view of the Opera House and the bridge. We’re getting spoiled rotten.

Speaking of being spoiled, niece Amy put on to the Aria restaurant, a few steps from the Opera House. They feature a really nice per-concert dinner, set menu with options. In by 5:30, out in time for the 7:00 show. All went well, the food was excellent – we had John Dory, a fish popular in this part of the world, and rightly so. We were getting worried, time wise, and asked the waiter to bring desert and the check so we could make it. “No worries,” and he was right. We at dessert quickly and made it with time to spare.

Judy was equally blown away by our concert experience. Here are her thoughts:

We just had one of the most amazing experiences of my life! We heard a Holiday Concert with 390 children and students from Sydney and all of Australia. The Sydney Opera House is an amazing place with wonderful acoustics and these choirs sounded amazing. The performance went continuously from one piece to the next not interrupted by clapping. I found that the flow of the program was much smoother with the orchestra playing as the performers smoothly moved around the stage and hall. The only other time I have experienced such smooth movements from one piece to the next was at the Tattoo in Halifax.

It was wonderful to experience the Holiday Concert and get me into the Christmas spirit. When they sang O Holy Night it brought tears to my eyes as I realized I was hearing it performed by these beautiful voices in this amazing concert hall! It is an evening I will never forget!

Tomorrow’s our last day of the trip. We’re being picked up for a half-day tour of the city at 8 AM and then will have the afternoon and evening “on our own,” as Viking likes to say when they have nothing for us to do. We’ll probably go to the The Rocks area, nearby.