Letter from Atlantia February 2009

Over half the time we had on the M.V. Amsterdam was spent at sea, which in our opinion is the major point of a cruise. We did however visit a number of interesting places and indeed had a ‘post cruise tour’ to the Iguazu Falls, of which more later.

The wind was blowing up to 30 knots as we left Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, but the seas were relatively calm and the stabilisers on the ship worked well. It was hardly noticeable we were at sea, and although the albatrosses and giant petrels dropped behind, the weather became distinctly warmer as we headed north. It took two and a half days to cover the 1100 miles between Port Stanley and the Rio de La Plata. We awoke on the morning of December 30th to see the water almost flat calm, but a very brown muddy colour. We were passing a light ship at the entrance to the one way channel up the river to Buenos Aires. The buoys marking the channel (red to starboard!) were close to on either side and we were told there was less than ten feet of clearance between our hull and the bottom. It was a good job the river pilot knew where he was going.

Buenos Aires is a modern bustling city, quite similar to the centre of London in many ways, with tall skyscrapers and elegant 19th Century buildings. There is a large boulevard down the centre of the city though, called the Avido 9 de Julio (the Avenue of the 9th July. We never did find out why) It is a little like the Champs Elysee in that it is wide and extremely difficult to cross. We had to cross it in two leaps over the twelve lanes of traffic and car parking under a grass and tree lined strip in the centre. There are modern buildings on either side of the avenue, with a beautiful early 20th Century theatre looking a bit like the National Gallery in London.

The city almost had a European feel to it, although the politics here have more of a medieval flavour about them, with hero worship, plotting, silly wars, and thousands of people who were quietly ‘disappeared’. The latter occurred in the nineteen seventies, when young people were apparently murdered en masse by the ruling military powers. A bleak time for Argentina.

The country is now ruled by a democratically elected government and the President is an attractive lady, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner.

There are pictures of her, and other world leaders out side the Presidential Palace, The Casa Rosada, where Eva Peron used to wave to the crowds in the early 20th Century. She died of cancer at the age of 33 and her tomb is very elaborate, amongst many other incredibly elaborate tombs, in the best cemetery in the city. Margaret visited the tomb. Eva Peron’s story of rags to riches has caught the imagination of the whole world, helped of course by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s musical ‘Evita’.

The posh area of Buenos Aires amazed us. In between imposing and stylish high rise apartments and down the leafy avenues amongst the foreign embassies were some large and ornate nineteenth century chateaux. Some are now hotels but others look as if they are still used as private residences, and others are closed up until their owners decide to come up to town for the season.

The European atmosphere prevailed until we heard gunfire, what sounded like a bomb, and then we saw about a thousand armed motor cycle police gathered behind the Presidential Palace. Admittedly the bomb could have been London, when we lived there in the 1970’s, but the others were definitely South American flavours!

The old docks, which are rather similar to a miniature version of those in the east end of London, have been nicely restored, and we had an excellent coffee and pastry for lunch in one of the modern waterside cafes. There are a few historic ships in the docks as well as the yacht club, with some nice yachts there.

They are still building alongside the water, and when finished, it will be a stylish area approached by a Calatrava style foot bridge.

We were only given a day to look around Buenos Aires, and a month probably would not have been long enough! We walked until we dropped, although our walking boots did get a very nice brush up very inexpensively by a man on a street corner.

Besides our sightseeing we managed to buy a leather Argentinean style hat for Will which is very comfortable, and will add to the growing collection of hats from around the world.

We also bought too much wine which had to be carried back to the ship in two large carrier bags; about a mile. They were carried because we had run out of taxi money, buying the wine! Never mind, It was an excellent pre dinner tipple for the remainder of our trip. We cast off our lines again in the evening, to make our way down the Rio de La Plata to Montevideo. It is certain we passed the resting place of the Graf Spey during the night, but there is little to see there nowadays, except a wreck buoy.

The Montevideans were very good to the Allies during the second world war, delaying the Graf Spey so long in port, that in the end there was no escape, and she could either be surrendered or scuttled. She was scuttled with no loss of life. We met a charming man with excellent English, selling gold jewellery and large purple amethysts from a stall in a leafy city square. He was recommending the work of a local jewellery work shop, run by a Jewish family, that made and restored the rings for the Roman Catholic Bishops in South America. Nothing but the best for the Catholic church; very egalitarian nowadays.

We had lunch in the timber lined ‘Café Brasilero’, where the waitresses and waiters had the same uniform and were very efficient with excellent food.

Other than that Montevideo is a dump! On New Year’s Eve rather a dangerous dump, since in the afternoon, the inhabitants have the endearing habit of throwing water from the balconies and out of the windows of high rise apartments onto the pedestrians below, whilst the police look on and smile. Admittedly it dampened down the dust emanating from the crumbling nineteenth and twentieth century facades, but we started to understand the warning, given by our jewellery salesman, that he was going to pack up his stall in the park early, otherwise, after lunch, he would apparently have had his table cleared for him , for no payment.

Graffiti starts to show its ugly head again, almost everywhere here and the Rambla Gran Bretana, which should be a beautiful seaside walk, turns into a crumbling and uneven pavement with an old falling down gun emplacement and a propped up canon pointing inland. It’s a pity its not in working order, it might brighten the place up if it was fired.

Montevideo is more like a South American Larache, and Larache is the slum of Morocco. Montevideo has no saving grace, such as Larache’s Garden of the Hesperides and it is dangerous (two of our friends were robbed at knife point). If you are thinking of going to Montevideo for any reason, don’t. It is not worth the taxi fare from one side of the town to the other, let alone an airfare or ship’s ticket. They revere their cowboy (gaucho) and the dusty trail. Enough said.

A thousand miles further north lies Rio de Janeiro. The voyage there, taking two days, was uneventful, except for the fabulous meals on board and surprisingly the best pheasant dish ever tasted by Will, which includes a pheasant dish in a very famous Scottish restaurant. It is not surprising that few people write of voyages nowadays. On the Amsterdam there was little to see outside the boat except white horses and sky with a number of rain clouds. On Atlantia we could tell you of the roller coaster, nail biting, white knuckle trips up and down the huge sea swells, whilst, communing with dolphins, whales, sea birds and floating jelly fish, and avoiding the crashing waves coming over the deck whilst we all cling to each other, including the boat, to support our lives. It isn’t really like that on Atlantia either, but it is very much more possible and believable on such a small boat as ours! More of our own sea time later. We reached Rio de Janeiro early in the morning and it is indeed a sight to behold. Denuded volcanoes, leaving only their worn granite cores, poke out of other mountains around, whilst the tall buildings and long beaches of the city support them like piles of sand piled up to support wooden posts or individual road side rocks.

There were three cruise ships coming alongside our dock almost at the same time. It must be admitted their seamanship was excellent, and all seemed to manage into their small spaces very smoothly. Although it is called The River of January, there isn’t really a river, although it was first landed on in January 1502 (mid summer) by Portuguese explorers.

Brazil of course is Portuguese, since the Pope, in about 1494, decreed that all lands discovered in the Southern New World west of about 50 degrees west, would be Spanish, and to the east (Africa etc.) would be Portuguese. He didn’t know it at the time but Brazil fell into the eastern category, thus depriving the Spanish of the rest of South America. Brazil occupies about half of the land mass of South America and is very important for its gems and its forests as well as silver and gold and other metals. It is also self sufficient in oil and has a very rich farmland, especially in the south. It has been a republic since 1889 and seems to have suffered little of the turmoil that other countries in South America have been through. (The ex Spanish ones). Rio de Janeiro reflects its country. To us, on a very short visit, it reflected industry and fun, although the graffiti artists had been up here as well adorning some of the less lovely buildings and not beautifying them at all. Generally though, Rio de Janeiro was, to us, an exciting place. We walked the length of Ipanema beach. You will remember the bosanova song “the girl from Ipanema”. Well, she is about 80 now, but is still sort after at dinners etc. Her daughter is not so well endowed apparently, but no doubt her great grand daughter will have songs written about her. Ipanema beach was saturated with bodies and bikinis, both top and bottom were all there when you could see them.

Copacabana beach has a bad reputation for robbery, but we had no problem here. We sat at a beach café for lunch and enjoyed the sights of people swimming, playing volleyball (with their feet), flying kites and generally having fun. We swam in the water but found it a little chilly.

The famous Carnival of Rio only really takes place down one boulevard as far as we can tell, although we were there at the wrong time of year for the actual event, which is around now. The boulevard itself is unimpressive with unadorned concrete grandstands on one side. They say the magnificent costumes make up for the colour and we could certainly believe it. They need to.

Our very few days in Rio were punctuated by three days going to the Iguazu falls. Despite the number of people joining us for the view, they were spectacular. One third of the falls are in Brazil and the other two thirds are in Argentina, on the other side of the river The grandeur of the scenery almost obliterated the thousands of tourists viewing these wonderful waterfalls .They are spread over the length of about a mile and a half, and although only falling about 200 feet, they carry the largest volume of water, over vertical falls, in the world. The longest continuous sheet of water and definitely a larger drop is on the Victoria falls in Southern Africa, although it does not carry as much water. Niagra falls regrettably comes a very poor third, although was still spectacular thirty years ago when Will was there.

We also saw a type of cormorant local to the area, the Anhinga.

There were toucans flying, and a well camouflaged heron standing only yards from the tourist trail. There were colourful blue browed jays in the trees.

We also saw a cayman alligator sunning itself on a rock just below the tourist walkway. It was no doubt hoping a tourist would fall in.

We stayed in a colonial style hotel on the Brazilian side of the falls, which are between Argentina, and Brazil with Paraguay just down the river.

The food was excellent, if expensive, and we were assured that all the rich and famous had stayed there, including Princess Diana. The hotel was being refurbished at the time we were there, but it was still delightful to sit on the terrace with the local rum drink, full of limes, and to see across the lawns and trees to the thundering water, and to watch the toucans jumping from branch to branch.

We took a boat ride! Not any old boat ride, but one that went right up to, and underneath the Brazilian Falls. We were warned we would get wet, and had changed into our swimming costumes for the occasion, together with the necessary, but fortunately not required, life jackets.

The boat was a twenty five foot rib with a very large outboard motor on the stern, and carried about 25 people.

Fortunately our helmsman/ skipper was extremely able and steered us between various cataracts to reach the bottom of the major falls, and indeed to poke our bow, (where Will was), under one of the areas of the falls themselves. It was lucky we had a waterproof and shockproof camera with us. It still works.

As if all that excitement wasn’t enough we went to a bird park before catching our plane back to Rio de Janeiro. The Red Ibis are spectacular.

The park was started by an Englishman in 1994 and covers about 17 hectares of natural second growth jungle.

Most of the aviaries which house the birds are about 8 metres high and the birds fly freely about within them, including Macaws.

The essence of the aviaries is to house rare or suffering birds which are in need of care and rejuvenation before being set free to the wild if possible, such as the Golden Conures.

There are over 500 species of birds here. About a third are threatened species. There are also anaconda snakes, although they weren’t in an aviary we could walk into!

We flew the 800 miles back to Rio de Janeiro. We had left the cruise ship before our trip to Iguazu and so we stayed at hotels for our last two nights. We stayed one night at a hotel provided by Holland America (who own the M.V. Amsterdam) on the Sao Conrado beach.

The beach was lovely and we saw hang gliders and paragliders land on the sand, having come all the way from the top of the nearby mountain. The hotel was appalling being poorly furbished and on the edge of a Barrio (slum!). We moved.

For our last night we went to the sumptuously appointed hotel, the Sofitel Copacabana, and our balcony looked over Copacabana beach, spectacular, although the currents produced some interesting brown swirls in the water, and we saw a cadaver being air lifted ashore beneath a small police helicopter!

We had a view of Sugar Loaf mountain which we scaled to the top. Not so much scaled as went up in the cable car, which in itself was toe tingling. We made it though, as have millions of people before us since 1912, and when we reached the top of this pinnacle of rock, there were the candy floss sellers

. Admittedly they were unobtrusive and the coffee from the café was first class, but it was all Margaret could do to prize Will’s hands off the railings and into his pockets for the payment. The top is just the right height for vertigo, no wonder the vultures were wheeling around.

After such a wonderful trip the flights back to Cartagena were somewhat of a disappointment and perhaps more like our original expectations. The same airline, Avianca, but their oldest planes. The seats on two of the longer flights, to San Paulo and then to Bogata, where broken and uncomfortable and the organisation on ground, especially at Rio de Janeiro, was chaotic. They even had to have a small piece in their in flight magazine saying that the good traveller does not complain whilst on board. We didn’t, but if Will hadn’t caught a bug from the inedible food on one of the flights, and been laid up for a week on Atlantia following our return, then we would have sent a sharp letter to the Managing Director of the Airline. As it was, two days in bed was enough to calm down, especially since the airline is supposed to be replacing its decrepit MacDonald Douglases with European Airbuses (such as we had on the way down). Maybe the new planes will help the overworked ground staff as well. Thus the ups and downs of modern travel. Atlantia is starting to gleam. She has been in the yard here in Cartagena, for about a week and has now had the topsides repainted. She is presently covered in tape, paper and plastic, but her shining self will be revealed in our next letter. Hope you are well.

Love Atlantia.