Club San Fernando, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires is located on the Rio de la Plata, a very large but shallow river that divides Argentina and Uruguay. The further up the river on travels the shallower the water and the more one has to stay within the channel created for the freighters the travel up and down the river. We spent our first week free at the Yacht Club Argentina, downtown Buenos Aires. Most of the yacht clubs in Argentina offer a onetime only free week stay and we gladly accepted the offer. Our first order of business was to clear through immigration, customs and port authorities, which, compared to Brazil, was very easy, though required traveling from one end of town to the other. Our next priority was to lock in a place to park the boat for the next six months. North of Buenos Aires is the Rio de la Plata estuary, an area of forested islands called the Delta, the location of over 20 yacht clubs and marinas. It's an easy 45 minute commuter train ride into downtown Buenos Aires, and it only cost $.35US. We had the names of a few recommended marinas and before the week was up we had arranged to stay at the Club San Fernando.

The Club San Fernando is a very large (50+ acres) sports club that includes 16 clay tennis courts, field hockey and soccer fields, indoor basketball courts, swimming pool, and numerous eating facilities, in addition to the marina. Half of the Club's facilities (soccer fields, acres for picnics and bar-b-que, snack bar) and moorage for the deeper draft boats (3 meters), are on an island across the river, where we are moored. The one major drawback is there are no docks. Boats are tied bow end to an anchor and tied to four posts. To get across the river to the main clubhouse we first have to hail a skiff to pickup us up from the boat and take us to the island dock and then take a shuttle boat from the island to the main Club area. We packed away our inflatable dinghy to preserve it from sun damage. We have concluded that we need to obtain a small skiff that we can power with our outboard allowing us to come and go on our own, including across the river or explore other spots on the river.

I (Nancy) have been in Southern California the last two weeks visiting my mother. I've also been purchasing needed items for the boat that are hard to get in Argentina. Mark has been busy trying to capture the rat that has been on board for over a month. We first noticed our little friend in Pariapolis, Uruguay but thought it had left by the time we were on our way to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, that was not the case and we kept finding evidence of his presence in every cubby hold on the boat. We set poison and rat traps but to no avail. Since I've been gone Mark has managed to isolate our friend to the outside but he's still around. If it wouldn't chew things, would eat what we put out for it and behaved itself we could live with it, but it is so destructive and we still don't know what damage it may have done to all those places we can't get to. Mark has even rigged a boobie trap, a large container of water to fall, something he remembered from Home Alone.

Within a week of my return (March 22nd) we will be leaving on a land trip to Patagonia. We plan on traveling down the East Coat to visit the few anchorages that will be available to us on the Argentine coast. Then cross over to the border with Chile, heading north to Bariloche and back to Buenos Aires. We won't have the opportunity to visit the interior areas later as we cruise down the coast. Later in the year we'll take a trip to the NW border with Bolivia and Chile. And with the easy access to Buenos Aires we hope to explore the many neighborhoods and sites of the city.