Jan. 7-9, 2024
Sea days, for me, are a blend of exercise, blog work and fun social time. I get together with some fellow guitar players – the participants seem to ebb and flow, and the growing Tiktok/Instagram and bloggers group. You may recognize a few of the faces.
We also enjoyed a “lobster” formal night during the last few days.
Our second stop in Argentina was the small city of Puerto Madryn, settled by the Welsh in 1865. For those that wanted to spend 2 ½ hours in small buses each way – you would be rewarded with the amazing cuteness of a penguin nesting ground.
Many said it was worth the trip. John and I looked through the itinerary and it looked like we would have a good chance of seeing penguins with less inconvenience at other ports, so chose to explore the city and have a relaxing day.
We started with a 2 mile walk to the Gemmas museum – a small private museum created by a family of gemologists who love to work the local stones. They have a studio on site and teach local youths the trade. Entry is free, but they do not allow photos in the museum. The owner gave us an orientation using a translator app on his phone. According to him, there are 52,000 different kinds of rocks throughout Argentina – one of the most geologically diverse countries on the planet. The studio mainly works with Inca Rose – rodochrosite – which has swirls of color in the outer stone and a deep pink to red in the center. I loved a pendant in the store – but they didn’t take credit cards.
We wandered back towards town, hoping to get John a new battery for his iPhone 12 mini (which is burning through battery power very quickly even with mild use), but even the Apple Store did not carry replacements. In our journey we encountered our good friends Liam and Alan – Liam found a new hat for the upcoming cold –
We found a Carrefour grocery store – and picked up three bottles of wine for about $10 to bring back onboard.
John hoped to get a massage – we’d been quoted 14,000 pesos (about $14). I dropped off the wine and rested for about an hour and went back out to see if I could find another pendant or jewelry I liked as well as the one at Gemmas. One jewelry store was open (most shops close from 1-5 PM for siesta)- and they had a lovely array of Inca Rose items. The workmanship looked very much like that at Gemmas, and I imagine the person had been trained at the school. I couldn’t decide between 2, which were $30 each – I asked if she could give me a better price if I bought both, which brought the total down to $50 – not bad for a non-haggler.
I reunited with John – he’d tried several massage places, but almost all were closed until 4:30-5pm, so we dropped into an open clothing store- I bought a fleece headband for 4500pesos, and then we stopped in for a really nice dark local beer.
We returned to the ship with about an hour to all-aboard.
History lesson:
In 1807-08, Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula, distracting and weakening the home colonial powers of Spain and Portugal. Inspired by wars of Independence throughout North America, and growing number of slave revolts throughout South America, the colonies took advantage of the distractions. Argentina’s independence from Spain spurred the independence of the South American continent. Although not fully independent until 1816, Argentina transitioned toward independence in 1810 with a provisional government, quickly followed by Paraguay in 1811, Chile in 1818, with most countries independent by 1835 (except for Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana).
The new Argentinian government handled slavery differently – from 1813 onward anyone born to a slave was free, and someone who’d been a slave elsewhere and immigrated to Argentina was also free, but those born prior to 1813 as slaves were not freed until 1853, and even then, the practice continued until 1861 in Buenos Aires. Most slaves brought to Argentina were for work in the mines, some in agricultural and care of livestock, and many as household servants in the larger cities. By the time of independence, close to half of the total population were from Africa or had African ancestry. Like Brazil, racial mixing was encouraged, especially with the many new immigrants from Europe. In 1895, race was removed from the national census, and not reinstituted until 2010. But as the government attempted to whiten the population, black culture became part of the national culture – especially in dance. The term “tango” comes from a meeting where slaves gathered to sing and dance. (Study.com and Wikipedia.org)
