Happy New Year everyone

We want to wish all our blog followers a great evening and a wonderful,
happy and healthy New Year!
I just made "Vanillegipferl" (cookies) for late christmas and
celebrating the upcoming new year. We're still at anchor near Puerto
Madryn and will leave tomorrow morning.

All the best to all of you
Michaela and Marcus

Puerto Madryn

> I safely arrived in Puerto Madryn yesterday where Marcus and Hanno picked me up from the bus. Oh my god I had so much luggage because of all the stuff and spare parts I brought for the boat. Bags on board, back to land for a walk and for the first grocery shopping. 2days trip to here, wow. But all went well.
Now we're sticking up more food and then back on board. Last night I slept very well on the boat. Just a knock out, although I slept all the way on the plane and the bus.
> Tomorrow night a strong wind is predicted. We'll move the boat to the southern part of the bay and head off afterwards. We already checked out at the prefectura naval (coast guard). So far for now. Happy new year to everyone!

I safely arrived back in Buenos Aires

and am now on my way to Puerto Madryn to Marcus, Alita and Hanno...

My christmas present

Oh, I have waited sooooo long for a Bretzl!!!

Happy second christmas day

Merry christmas and a happy new year

I would like to take the chance to thank everybody, who reads this, for following us on the blog(s). We hope you enjoyed participating on our journey by reading our texts and looking at all the pictures. There were a lot of pictures, I know, but there was just so much to see.....

I (and for sure also Marcus) wish you all a wonderful and peaceful Merry Christmas

and a happy and healthy new year.
I hope you can look back to 2012 smiling at all the good things that have happened and being able to f... (ahem, forget) all the bad things just like this guy,

 yet taking into account that both - good and not so good - are part of our lives and make us grow and treasure every wonderful second we're alive and healthy.

Last pictures of Buenos Aires

Now it's been a week since I left Buenos Aires to travel to LA, see family and dance like crazy. I just came across some pictures of Buenos Aires which were still in my little camera. I took them on my last day, strolling over the market of San Telmo where I needed to get an old license plate for my brother. Enjoy.

 I bought the CD of this great guitar player

 and of this super good band.

 Did not know my brother owns (or used to own?) a production company

 There is no limit to creativity. Here: handpuppets, made from sponge material.

 Vintage clothing store.

 View over a part of the street with the market

 a demonstration going on

 Boy the smell was good. If there is something the Argentinans are good at it's BBQ!

 Here the license plate I got for Alex from the year of 1940. Full of rost.

 Marcus and my christmas dinner at the Puerto Medero Grill. Of course a Quilmes beer can't be missing. Marcus loves it.

Puerto Medero at night

In the meantime I am regaining strength here in LA being able to dance the soul out of my body

 and was able to get lots of stuff we need for the boat which we were not able to get anywhere else. So this trip to LA is not pure pleasure and inspiration, it's also business ;-) while Marcus and Christian are sailing down the coast to Puerto Madryn. Actually they should arrive there within hours from now. We have been communicating a lot so that every day I knew they were ok. Only one stronger wind with gusts around 50kn hit them, but they were prepared, and Alita safely swang them through the waves. To be honest I really need this break and it fills me up with energy for the next long part of our trip, but of course I miss Marcus and Alita, especially when I am at the ocean here. I so much hope my dream comes true and one day the three of us will arrive under sails here in LA. Sailing home after a long journey.

View from dance studio

Hollywood hills..

Energy in class

Sailing break

Ok, I have to admit I was YERY sad to leave Marcus and Alita for two weeks. It was pouring rain outside and in my heart. Tired from all the running around I stepped abord the United Airlines flight 818 to Houston and after 3 hrs of watching a bit from the choice of 165 movies I fell asleep and lost the time. Next thing I noticed was we were about to land in Houston. Wow. There I had an hour and 20 til the next flight left, but I had to do immigration, pick up bag, customs and check in bah again and hope she makes it to the flight. Houston is a surprisinfly huge airport and of course my departing gate was at the poitn farthest away. Well, I made it just in time including buying a hot chocolate during the transfer run. Once in the plane I half slept again, so next thing I know it was 9am LA and we artived at the gate. I was home with the rental car before 10am and at 1pm I found myself in my first Jazz class at the EDGE Center of Performing arts, the best dance studio in the world. What a great class that was, a wonderful beginning of my two weeks dancing break.
I will continue to miss my two lovers in Argentina, but I will pump a lot of energy into my bidy while I am here and use the chance to express my heart on the dancefloor with beautiful music and chireographies and the energy of wonderful teachers!

My bar in Buenos Aires

I found my bar in Buenos Aires....

Cooooool.

Heavy rain in Buenos Aires

What a rainy day in Buenos Aires today. We had several thunderstorms. In the afternoon I had to go to the ministry of tourism. It never stopped raining, so I went anyway. It poured so badly, that within one hour the streets and sidewalks went from water as high as half the shoe to having to walk through water higher than my knees when crossing the street! As crazy as it might sound: I loved the experience. It's just water. My jacket was good enough, my pants were wet all the way up. But it's warm outside, so no problem. A kayak would have helped me getting around. Someone was cool enough to get his surfboard out!



View news here:

http://www.cadena3.com/contenido/2012/12/06/107057.asp

http://www.larepublica.pe/06-12-2012/fuertes-lluvias-dejan-buenos-aires-inundada

http://www.eldiario24.com/nota/272096/intensa-lluvia-en-buenos-aires-deja-cientos-de-calles-inundadas.html

http://diagonales.infonews.com/Content.aspx?Id=191509

Also there was a toxic gas cloud over the city, caused in the harbour, not even a mile away from where we are. I woke up from a strange smell, which was toxic to me. I thought, we have a fire on the electronics on board and walked through the boat trying to find out, what's wrong. Until I noticed, it comes from outside. I woke up Marcus cause I was worried. Later, when we had the radio on, I heard the news about the toxic cloud. In germany those news where widely spread today.
You can read about it e.g. here in german: 

http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/panorama/gaswolke-in-buenos-aires-verursacht-chaos-1.17875096
 
http://www.fnp.de/fnp/nachrichten/vermischtes/-gaswolke-und-platzregen-verursachen-chaos-in-buenos-aires_rmn01.c.10370868.de.html 

Here even a video about this: 
http://www.spiegel.de/video/buenos-aires-giftwolke-nach-brand-video-1240046.html 

http://www.clipfish.de/special/rtl-news/video/3893947/riesige-giftgaswolke-wabert-durch-buenos-aires
 

Buenos Aires

Many years have passed since I worked here, since I fell in love with this city. So of course I was very anxious to come back here, let alone with a sailboat. What a feeling! Back to the city of Tango, artists and weekend fairs where they sell all kinds of extraordinary hand craft products, proud and well dressed character people... AND: Evita and Casa Rosada of course. And Recoleta, with probably the world's most famous, very spooky cementry and my favourite hancraft market. And and and....And I am happy to be able to fluently speek a language again, my loved spanish language. I got along well with my Portugnol in Brazil, but I always had to think what I say, speek slowly...

Our arrival day, friday Nov. 30th was quite a day. They sent us back and forth. The guys at the Yacht Club forgot to give us a paper which we should have filled out and taken to the Immigration. Instead he sent us to Prefectura. These guys sent us - without checking papers - to Immigration. At the desk at the entry, where there are people who ask you what you need and then send you to the correct station, the guy became big eyes when we told him we had just arrived on a sailboat and need to do the immigration. He had to go and ask someone and then joined us in looking for the place to go in the ministry. We found the small office where a very friendly lady thank god knew about the procedure and immigrated us for 90 days. Oh good, so that went fast. She gave us three copies of a paper, which we were supposed to bring to Prefectura. So we took a Taxi back to the Prefectura cause we did not want to walk 2km in pouring rain. There the guy asked Marcus for his boat "driving" license. Oh, no one has ever asked us for it. So again we had to go back to the boat to grab it. Before tat we asked the guy, if all the other papers are sufficient. His "Si" made us confident we had all. So back to the boat and again to Prefectura. Another guy received us and asked us for "Rol de despacho". What the hell was that? A paper which the Yacht Club should have given to us and which should have been stamped by the Immigration. Oh well. I smiled and listened to all the official had to say about that, the content of the paper, why we should have it etc. When he was finished I asked him "what now"? Well, he had already stamped our papers, we have to show the paper before we leave the harbour and he sent us to Aduana (custom). Just they did not know where this customs is. So he sent us to customs head quaters, 500m away. Ok, we can handle that. once the nice lady at the reception had finished her conversation with a friend she turned her attention to us and almost fell off her chair on the question, where we can do the customs for our Alita. She had no idea, this is definitely not the place. No no no. No idea we have to do something like that. What do you mean, you arrived with a sailing boat? Well, she called a guy and he sent us to the Ferry Buqebus, on the  north end of Puerto Madero, where we had just been for the Immigration. Asking around we finally found a customs guy, who very friendly and again by telling me a long story sent us to the very other end of Puerto Madero into the slum area, about 4 km away. But we should go to the Yacht Club, they shold call them. So we went back to the Yacht Club, where Jorge Naón, chef of the Marineros, was finally present. He contacted Daniel at the customs, 20 Min. to 1pm. Customs closes at 1pm, we ran off, crossed the harbour with the Yacht Clubs boat crossing service, took a Taxi and prayed. At 1:10pm we finally arrived in the worst area you can think of, close to La Boca, at a run down building. The door was closed, the windows locked. I knocked on the door and luckily Daniel had waited for us, so at 1:20 we happily stepped back into the Taxi, which had waited for us. DONE.

Back at the boat to get some rest and catch up with some sleep which te last night of sailing with the thunderstorm in the morning has not allowed us to get. In the evening we went to the center, just a nice walk, to the Obelisk, to breath some Buenos Aires Air.

The air here has become more clean thatn 9 years ago. A lot has changed. I will write about that in my next Blog entry.

Saturday we were lucky to get into Casa Rosada and from there went to Recoleta. Sunday was fair / antiques market time in San Telmo.

Just some pix here, the rest as always in the Photo Gallery.

Shps at anchoron the screen

And outside:

 In front: a cargo ship. Behind: cruise ship MSC Maginfico

Waiting in the harbour for the bridge to open

 Alita in Puerto Madero

 Casa rosada and Banco de la Nación

 View from THE balcony

 Recoleta

 some spooky graves in Recoleta....

 Watching Tango

 Market in San Telmo

 Clothes for Barbie knitted (gestrickt)

See all the pictures here: http://sailing.smichah.de/#35.0