Alita - Sail your dreams: 2012-12-02

06.12.2012

05.12.2012

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