I have to tip my hat to the Buenos Aires Holland America crew. This has been the smoothest cruise I have ever taken - at least in the getting there part - to include all of the liveaboard dive trips. We came downstairs in the hotel to identify our bags and be told which bus we were on, which, for us, was Bus 3. It left very nearly on time, perhaps 5 minutes late, and we zipped down to the port. No need to reclaim and turn in our bags, all was already done. From there, we expected to wait for at least 2 hours, a la the departure in Genoa, but to our surprise we were through the inprocessing and in our stateroom within 40 minutes. Our stateroom is the port-most stateroom on the stern, so we have a nice, wide lanai, and a great view out at what was pretty much muddy water in the BA port.
We met up with our friends from the last Geek cruise, Ivan and Sue, on the bus, and then made plans to meet for lunch on the Lido deck. One thing that we are pleased about here is that for the first two days, Holland America has us under a virtual quarantine given the recent bout of GI problems on cruise ships, so their staff serves the meals. No view of people loading up their trays with tons and tons of food, simple, healthy portions on one plate instead. Nice. Now, there’s nothing stopping you from going back for seconds, and there’s that soft ice cream machine near the back....
We stayed talking, planning excursions, dinners, and eventually all things Mac, for about 2 hours, and then headed to wait for the safety drill. Now done without life preservers, the safety drill took all of 14 minutes! And then we were off exploring the rest of the ship before the Mac Geek welcome reception.
Dinner was at assigned seats, and we sat with two couples from Canada, one pair of which was on our last Geek cruise. They remembered our Mele Kalikimaka shirts, and were wearing aloha shirts of their own! Nice conversation about travel, differences between Canada and Hawaii, world politics and their side trips to Iguazu Falls. And we felt the engines of the boat starting and watched it moving backwards out of the port. I have to say we are really looking forward to the rest of this trip.
After some ship exploring, it was 11 pm, so we headed to the cabin, where we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the ocean behind us, and the rocking motion of the ship. It’s good to be on vacation!
