Back to Buenos Aires for a little Tango and a boat ride in the Parana Delta

It took most of the day to fly from Ushuaia back to Buenos Aires.  We spend just one night here before starting the post-trip portion of our adventure--Easter Island.

Dinner was at a restaurant in the commercial district of Buenos Aires.  It is a Farewell Dinner, as 4 members of our travel group will be heading back to the states tomorrow.

The restaurant was located right next to the Puente de la Mujer (Spanish for "Woman's Bridge"), quite beautiful all lit up at night.

It is a rotating footbridge.   It has a single mast with cables suspending a portion of the bridge which rotates 90 degrees in order to allow water traffic to pass.

After dinner it was on to a Tango Show!

It was fun to watch professional Tango dancers tell a story through their dance.

It was a far cry from what we looked like when we had our Tango lesson!

 I don't remember learning this step....

Or these steps!

The next day we packed up to leave Buenos Aires and meet up with our local guide, Pablo, who gives us a tour of the Recoleta Cemetery and also the Parana Delta before we head to the airport.

Our first stop is the Recoleta Cemetery.

It contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Peron, presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners, the founder of the Argentine Navy, and a granddaughter of Napoleon.

When Argentina’s wealthy and powerful rest for eternity, they do it in style.

Recoleta cemetery is one of the world’s most extraordinary graveyards, with over 900 grandiose mausoleums covering 15 acres.

No one goes to Recoleta cemetery without a visit to Evita’s grave. By Recoleta standards, however, it is quite plain.

Pablo briefly explained the history of Juan and Eva Peron.  Some people loved them; others hated them.  Three years after former First Lady Peron died of cancer in 1952, her body was removed by the Argentine military in the wake of a coup that deposed her husband, President Juan Peron. The body then went on a transatlantic journey for nearly twenty years before finally being returned to the Duarte family mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery.

She now lies in a crypt five meters underground, heavily fortified to ensure that no one can disturb the remains of Argentina’s most beloved and controversial First Lady.

Then off we went to the Parana River Delta for a cruise on the river.  The Parana River empties into the Rio de la Plata on its way into the Atlantic, forming a huge delta.

What makes the Parana Delta unique is that it doesn’t empty into an ocean or sea like all the world’s other great deltas do. The Parana is the only river delta on earth that empties into another river—in this case, the Rio de la Plata. No other river on earth has formed a delta into fresh water.

With rains the river will run high, so houses are built on stilts.

Many of these homes are vacation homes.  The only way to reach them is by boat.

Then it was off to the international airport for flight to Santiago, Chile, where we spend the night before flying to Easter Island, 2300 miles off the west coast of Chile.

To continue reading, scroll up towards the top of this page and click in the right-hand column the entry entitled:  Easter Island and the 900 mois.