Spring Moon of the Southern Cross
38 degrees 1 minute S 55 degrees 26 minutes W
Nearing Buenos Aires, off the coast near Mar del Plata, a family resort area for South Americans
Over a month now we’ve been onboard the Veendam. Going to sleep with the gentle rocking of the ocean and waking up to its expanse has become common place.
Breakfast and lunch happen on the Lido deck while dinner comes to us on white linen tablecloths at our table 31 in the Rotterdam dining room. Since it overlooks the stern, we watch sunset each day over dinner, perhaps catch a cargo ship or another cruise ship in the distance.
If we need something else, we show our room key and it goes on the tab.
Kate seems ready to sail on beyond Rio, the absence of domestic and medical duty allows her to relax in a way she find impossible at home.
I’m finding the lack of stress a bit dull, wanting to gain some traction in the day-to-day. The shore excursion gambit has grown stale and I’ve read through 6 or 7 novels now.
Cruise ships try to account for this kind of drift toward home by having different kinds of things to do: movies, cooking lessons, the casino, shopping, trivia contests, the spa, swimming pools and basketball courts. Neither Kate nor I warm up to these kind of things much.
We’re both introverts and the constant presence of other people drains our energy, requiring time in the cabin or on the deck in our deck chairs away from other passengers.
This is not by way of complaining, just being descriptive.
If we had another month to go, I would start writing stories, perhaps doing some more research into oceanography. I knew this last topic would fascinate me while we were on the ship, but I failed to find a reasonable cost general introduction with good maps of the ocean floor and of the many currents.
Anyhow we’re now three ports from the end of the cruise: Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rio.
At Rio we will disembark and take a taxi to our Tulip hotel a block from the Ipanema Beach and two nights later board a flight for home.
