Tigre Delta excursion

 We are now veterans of our first land excursion and, in true cart-before-the-horse fashion, we did it without the virtue of sailing the high seas! (Disclaimer- The facts contained herein are to be taken as one would the facts revealed during a political campaign. Read them/ study them, but don’t take them as gospel. They are based on second hand knowledge, culled from a distorting speaker, connected to a sometimes functional microphone, operated by a fast-speaking tour guide who is rattling off information at a rate roughly 2X the comprehension pace of an aging mind.)

The Tigre River emerges from the Ecuadorian confluence of two rivers (let’s call them A and B, because you C I don’t remember their names). After flowing for hundreds of miles the water turns a yucky brown (apparently because pink was already taken by the flamingos).

The area just north of Buenos Aires is known as the Tigre Delta. It consists of a group of islands formed at the mouth of the river by the silt and mud deposited by the river currents as they spread out and slow. The result is a very unique area where houses are built on stilts (due to frequent flooding), and roads do not exist (due to frequent flooding also, no doubt.) The area has Wi-Fi, TV service, telephone, and electricity. The area is completely devoid of gas and… FRESH WATER. All access is by boat, and boats are the critical link to all other services.

Our tour boat was among the larger boats that travel the canals of the Delta area. Many of the boats were small private transportation. Each house along the banks had a pier/dock with a dock address on most, and/or a name. A water boat patrolled the channels and, on a given schedule, residents would place a receptacle (or two or three) on their pier, to be filled by the water boat. Similarly, services were provided by the Supermarket boat, the bus boat (which picked up both the students and teachers of the school that was perched on a raised promontory at the confluence of two tributaries.) An ambulance boat and police boat can be summonsed in case of emergency. The gas station sat between the road and the canal  near the boat ramps. On one side were pumps to fuel the boats, on the other side were pumps to fuel the cars and delivery trucks.

Apparently, today was garbage pickup day…

Gardening on the dock - interesting!

Unlike most places in Buenos Aires, the real estate here was considered to be affordable (albeit ever changing property boundaries).

Barbie’s Dream House?

This one came equipped with a motor-driven boat lift: 

An elderly gentleman in our tour group suffered a medical emergency which required an ambulance be called to the pier upon our return. Our tour guide was escorting him to a local hospital so, much to their credit, Oceania called for a backup guide to complete the tour, which boiled down to stopping at the Cathedral de San Isidro for an unguided 15-minute photo op, then gathering the group back together at the ice cream parlor across the street.

The 4 hour/half day tour proved to be exhausting but interesting. We returned to the ship and are now preparing for our first cruise launching (aka getting the horse back out ahead of the cart again). We set sail at 6:45 this evening!

BTW, the name of the river, Tigre, is an interesting story. It is the French word/pronunciation for (obviously) “Tiger.”

The first conquerors/invaders of the area were mostly French. When they saw native people’s multiple-colored coverings they reported to their sponsors back home that the skins were that of large, scary, wild beasts and likened them to tigers, never having seen or heard tell of the jaguar before. (Apparently, they knew they weren’t Lamborghinis!) The French bought it hook, line, and sinker, naming the River where these strange beast were found after the mythical Tigre. I guess it’s a good thing the natives weren’t wearing unicorn hides!