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Doors of Buenos Aires, Argentina – March 4, 2018

We began our tour of Buenos Aires at La Recoleta Cemetery, where many famous Argentinians are buried, including the Eva Peron. This cemetery was rated by CNN in 2013 as one of the 10 most beautiful cemeteries in the world. As you can see from the featured image, there are walkways lined with crypts, each one trying to be more beautiful than the next.

Eva Peron’s crypt is small and less gaudy, although the people often bring flowers to decorate it.

Here is the plaque next to the crypt door:

Here are a few more pictures of some of the older crypts:

Each crypt plot has a family owner. The cemetery is completely full, so if you want to be buried there, you need to negotiate the sale of an existing crypt plot. You can then have yourself or a family member buried in the existing crypt, or you can tear the crypt down and build a new one more to your liking.

Our tour then moved to the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires to a small but colorful area called Caminito, where the building are painted in pastel and even some brighter colors, with artistic depictions of people hanging out of windows or standing on balconies.

Here are a couple of pictures of the neighborhood to give you a bit more flavor, even though they do not feature specific doors.

There are also many huge bank buildings in Buenos Aires. Here is a door from one of those building located across from the La Casa Rosada (the executive mansion and office of the President of Argentina):

Here is an image of La Casa Rosada:

Our next stop will be Montevideo, Uraguay. Stay tuned.

This will be the first of a series of posts that document our South American cruise on the ms Zaandam from Holland America Lines. The featured image is the Albatross Memorial sculpture on the top of Hornos Island. The sculpture was unveiled in 1992 as a memorial to all of the sailors that lost their lives trying to round Cape Horn. This is a notoriously dangerous sea passage where you pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean if heading west. It is famous for its many storms and high waves rolling in from Antarctica, nearly 1,000 kilometers to the south.

Here is a picture of a real albatross in the water beside our ship.

Here is the point where we are about to make the ocean-to-ocean crossing of of this smaller island:

Here is a short movie of the crossing. The captain sounded the horn at the exact moment we crossed into the Pacific Ocean:

In the next several days, I will start posting from the beginning of our trip, which started in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I hope you all follow along. Comments are always appreciated.