The Costa Fascinosa berthed next door. They’re doing a crew lifeboat drill.
Cruise ships are parked beside the city’s container ship depot and you can walk three blocks into the old city. There are plazas every few blocks with grass and trees. And birds. Queen Victoria never did come through with a private bird tour, but I did pretty darn good on my own for free.
In each plaza grows at least one tree that has been here for ages. Huge trunks, spreading canopies. In one, the Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala Plaza (obligatory statue and plaque), a huge, dark, yew-like evergreen has monk parakeet nests. They are bristly globs of sticks, three feet across, with a hole in the middle. As I watched, a parakeet brought a long, narrow twig to do a little home improvement. She jammed the twig up into her nest, let go of it and took hold of it farther down, forced it farther, forced it farther until it was even with all the others.
Two other parakeets are already parents. The nestlings get very, very noisy when one of the parents comes near. Little leatherlungs.
Dog park. Very politely the sign says in Spanish “pick up that which your dog has made, approximately.”
Brown-breasted martins, which are swallow relatives and fly like swallows, are also nesting. They built a nest of mud, much like cave swallows or barn swallows, only it’s about ten inches in diameter and roughly spherical. Of course there’s a hole in it and a little nestling head sticks out now and then. The hooker: The nest was built on the flat, narrow surface of the top of a light pole. You have this light pole with a glob on the tippy top.
Down on the Atlantic shore, a dozen snowy egrets in breeding plumage (that is, with ragged white plumes, called eigrettes, coming off the backs of their heads; they look like they should comb their eigrettes) were standing around. On another hillock on the shore, a couple neotropical cormorants were also standing around trying to look dignified. And out beyond the egrets, Kelp Gulls were gathered. According to the book, Kelp Gulls are aggressive and pushy. I believe it, because a lone Grey-hooded Gull was keeping off to himself, either snubbing them or being snubbed.
The junkyard
Our port side is at the dock. Beyond our starboard side is a breakwater, and just beyond the breakwater is where they dump their marine rubbish of dead boats. Dozens of boat and ship hulks, some floating, some not, are heaped together, waiting for the cutting torch.
In this harbor is where the Graf Spee took refuge from British warships. Her anchor has been retrieved and is used as a monument to the Battle of the River Plate, which is worth looking up. The Graf Spee was damaged in an encounter with the British and took refuge up the La Plata, intending to find repair facilities. The British sent an easily decoded message that super-duper warships were in the area waiting for the German warship to leave harbor and then they would pounce. It was a lie; there weren’t any; but the German ship believed it. They scuttled their ship rather than let it fall into enemy hands. Most of it is still down there.
It is now early the next morning and we have crossed the La Plata estuary, approaching Buenos Aires. Should anyone ask you, you can reply with authority that “Why yes, the Amazon River and the River Plate are indeed the same colour.” Tell them I said so.