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Wednesday, November 11, 2015

A Magical Day Sailing Around Lago Argentino

I had quite an adventure yesterday. I rode a bus out of town to a dock area on Lago Argentino that is the largest lake in Argentina. I boarded a very modern 3-level catamaran for a ride around this huge lake. We were sailing from 08:30 to 14:15. We rode up to the largest glacier in Argentina, Upsala. It is three times the size of the Perito Moreno glacier that I viewed on Sunday. It is also three times the size of the land area of the city of Buenos Aires. I like to describe glaciers as giant ice cubes in the water. When you close to one of them, you get freezing cold. That was the case yesterday. I'm sure that the temperature dropped below zero Fahrenheit. We spent a lot of times around the glaciers taking pictures and observing. There were also quite a number of icebergs in the water. You have to bear in mind that when you see an iceberg floating on the water 90% of it is below water. I thought back to the HMS Titanic some 103 years ago. It was roaring "full speed ahead" through the North Atlantic at night. Visibility was limited. The ship scrapped an iceberg and that made sad history. Fortunately we were sailing at extremely low speeds in daylight with very good visibility except when it rained. Our captain also had a wonderful piece of technology that the captain and crew of the Titanic did not have so long ago-a digital sonar system. If our boat had it an iceberg and started to sink, it would have been a disaster. That water in the lake is just as cold as the North Atlantic long ago. Anyone who hit that water would be dead in more or less five minutes. Fortunately we had a good captain and crew. We made it back safely.

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