It's moist and cloudy - and really, really warm. Buenos Aires welcomes us with the smell of subtropical green, which mixes with the occasional whiff of industry, as we enter the Terminal Rio de la Plata.
Changeover. Busiest of times, a swirl of groups, lists, guides, buses, announcements, luggage dollies and hand luggages.And then, all of a sudden - silence. The ship is empty. The hustle and bustle of the last 18 days comes to an end quite abruptly. Gone are the faces we got used to, headed home.
Also heading home are most of our colleagues, as now we are turning the wheel towards the North, commencing a near-5000-mile-voyage to the other hemisphere, with only a few stops. So the ship feels twice empty, quite awkward. A mini team, however, remains. And so this shall be the story of FRAM's long ride, at the end of which we will stop in Las Palmas.
The time is just long enough to dash into town and have one of the world famous Argentinian steaks, because in the afternoon our new guests arrive, under the gushing warm rain of South America.
From the size of the welcome cake you can easily tell that it is the opposite of a large crowd - 58 of them set out with us, across the mighty ocean, via Uruguay, Brazil and the Cape Verde Islands. A voyage like none other we do, trying to combine excitement and laziness.
Right now we are checking the weather non stop, hoping that the wind drops enough to enable us to go to pier tomorrow morning.
The gushing rain turns into a serious deluge as we cast the lines in order to "hop" to the other side of the Rio de la Plata.
