Why I cried for Argentina

Just in case any of my regular readers are wondering whether I would make it safely to Argentina – you can relax. I was delivered from Paris to Buenos Aires by a bumpy 13-1/2 hour flight, and I have spent the afternoon strolling along its graceful tree-lined boulevards and the teeming pedestrian shopping street that is Florida.
The most moving moment of the day came as I watched the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo slowly processing round the square in remembrance of their children, who disappeared during Argentina’s “dirty war” – the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
They and their supporters (above) are here every Thursday, as they have been for more than 30 years, demonstrating in the shadow of the Casa Rosada, the pink-painted government building on whose balcony Eva Peron regularly appeared to rally the masses, and from where Madonna sang Evita 50 years later.
Wearing white headscarves embroidered with the names of their missing children, and holding their faded photographs, they walked anti-clockwise round the square for almost an hour as the names of some of the missing – estimates put the total as high as 30,000 – were read out.
Before I fly to Ushuaia on Saturday I’ll be seeing more of Buenos Aires tomorrow. It’s a popular port of call for cruise ships travelling round South America and my friend Captain Albert Schoonderbeek was here for two days earlier in the week with Holland America’s Prinsendam.
We last met when he brought the ship into Greenwich in July and although we just missed each other this time, he was kind enough to send me a message:
“Enjoy your time on the Via Australis. I saw her in Ushuaia, nice new looking ship. She was landing guests on Cape Horn island when I disembarked the pilots there.”
Fingers crossed the weather will be good enough for a landing when I get there.