Antarctic Cruise part one

Twenty months after booking this Antarctic Cruise on the Celeberity Infinity with a 2 night stay in Buenos Aries, Argentina,  on February the 11th, Sue and I were at Heathrow Airport ready for the almost 14 hour flight to Pistarini Airport, Buenos Aires.  I almost always say in my blogs 'after an uneventful flight' - but not on this occasion!  We must have had, on and off, about 5 hours of turbulence, which at times was pretty bad - some people had even fainted during some of it! We landed on time at 9.05am, but did not get off the aircraft till nearly 10 o' clock, as a lady had fallen ill during the flight, and we had to wait for her to be stretchered off  by paramedics (hope she was ok!). We had no problems going through border control, and soon after, we had our luggage and was on our way to our hotel, which we got to about 11.30am

                                                 Common Gallinule/Moorhen
Not far from our hotel was a nature reserve called the Constanera Sur (it was given this status in June 1986, after years of land being reclaimed using materials from demolished buildings which they stopped in 1984) It covers approx 865 acres with footpaths meandering through it so, after a quick wash and brush-up, we headed for the Sur where we had a slow walk down the paved promenade. The pools are just the other side of a small wall which followed the promenade. Sue and I were pretty pleased  by how many bird were on the water; some more notable were White-tufted Grebe, Silver Teal, Spot-flanked Gallinule, Rosy-billed Pochard and the rather peculiar Southern Screamer. We spent approx 3 hours here, and decided to go back the following day, which we did - but we walked down a footpath on the other side of the pools which had lots more trees and shrubbery. Birds of note here were Green-barred Woodpecker, Picazuo Pigeon, Rufous Horneo, Golden-billed Saltator and Black Hooded Parakeet; what I did note was that there were not many herons - only a couple of Great White Egrets, one Snowy Egret and a Striated Heron, and the only wader was Southern Lapwing - but all the same, what a great few hours at a reserve so close to Buenos Aires town centre!  As you know, I'm not one for listing just lots of birds but we had 52 species here, and below are a few images of some of them.
                                                                   Bay-winged Cowbird

                                                                    Black hooded Parakeet

                                                              Chalk-browed Mockingbird

                                                             Chequered Woodpecker

                                                                    Coscoroba Swan

                                                             Fulvous-Whistling Duck

                                                             Green-barred Woodpecker

                                                               Grey-necked Wood-rail

                                                                     Guira Cuckoo

                                                                       Limpkin

                                                        Monk Parakeet with his lunch

                                                            Narrow-billed Woodcreeper

                                                                Red-crested Cardinal

                                                              Rosy-billed Pochard

                                                              Rufous-collared Sparrow

                                                                    Rufous Hornero

                                                                   Shiny Cowbird

                                                                      Silver Teal

                                                     Southern Screamer, bizzare creature

                                                                Spot-flanked Gallinule

                                                                Rufous-bellied Thrush

Yellow-browed Tyrant

This concludes the first part of our trip - the pre-cruise stay in Buenos Aires; I shall be posting part two when I sort my brain out - which hopefully won't be too long!

As always, thanks for stopping by and see you soon for part two!