Paid Up at Club Argentino

Beach and Tourist Area

Naval Base and Harbor

After the long computer session this morning I decided take advantage of the bright sunny weather to make the visit to the headquarters of Club Argentino and make a payment on my stay at their slip.  Thanks to Jorge I had a rough idea of where it was and when the man at the local office gave me the directions in Spanish I was able to understand him amazingly well.  By the time I set out after a quick light lunch the clouds had closed in again.  It was a walk of about 4 or 5 kilometers past the naval base to the beach area that Jorge had taken me on his motorcycle.

The club building is a solid one in the art deco style.  The front door was locked but two men asked me my business then one led me down the stairs to the office.  On the way I could see that it was an elegant and exclusive looking club.  Fortunately one of the young ladies in the office spoke very good English because the transaction was a little more complicated than I had expected, and my blog to which I put so much time and effort was a big help.  They needed to know the exact day of my arrival to MdP so I passed my boat card and pointed out the URL of my blog.  Soon she was scanning through the blog, with me giving directions from the counter, and found my date of arrival.  Then she needed to know the day when I had berthed the boat at their slip  so it was back to the blog. 

The result is as follows.  The current charge is $2.50 USD per meter of boat per day, resulting in $30 USD per day, so I paid for the last 9 days of March, the 30 days of April, and up to the 17th of May, which is when my current visa expires.  The total charge was 7,411.55 pesos which using an exchange rate of 4.37 came out to $1696 USD.  (That didn't include the charge for electricity for the days in April because that is paid by the whole month.)  That worked out to 131 pesos per day which from memory is 8 or 9 pesos a day cheaper than Club Nautico.

They had asked me how long I planned to stay and I told them that I wasn't sure.  The Prefectura had told me that I could extend my visa by 90 days on request and when that happened I would be back to see if I could extend my stay at the club.  They saw no problem with that, so I'm confident that I'll be secure here at Club Argentino until the middle of August.  Before then the major work on the boat would have hopefully been completed and I hope to move on to Brazil to escape the remaining part of winter and get a taste of sub tropical cruising around Angra Des Reis.

Included are two panoramic photos that I took on the way back to the boat.  One covers the beach area, the white Club Argentino building in the center, and the tourist district to the left.  Jorge took me up that road and it is a very nice section of town with splendid views of the coast.  To the right of the club building are the blue-roofed beach shelters.  (They look very English to me but don't compare to the Mexican palapas.)

The other photo is to the SE, showing the naval base.  There are two submarines on the far side of the base.  On the other side of the base is the small boat harbor where Pachuca is tied up.