Grande Buenos Aires: The Media

Map:
As is common with freighter voyages, the dates and ports of calls of call differed from the first schedule I reported. Not only was the ship late in picking me up from Zarate, but it continued to fall behind schedule as my trip progressed. Sometimes I wonder if the Grimaldi fleet of cargo ships are hands on a watch running out of time as they ever more slowly completely their revolutions.

Here's what ended up happening:
(and it's annotated! Click the link below the map to get full notes and dates)


View Grande Buenos Aires Voyage in a larger map

Videos:
Here are a couple of my favorite videos, but check out my Youtube channel to view all my uploads.

16 day check-in on the Grande Buenos Aires

I rode on the Grimaldi cargo ship The Grande Buenos Aires from August 13 to September 18, 2012. I embarked in Zarate, Argentina and disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium. The ship called on the ports of Santos, Brazil; Vitoria, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; Tilbury/London, the U.K.; Emden, Germany; and Hamburg, Germany. This post was written on August 29, 2012.

Waiting outside the port of Vitoria, Brazil.

By now I have been on the ship for 16 days. When I checked my calendar earlier today, I was a bit surprised: indeed being on the ship feels like inhabiting a timeless space where the day of the week matters less than the schedule of ports of call, yet I feel like the past two weeks have stretched into countless frames of mind and periods of personal growth that temporally feel much longer than 16 days.

It wasn’t until we were about halfway between Brazil and Senegal that I truly adapted to ship life. Before that there would be false starts of feeling good, but good days were usually followed by bad days. Bad days in this sense usually meant not feeling physically 100%. Typically my stomach would be upset after a meal or I would lack appetite—food just didn’t taste great and most of the courses of my meals would be sent back to the kitchen, only a small portion having been consumed. Also there were mental and emotional adjustments to make: dealing with loneliness was one, and dealing with my sense of self—how I portrayed my personhood to those I met on the ship, especially when there were no other native English speakers aboard—was another. For the first few weeks I felt like I was a person without a history: I could be anyone, and even when being “myself,” I wondered who is this. Do I contain an unalienable kernel of personality, of being, of self?

One night I showed pictures of my life back home in San Francisco and some of my travels last summer to the passengers’ steward, A Ukrainian living in Italy for 3 years, who I had befriended and to whom I was teaching English slang. After I returned to my cabin, I continued scrolling through the photos on my iPad, going back several years. There I was at Ocean Beach with Colin, on Halloween 2010; there we were with our cat Indigo, playing with him on our bed; there were Kai and I, on a street corner downtown after attending a Switchback launch party; there was my dad and Tommy at my apartment for Thanksgiving 2010. I put down the iPad and a wholesome sense of relief washed over me. I had been denying all this history in my attempt to, in some sense, reinvent myself and avoid home sickness, but in reality I needed to embrace it all. Life is a continuum. I needed to be grounded, I needed to remember I am a person with a rich history—a life well lived despite the yearning for the present period of travel that constantly overlaid all the experiences captured in these pictures. This history informs the present moment in which I find myself sitting in cabin 1215 aboard the Grande Buenos Aires, a few hours away from the coast of Senegal.

We’ve now been at sea, without a glimpse of land, for about 6 whole days. The captain, a kind man without disregard for decorum, recognized how important our last port of call before crossing the Atlantic is to his crew. Therefore, although we were only in Vitoria, Brazil for less than 24 hours, around 9 pm he authorized us all to go ashore, telling everyone to be back by 11 a.m. the next morning at the latest. I ventured onto solid land with the steward. We grabbed a taxi, picked up 4 of the Italian crew at the Manila Discotee located right outside the port’s gate. They subjected the strange taxi driver to Italian, Spanish, and English directions in a fruitless quest to find a money changer at the late hour, all while poking and rough housing with each other the whole drive. We spanned the industrial side of the city, on which our ship was docked, across the bridge over to the old city, and then to the commercial district where a large mall holding many American chain restaurants was located, then back to the Manila Discotee, which I quickly realized was a prostitute bar. So, some stereotypes about sailor life are true.

Coming into port at Vitoria, Brazil, under a concrete bridge.

We spied a photography session of a wedding couple on the banks of the river.

Looking ahead into the port, up the river.

Looking back, the way we came.

Looking back, there's the bridge we came in under.

Tiny glow of sunset.

Panorama of the port of Vitoria, Brazil.

And the two sides of the city, at night. There is a taxi boat but we took a cab across a bridge.

Some of the crew taking a break ashore.

Some more crew letting off steam/chillin. The dang naked mermaid on the wall was my view for a long time.

That night was special despite a slight feeling of not belonging that I couldn’t shake. Many rounds of beer were ordered, deals were made with the establishment’s Madame, and many cigarettes smoked, the Italians pulling from each other’s packs one after another. The spirit was lively and became even livelier when the next round of crew got off their shift and rolled up, still donning their blue and silver reflective jumpsuits emblazoned with the Grimaldi logo. More rounds of beer, more packs of cigarettes flung open for all to partake, and the chief mate had even brought his walkie-talkie and flashlight, which he turned to strobe and shone in people’s faces to annoy them as his loud voice exclaimed in Italian inflection above the din of the celebration. There was an air of frenetic energy and liveliness punctuated by yelps and responses in high pitched Italian, and the famous Italian inflection wrung clearly throughout the whole neighborhood. The steward chaperoned me back to the ship around the time the party was really getting going, but that was fine with me. The crew had welcomed me as one of their own for a few hours despite the fact I could barely communicate with them; I had drank a few beers and my feet had traveled on solid ground. It had been a good night. 

We were invited up to the bridge to have a look around once we left Brazil. In the middle is the one and only female crew member. This picture of her, the other passenger, and me is a picture of all the women on the ship (out of about 35 total people).

I suppose this evening embodies the answer to the question I keep getting: why travel alone on a cargo ship all this way, for all this time—why not fly in an airplane or at least take a passenger ship? Traveling by any other method would not have opened up this slice of life to me: one night of freedom before 6 or 7 days surrounded by water for a group of men (and one woman) who make their life at sea. Usually: 4 months on, 2 months off the ship. As conversations with crew members have revealed over time, this is a type of work that is skilled, offers channels for promotion, yet also consumes the laborer whole. When they are in port, it’s work, work, work nonstop, which is especially exhausting to the older crew members. The majority of the Italian crew seems young, in their 20s or early 30s (I imagine them as children at their parents’ dinner table when forced to eat with the captain), and for them, there may not seem like much alternative at the moment. Put in the context of Italy’s current economic status (worse off than what we hear about the U.S.’s unsavory job market), they perhaps feel locked in, like this is as good as it gets at the moment.

Some—no, many—get out after a few years, judging from the overwhelmingly young crew. However, I had the pleasure of hearing the oldest crew member (besides the cook, who is retiring once this tour concludes in Antwerp) complain about his salary. He is Italian contracted, and receives gross monthly income of 3,500€ (net: 4,800€; apparently the Italian government eats up 1,300€ in taxes, which is a 27.1% tax rate). Considering the grueling nature of the work, he was not satisfied with this salary. By contrast, the Indian workers on the ship have a different contract, and are paid in US Dollars: $6,000/month. One Indian I spoke to is on a 8 month contract. Can you imagine spending July – March nonstop working on a cargo ship, but at the end you have a cool $48,000 waiting for you. Without a family to support, or assets like real estate to maintain, that’s pretty good money—take the cash and hit the road for a 4 month vacation, or rent a short term lodging in your hometown, enjoying a leisurely 4 months of hanging out with friends and bumming around, or perhaps working on a pet project or hobby. But, for the older crew members, or ones with a family, I can see how that money would get eaten up fast when a house, car, and children are taken into account.  

This is part of a series called Photoshoot with myself at sunset on the deck.

All this, to me, is a main impetus to travel: not for the theater of a resort-spotted white sand beach or expensive guided tours in ancient castles and museums, but for the glimpse into what surviving entails for people all around the globe. How do others make a life, make a living? If nothing else I feel less alone in my struggle: indeed I have a family to support while I travel, and likewise I have a family network to return to once my year being abroad is up, similar to the families I imagine the sailors returning to once their tours have finished. Maybe we are content in our work, maybe not; maybe we are searching for something more fulfilling or that feels like a better fit during all of this. No matter what, it’s all authentic human experience, a struggle of survival that spans all of history.  

8 days in and sailing life suits me well --

I rode on the Grimaldi cargo ship The Grande Buenos Aires from August 13 to September 18, 2012. I embarked in Zarate, Argentina and disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium. The ship called on the ports of Santos, Brazil; Vitoria, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; Tilbury/London, the U.K.; Emden, Germany; and Hamburg, Germany. This post was written on August 21, 2012.

The view from the bridge of the ship, making our way down the tiny river from Zarate.

Passing under the bridge I routinely gazed at from Zarate's waterfront.

I've been enjoying the white wine that accompanies all meals on the ship, the ship is rocking its way up the coast of Brazil, and I've finally got my sea legs. Ship travel embodies a unique time/space coordinate in the human psyche. The majority of the past week can be likened to a drug-induced trip. Days, hours, and minutes no longer mark the majority of life's quantifying; instead, the ship's meal schedule, day-light, and night-time measure the distance to our next destination, all with a sprinkling of patient reserve. We slowly pull abreast of another vessel making its way north; the horizon of land in the distance gradually undulates as we pass new peaks and valleys of Brazil's coast. Occasionally a white edifice wedged within a cliff's plateau shines like a beacon of life existing outside of sea travel.

My first week on the ship passed in some sort of time warp I can only liken to the time warp of hallucinogens (I remember my date, Federico, in Buenos Aires describing his recent acid trip: So much time had passed yet the man was no closer to approaching me on the street). For a few days it was my self-appointed task of moving the marker on the calendar in the mess room, yet days compressed into each other and the week emerged as a composite of one whole day: wake up, eat at 2 or 3 designated times, nap, write in a notebook or on a computing device, behold the horizon outdoors of the cabins, flow with the rhythms of sea and wind; repeat.

At night, when the sky permitted clearness to observe, the stars of the southern hemisphere glowed something bright, Cancer's crab and the stretch of the Milky Way spreading the light of their energy into the swarthy water, which, in return, threw up tiny sparks of white surf, broken and frothing by the bow of my cargo ship. Land and sky engaged in a dance of light and darkness for my poetic enjoyment.

In the day, away from the overcast sky of Argentina, the Atlantic undulated into the texture and iridescence of onyx. I spoke it to myself while beholding the scene on the deck outside the cabin area: texture and iridescence of onyx. Onyx... onyx... onyx... my voice sounding bizarre and foreign in the wind and spray. Yet I recalled a poem I had written years before, about the onyx-thick coal ribbon perpetually aflame in Pennsylvania, a poem that no one in my first year MFA workshop could get a grip on. No onyx-thick coal ribbon to dive.

On the morning of my 8th day on the ship, I awoke in Brazil. I exited the indoors cabin area on the left side of the ship instead of my normal right side. The East-rising sun was shining and reflecting a bright white off the bay water marking space between the various hills rising out of the Santos port area. My bloodshot eyes strained to adjust to this new atmosphere yet a smile crept into my core: our first destination since Argentina. I am in Brazil, this is sea travel: a slow, timeless progress towards new lands.

Panorama of the Port of Santos, Brazil

Yours truly with the Port of Santos Brazil as a backdrop.
This was taken from the deck outside the passenger's messroom on the ship.

After breakfast I ventured onshore with my two fellow passengers, an older couple from Germany who were wrapping up their one-year adventure of traveling South American in their RV. I had said to them, upon making their acquaintance my first day on the ship: Your year is ending and mine is beginning. It occurs to me now that I can no longer say my year begins; I'm 5 weeks in. 46 weeks to go. But this entry isn't about tracking time; it's about time becoming irrelevant in the sense that industrialized countries employ it: their inhabitants' work weeks parceled by the progress of labor: tasks completed, busy-work assuaged, yearly self-evaluations written. Slowly I am sloughing off this stupid skin; never before has it occurred to me as so dangerously inorganic. As a passenger on a cargo ship at sea, I am able to listen to my own biorhythms and no one gives me much trouble if my biorhythms put me out of sync with the schedule of meal time and sleep time on the ship. The mess room staff have ceased calling my cabin when I miss lunch at 11. They might ask the Germans if I am sick or if I am OK, but once I emerge I am met with offerings of cappuccinos and fresh rolls with salami.

Exiting the ship for the first time since Argentina.

Gate 4, from where we got a taxi into the old city center.

So here we are in Santos. The Germans and I are waiting for a taxi to take us from Gate 4 of the Santos Port to the old city center. I drag on my cigarette, nicotine rustling a stomach filled only with Nescafe, and it hits me: I feel like I'm still on the boat; the solid ground undulates like the water. And it continues, in the taxi, in the Coffee Museum, in the city square, in the internet cafe, in the wine and snack shop, on the terrace outside our lunch-time cafe. My body’s equilibrium devices are out of sync; all of Santos rises and falls like the Atlantic. Sure I only got a few hours of shut eye the night before, excited about coming to land, which is adding to my general cracked-out state, but at this moment I am pretty sure the feeling of sea-rocking while on land is as good as the effects of any drug folks pedal on Haight Street. I oscillate between euphoria at the bizarreness of the experience and resigned irritation, waiting to get back on the ship and set sail, where the feeling will be warranted.

View from outside the Coffee Museum.

Lunch time with the Germans. 

Stained glass detail of the Santos Cathedral.

Christ figure with stigmata in the Cathedral. Pretty freaky!

The Germans and I wander Santos old town some more. The sidewalk tiles disintegrate into sand here, like Buenos Aires, yet the half derelict buildings have a charm I did not absorb in Buenos Aires (I do attribute this partially to the summery weather of Brazil, which contrasts with the very overcast winter of Argentina). And Brazil is a country of color: not just some neighborhood painted with blocks of random paint hues (i.e., Boca barrio in BA), but facades consistently sport invigorating colors that set off the tropical green flora exploding out of city squares, hill sides, and sidewalk planters. The buildings aren't the only color in Santos: the inhabitants' skin ranges from dark to light, an absence of which I found disturbing in Buenos Aires. The gene pool in Santos seems to produce a uniform amount of wide, full-bodied noses and thick, sturdy hips in woman and robust mid-sections in men. I have no doubt these people genuinely know how to enjoy their cuisine which is refreshing compared to the appearance-obsessed Argentine who simultaneously yearns for thinness while boasting of the steak and other cow parts routinely roasted in their county's famous parrillas.

Standing in front of a monument in Praça José Bonifácio, Santos, Brazil.

We return a few hours ahead of schedule to our ship; its towering silhouette in the port sparks a unique pride, excitement, and relief in my heart: I remark that it is good to leave the ship but even better to return to it. After observing the crew loading some Caterpillar construction equipment into the vast belly of the ship, we take the service elevator up to the 12th floor. No one is home, all the crew are busy unloading/loading and stocking up on supplies for our next spell of sailing. It's ok because I am comforted to be on the ship, what with my sea legs insisting we are still vying for equilibrium within the waves of the sea, even if the water in the harbor is still.

Loading the construction equipment onto the ship.

View from the deck of the Port and city of Santos.

Panorama of the bay side of the Port of Santos.

Panorama half port, half bay. Santos, Brazil.

3rd floor cargo deck, the floor of the hatch.

3rd floor cargo deck. 

Returning to the ship after sight seeing in Santos, Brazil.

Later that night, after a dinner or tortellini soup, salad, hot dogs, steak, and my post-dinner nightly cappuccino, I watch the crew finish loading the cargo of the stop; the road outside the ship progressively becomes more empty as the construction equipment and cargo containers are charged and stowed. Finally, around 11 p.m., the ramp of our ro/ro ship begins to close, and the large greased cables pull the yellow hatch towards the ship's rear top deck. A Santos tug boat assumes its position on the East side of the ship; port workers untether the ship's ropes from the docking ties and throw them into the bay, from where they are sucked back into the ship, dripping with water; we slowly inch away from the dock and the nose of the ship points out toward the river that will take us to the Atlantic. The air is thick with a foggy mist warmer and more aromatic than I've encountered in San Francisco; the smell on the left side of the ship alternates between the sweet yeastiness of a beer brewery and the fragrant assault of a dump of garbage.

The closing of the ro/ro hatch: the sure sign we were about to leave a port.

Ro/ro hatch almost closed and sealed.

Brazilian port workers waiting to untie us.

Tug boat in position.

Port workers taking a break in Santos, Brazil.

Same view of the bay, at night. Beyond the center hill, there must have been an oil refinery.
Besides the glow evident in this picture, I occasionally caught a glimpse of a flame burning atop a long pipeline.

As we pull out of port, we pass cargo ships from Germany, Singapore, and China, all receiving and emptying containers with Santos' movable cranes that twist and lift tons of goods to and from the ships. The sky-line glows orange from the sodium lights caught in the foggy mist. My body and the rails of the ship are coated in sea salt and humidity; my hands become so sticky I no longer want to carry my camera, yet I can't will myself from the top of the ship, from where I behold glowing Santos passing, passing, passing, and finally receding in the dark horizon. Soon, the familiar rolling of the ship going head to head with the whipped waves of open water, which lulls me into a sound slumber. 

Panorama of Santos, Brazil at night.

Sodium lights getting caught in misty haze and reflecting off the black water.

Trusty tug boat pacing us.

Bye, bye Santos.