We sailed off up the brown muddy waters of the Rio Parana under a massive suspension bridge, waving to anyone who was interested and sitting out on deck watching the world go by. After lunch we finished packing and watched as we approached BA, and then started sailing away from it - I reckoned that it was because the channel on the Rio de la Plata is so narrow that we can't turn to approach BA and can't execute a 3 point turn, so we watched helplessly as BA disappeared towards the horizon and the thought of spending another night on baord loomed ahead.

Eventually we approached the end of the channel's bouys and the captain did a 180 to point us back to BA - phew, I'm not sure what Claire would have done if we'd been told that the next stop was to be Dakar. The BA harbour is quite difficult to negotiate and I think the captain was quite nervous. He sounded the ship's horn often enough, just to make sure that evryone knew we were here, not like the ship isn't big enough already. His reverse parking was spot on and it was a smooth berth/dock, which pleased him no end as he did a little dance on deck.

The 'plank' was lowered and we waited for immigration to do their thing, as usual information on what was happening and how it should all proceed was sadly lacking. We hung around like spare parts for a while, until finally Paulo sauntered in to the mess and said that we should take our bags down to the ramp for customs. We hastily said our good byes and made a bee-line for our cabin to grab our bags before heading to the ramp. Customs just asked a couple of questions and then stuck some stickers on our bags, gave us our passports and that was it. The shipping agent - Eduardo approached us and offered to help us find a hotel and give us a lift there - which was nice. Eventually we made our way to the hotel Meditterraneo (not exacly salubrious - but v. affordable) after trying at a couple of places (one was fully booked, Eduardo's suggestions were a little out of our league i.e. 4 stars - our trip would be over in a week if we took his suggestion).

We dropped our bags off and headed out to get a bite to eat, it was nice to have a free reign over what we could eat - and no it wasn't pasta. We enjoyed seeing life again, the hussle and bussle of city life after almost a month at sea, after dinner we found a small internet cafe and checked out the emails, then back to our hotel room, zzzzzzzz.