Buenos Aires: Tigre

Once you have settled down in your apartment in Buenos Aires, you will soon want to get to know the city and the surrounding municipalities that make up the Greater Buenos Aires Metropolis.

There are many organized tours of Buenos Aires, the 'Capital Federal' to help you discover the city. When you have familiarized yourself with it you may want to go further a field into the other cities that comprise the Greater Buenos Aires, or Gran Buenos Aires.

A lovely day trip from Buenos Aires is by train, the 'Tren de la Costa'; twenty eight kilometers to the north of the Capital Federal, will take you along the coast line to the city of Tigre. It is also accessible by road, but then you miss the coastal scenery. Tigre is linked to a huddle of picturesque villages and ports by a network of rivers called the Parana Delta. The waterways provide a playground for all kinds of boating, fishing and water sports.

Tigre is named after the South American Tiger, or Jaguar that used to be found in the area. It has long disappeared from the region, hunted to extinction locally. The town is built on an island surrounded by small rivers and streams.

The pleasant, wooded area is a favorite weekend getaway for the wealthy of Buenos Aires, who own holiday homes, and boats and yachts moored at the many marinas. Even if you don't have any water craft of your own, you will find any number of organized ferry trips to the islands and boat trips to take you exploring the maze of waterways. Some of these rivers are quite unspoiled and you will be able to see birds and wildlife.

You can choose organized tours of the rivers, or you can take an Interisleña ferry. These boats are like taxis, you hail them as they go past and they stop to pick you up! They have routes to and from many different parts of the Delta. They operate daily from 6am to 9pm.

When you have enjoyed the swimming or other water sports or just had a great time sight seeing, you will be ready for something to eat. You will find all kinds of restaurants serving gourmet food from many lands, or you can choose traditional Argentinean cuisine. Perhaps all you want is simply a snack from one of the many food stands where you can buy delicious, cheap food.

You will find many of these food stands near the Puerto de Frutos. This is one of Tigre's popular attractions. Apart from the fruit, preserves and jams, you will find an extremely interesting crafts fair. This Puerto de Frutos is the biggest outdoor crafts market in Argentina.

In the area are many riverside bars and restaurants, where you can enjoy the outdoor beauty while you eat or have a drink. Later you may like to spend the evening at the casino, or perhaps at the amusement part, before you head off back home to your apartment in Buenos Aires.

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A Charter in the Ionian

The Ionian Islands, set off the west coast of Mainland Greece, are the perfect place for an Eastern Mediterranean Yacht Charter. Most of the islands are short distances apart making a great itinerary for the beginner or seasoned sailor. With hundreds of anchorages to choose from, deserted quiet harbours, lively seaside resorts, historical villages and clear blue seas you will be spoilt for choice. There are airports on most of the islands so you can pretty much choose your own itinerary depending on how long you want your vacation to be... take a look at a sample 7 days here...

Day 1: Corfu is the ideal place to start a charter. It has an international airport which is not far from Corfu Town where there is a lovely anchorage off the Old Fortress that you can spend your first night. Your Captain will meet you ashore and take your group to board the boat by dinghy, be welcomed aboard with cocktails and nibbles and spend the afternoon at your leisure, starting to relax whilst your crew tend to your every need. Enjoy your first dinner prepared by your chef and settle into life onboard, if you are feeling energetic your Captain can take you ashore after dinner for an evening stroll around Corfu Town.

Day 2: Woken up to the smell of Coffee and something baking, your Chef will have prepared your first breakfast. Your Captain will likely get the chart out and discuss some options with you and give you a short safety briefing before setting sail to the Sivota Islands just off the mainland coast of Greece and the village of Mourtos. Mourtos is very picturesque. It is lovely to walk around, have a drink in one of the taverna's and do a spot of shopping. There are several nice anchorages to choose from in between the islands. They are generally well protected and offer good flat calm water, ideal for spending the afternoon enjoying a range of water sports.

Day 3: Another morning sail to the island of Paxos where you can stop and anchor for lunch on the south side and take a look at the several caves on the coast. Take a kayak, a paddleboard - or even a snorkel and mask and explore! After an afternoon swim you can take the boat around the north side of Paxos to Longos, a small fishing village with white washed houses huddled around a miniature harbour under olive-clad slops, here you can spend the night and enjoy what delicious meal your Chef may have prepared for you.

Day 4: You might want to opt for a big breakfast at this mid week point with a little longer sail to Vasilikki on the island of Lefkas- or even opt for a lunch under way. Arriving in Lefkas mid afternoon you can jump in to the beautiful clear water in this harbour. If you feel like stretching your legs you can take a hike ashore and visit the site of a temple dedicated to Apollo or if you are feeling energetic hire a windsurf in one of the top ten spots in the world!

Day 5: Winds may not be too favorable for a sail this morning but you can admire the views as you motor through the Stenon Meganisiou the straight between Meganisi and Lefkas, one of the loveliest channels in the Ionian. There are several spots to choose from on Meganisi, being well protected, most of the bays fringed by olive and cypress with clear blue water. These are a stunning place to spend the afternoon in the water or chilling on deck.

Day 6: Heading further south are the Islands of Ithaca and the largest of the Ionian Cephalonia. Both rugged and steep, Cephalonia is home to the highest mountain of the Ionian Islands, Mount Nero. Fiskardho, on Cephalonia is a lovely place to stop and explore, with picturesque 19th-century houses set amid green pine groves. There are a number of bays to choose from in this area which are pretty much deserted and ideal if you are looking for a quieter spot. You could also check out one of the anchorages in Ithaca, perhaps visit Port Polis where a local school teacher looks after a small museum housing a collection of items from excavations on the supposed site of odysseus palace or if you feel like heading over to the NE side try Frikes, postcard stuff! Set at the bottom of a wooded ravine with a stream running down to the sea. A couple of windmills also sit above the village on a rocky cragg.

Day 7:Assuming you are flying out of Preveza on the mainland (there are many options available for arrival and departure which can be discussed when planning your charter) it is time to start sailing north again. From Cephalonia you will sail up to Lefkas and perhaps anchor in the seaside town of Nidri. It is a lovely place to spend your last night and only a short taxi away from the airport.

Day 8: One last breakfast, One last swim... Time to pack up and say good bye to your home for the past week, your crew and the islands.... until next time!

Getting There: Corfu, Cephalonia, Kythira, Zakynthos and Preveza (about 20km from the northern end of Lefkas) all have airports. It is a great idea to do a one-way charter flying into Corfu for example and flying out of one of the smaller islands further south. Try looking at sites such as http://www.skyscanner.com for the best deals.

Weather: Winds are consistent in the Summer Months and from June until the end of September the prevailing wind direction is NW to WNW. Generally it arrives in the afternoon and dies at Sunset. The climate is mainly sunny with little rain and temperatures regularly reach up to 32C plus in July and August.

If you are interested in a Yacht Charter in the Ionian Islands, get in touch using the Contact Us Form or take a look at the different boats available in Greece using the Yacht Search Page on our website http://www.jkyachtcharters.com/.

Kelly Coop - Owner JK Yacht Charters - For further information regarding a Yacht Charter in the Ionian Islands or anywhere else in the Mediterranean or Caribbean please get in touch by emailing me at info@jkyachtcharters or go to our website at http://www.jkyachtcharters.com/

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Bespoke Luxury Cruises, May I Help You?

I often wonder whether I am the only person who dreads making a telephone call to any company or corporation these days?

Computerised, mechanised call reception is supposed to assist us in getting through to the right person with the right query. But at the end of the process just how many of us do actually feel assisted?

For those yet to have the pleasure - and there can't be many - this is roughly how it goes. You call the number and a robot with a matter-of-fact voice offers you several options, none of which quite match your query. You plump for the nearest one to it. Dreadful music ensues, interspersed periodically with a transparently insincere reminder that the faceless multi-national entity in question does value your call, and implores you to listen to more music until such as a time that you can be routed to the only real live person that they are prepared to pay to remain in the building to talk to you.

When that person finally does get round to speaking to you, that is where your nightmare begins. For he/she won't have been trained to think outside of the box, nor to field any questions other than those written into the banal script that is the alpha and the omega of their entire working existence. When you become angry the voice becomes apologetic (sometimes), but their expressions of regret at not being able to understand your question - let alone to answer it - seldom reach the intensity of the very real anger and frustration that you have by now begun to experience.

You ask to be transferred to someone sensible and after much indignation and avoidance they relent, offer to transfer you, subject you to more music, and then you are cut off. Back to Square One.

No matter how hard the advocates of this new way try to persuade me that it is more efficient than the way we did things before, I know that it isn't. We may have sent exploratory space expeditions to Mars and created the World Wide Web, but we have yet to devise a telephone answering system that beats a real live human being who actually knows what you are talking about.

This applies to the travel industry every bit as much as it applies everywhere else, and it was truly reassuring when I spoke to a luxury travel booking service recently that was owner-managed and - well - human! The experience of having an intelligent conversation about luxury cruises and hotels in the Indian Ocean as opposed to trying to get the disinterested voice on the other end of the line to understand the complexities of my postal address was truly a joy.

Call me Luddite if you will, but there is no substitute for personal human contact. Those who believe they are saving money by factoring out the human touch will, in my view, come one day to regret their short-sightedness.

Mark Richards is a professional writer working for The Middle Man, a business promotion service using its experience and expert knowledge of marketing strategy to generate important new business for its clients at a surprisingly low cost.

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