Montevideo, Uraguay

Montevideo is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. If you look at a map, it is situated in the south of the country at the northern mouth of the Plata River across from Buenos Aires at the southern side. It’s one of the major ports of South America and also the governmental, financial, and commercial center of Uruguay. We were amazed at the number of fishing boats around the harbor, only to learn that most of the South Atlantic fishing fleet is based here. We had some pretty severe thunderstorms last night as we sailed from Buenos Aires – strong winds & blinding rain – ship was rocking but we’ve been in much worse. We’re hearing horror stories about Cape Horn – that’s the area at the southern tip of South America we need to go around to get to the Pacific – many passengers who’ve sailed here before say sometimes the ship is tossed around like a toy in a bathtub! We’ll see – that’s several days away yet. We boarded a steam train in Montevideo and traveled through the industrial areas, then joined a tour bus for approximately 4 hours and visited various sites around the city. Overall, we found Montevideo to be much the same as several other places with a mixture of good, bad, & ugly – the latter being the shanty-towns with strewn trash and people living on sidewalks. One of the pictures you’ll see is that of a river flowing through a beautiful park – while the landscape & trees were beautiful, the river itself was foaming with pollution along with plastic bottles & garbage – why do they do that?? Conversely, the architecture in many places is quite beautiful and many nice homes can be found along the beaches. The average monthly income here is $450, with the primary industry of cattle or beef. We missed an opportunity to have fresh steak in one of many cafes and our friends who dined all told us the meat was excellent. This was an interesting stop and the residents were cordial, but not a city we would return to. It’s off now to the Falkland Islands & a visit with Penguins (very excited about what’s coming) – another 1100 miles south, and we’re told quite cold!