Day 22, Montevideo

Day 22, Montevideo

Only 50 miles from Buenos Aires, we slowly crept toward Montevideo all night before arriving early this morning.  

I should’ve paid more attention to the notice about the water being turned off at 9 AM.  When I stepped in the bathroom and turned on the shower – nothing – then I remembered that note we received yesterday.  Oh well. 

The weather was beautiful when we left the ship around 10 AM and followed the green painted path to the port entrance.  We paused to take a nice gangway photo with some local models. 

There is a small “cruise terminal” on the way out, but it is really more of a small gift shop than a terminal.  They have wifi, sell drinks and some leather goods. 

Outside the port gate there is a nice turnout where we ordered up an UBER to take us about 1.5 miles to the outlet store for the yarn shop – Manos del Uruguay.  Our Uber driver had over 14,000 trips with a 4.93 rating – pretty amazing – and when we see someone with that much experience we can count on having good ride. 

MANOS DEL URUGUAY

Fifteen minutes later we arrived at the shop and discovered that Kathi and Sherita from the Crow’s Nest knitting group were already present and buying everything is sight (slight exaggeration).  When the smoke cleared, Judy swooped in and bought whatever was left (another exaggeration).  One can never have too much yarn! 

Kathi and Sherita walked here from the ship and alerted us to a yarn shop a couple blocks away.  After leaving Manos del Uruguay we headed back toward the ship and found the shop they mentioned.  It wasn’t much of a shop, in fact it was only a window and a counter where you had to ask for whatever you wanted.  It looked like they had mainly cotton and acrylic yarn plus trims and other items for sewing. 

THE NATIONAL SANDWICH

The national sandwich of Uruguay is the Chivito, and we found a place on our pre-cruise research, Bar Hispano, that offered up one with decent reviews.  This is not a touristy place and was empty at 11 AM when we arrived.  The menu offered dozens of variations of Chivitos and we selected the first one offered, it was in bold and big print.  We ordered one to share with a couple of Coke Lights.  

Service was fast and the food was good.  Chivitos come with a lot of variations – much like you would find many varieties of hamburgers back in the states.  They accepted credit cards, service was already included, and we settled up our bill and were on our way. 

Our normal plan for ports is to quickly venture to the furthest most point from the ship and then work our way back toward the ship the rest of the day.  This way we are always getting closer and  to the ship as the day progresses.  Then if something changes, we have less distance to cover to return to the ship. 

TANGO MUSEUM

The Plaza Idependencia is a large park on our way back to the ship.  Along the eastern edge we discovered a Tango Museum and decided to check it out.  They offer tours every half hour or so and there was supposed to one more in English in 20 minutes.  It turned out that the English tour was cancelled so we joined the last tour in Spanish.  We figured that we could still look at the exhibits, but the museum is only one room with a bunch of plagues and signs on the walls.  Fortunately, the Spanish guide spoke excellent English and she gave us an abbreviated English version after she finished the Spanish language tour.  It was very interesting, and I would recommend this as a place to visit but work on arriving in time for an English tour. 

ANDES MUSEUM

Continuing on, our next stop was the Andes 1972 Museum (Museo Andes 1972) which tells the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which crashed in the Andes mountains in October 1972, and the 16 people who survived the crash for 72 days in the elements.  The story is fascinating and I didn’t remember much of it at the time or the movies or books that came out afterwards.  Worth a stop. 

Today was Saturday and many of the shops were closed.  At first we thought it might have been a holiday or something, but we learned that the city in this area is geared toward the workers that are only around M-F and many places close for the weekends. 

We had originally planned to see the Carnival Museum, very close to the ship, but we decided to head back to the ship.  We made a quick stop in a few of the shops across from the entrance to the port, picking up a couple of T shirts and some Dulce de Leche. 

MUSTER DRILL

We had our second mandatory safety drill this afternoon at 4:15 pm.  We will have one of these every 30 days on the World Cruise. 

CHINESE NEW YEAR

Today is Chinese New Year and the Lido was celebrating with decorations and a special menu.  We dined in the main dining room, but I did wander by to check out the decorations and see what the staff was wearing. 

DAVID COPPERFIELD

David Copperfield, not the famous magician, but the famous “unusualist” was the guest entertainer this evening.  He was a one-man variety act, telling jokes and singing songs throughout his entertaining show. 

• David Copperfield