Montevideo

Today’s port is Montevideo, in Uruguay. We’d booked a tour through someone on the roll call on Cruise Critic which was to do some sightseeing. Started out on a rough note when apparently one of the people had lost their key card and was having to get a new one, so that delayed us for a bit. Tour also turned out to have a few more people than we really expected, we were travelling on a full sized motor coach.

Headed from Montevideo up to Punta de la Esta (all names and spelling subject to correction later when I have a chance to double-check them). Stopped part way up there to view this weird house or something with some strange architecture. Punta de la Esta is something of a resort town with beaches right on the Atlantic. Drove around town for a little while and stopped at a street with some shopping and some places to grab a quick snack.

Back on the bus, then headed down to a place called Periopolis or something like that. Drove up a large hill (and I’m pretty impressed that the driver was able to handle the curves with the bus), to a spot with a pretty decent view. Then back down and we stopped briefly in the town itself. Decent views, but really not a whole lot to do in these places.

We did have a little excitement on our way back to Montevideo. We heard a very loud bang and in the window right next to Cathy’s head was a small hole, and the entire window was basically shattered. It was some sort of laminated glass, so in general it held together in even it’s shattered state, but whatever hit the window did actually manage to produce a small hole right there next to Cathy. The guide and driver thought it might be kids with slingshots, but it also could very easily have been some sort of bullet. Good thing for safety laminated glass.

Finally, back in Montevideo we did a little driving around to see some of the sites there. We got off to see a few things in a plaza there, and seriously considered walking back to the ship from here. Looked like it would have been easy, but decided not to, and finished up by being dropped back by the ship. We did a little wandering around in a shopping area that’s right near the port, then headed back to the ship ourselves.

Honestly not real sure what to make of this tour. It was a *lot* of driving around in the bus, with very little getting out of the bus. It made for kinda a long day, something like 7-8 hours.

One thing we did discover as we were walking out of the port is that Montevideo has a walking tour of the town, that covers some of the new city and old city. It was part of this walking tour that we’d been tempted to do when we stopped at the one plaze in Montevideo. While it would certainly not use up an entire day (they said the whole tour would take about one and a half hours), I’m not overly convinced that this wouldn’t have been more interesting than what we did. I’d certainly considering giving it a try if we ever end up back in Montevideo.

One of the soups this evening at dinner was a chilled tropical fruit soup with vanilla aroma. Gave it a try, but wasn’t real sure about it. To be perfectly honest, I strongly thing it could have vastly been improved by a little tequila in it. Cathy says she’d choose vodka, but I honestly think a nice Reposado would have accented it pretty well.