2009 01 31 Montevideo, Uruguay

Early this morning we noticed the sea water changing from blue to muddy brown. We thought for a minute we were back in the Amazon. We enjoyed the improvement in the weather from the rain we’ve had the past couple of days – it is breezy, cool and the sunshine and blue skies are lovely. Montevideo sits in the mouth or delta of the Rio de la Plata, a huge river system. Montevideo is a very old, highly populated, city home to a busy commercial port. High rise apartments and office towers dominate and it has a beautiful shoreline of dark rocks and deep gold sand. We took the free shuttle from the dock to a leather goods factory in the square, an visited a few of the souvenir shops along the way. It was relatively early in the day and the square was empty, but it quickly began to fill with shop owners and tourists from 2 other cruise ships in port (Celebrity and Norwegian.) We joined 4 other folks and took a van tour from the square. They took us to a park to visit a flea market, then a spin around the city pointing out Montevideo’s important governmental buildings, embassies, hospitals and universities. Soon we were off to a viewpoint to take photos of water’s edge and beaches. There was a pit stop at the football (soccer) stadium where Uruguay hosted the World Cup and another opportunity to purchase souvenirs. Finally there was a spin around a former prison that has been converted to a shopping mall – it was really a beautiful building to have been a prison. Our tour guide mentioned that the square was a safe place to be during the day, but we really shouldn’t be there at night. She also informed us that the area around the port wasn’t safe either (we haven’t visited a port area yet where they encourage milling around.) A police presence was clearly evident all throughout the city and we never felt unsafe. We returned to the port to check-out the internet café. It was our first visit to Uruguay and we would probably describe it best as another big city in South America. It is a nice place to visit and our guide and driver were very nice people.