We've just come back from touring the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo ... and we've voted it the best place we've visited in South America ... it's clean, uncrowded, picturesque, friendly and small. The city is built on a peninsula, and you can see water from almost every street. It's 34C today, but it's not humid. The River Plate seems much cleaner here than in Buenos Airies (actually, in BA the water looked like the jokes about the Yarra - too thick to swim in and too thin to plow - it' MUCH worse than the Yarra!). The whole place was a delight!
The ship is berthed right next to the memorial to the Graf Spee, the German warship which was sunk (by its own captain) here in 1939. Other memorials around the town are large and bronze, including two wonderful (huge!) collection pieces by a local artist - one of horses pulling a coach out of a bog, the other of oxen pulling a cart out of another bog - both are life size, and wondrously realistic. The area is flat except for one small rise - obviously there were a lot of bogs!
Now we're off to spend the rest of the afternoon in the whirlpool, then sit on our balcony and watch our departure - when we left BA yesterday we set the whole port alive with sound - the Carnival Splendor sounded its horn, then two other cruise ships nearby set theirs going to farewell us, and the whole port area resounded ... it was a wonderful experience as people on the wharf and the passengers and crews of nearby ships all waved us off! (This is the second-largest passenger ship ever to have visited South America)
Cape Horn, here we come ... we head south this afternoon - will stop in Puerto Madryn in 2 days time, then it's off to the Cape.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
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