Montevideo, Uruguay

Montevideo, Uruguay

The name, so says the tour guide, came from a notation on a nautical chart back in the 1500s: Monte VI de O(este), the sixth hill from the west. I do not know whether to believe her.

The temperature says 82, but it seems like 102 or more. It feels like Arizona in the middle of August.
We came into the port fairly early. Looming out of the twilight was a big building that looks like the sail shaped hotel in Dubai. The captain did a pretty good job of parallel parking into a very tight spot. The people on deck were holding their breath. He had only about a foot left on each end of his parking place.

After breakfast, we got our tour assignments: we are on bus #5, a 12 passenger Mercedes van. This was a private tour arranged by our Cruise Critic friends Gail and Murry from NY. It was to be an all day tour with a stop at a local place for lunch.

Our first stop was one of the city squares. There was a McDonalds and a Burger King and a money exchange shop. For $2, I got 45 pesos. Effectively a peso is a nickel. Gas costs about $5 a gallon, and the minimum wage is about $2.50 an hour. There were a couple of cops in the square with automatic weapons. They were guarding a bank shipment unloading at the bank on the square. Jack asked them what kind of guns they were. They are an American design made locally. He did not get the name. These people talk really fast, person to person. They seem to talk more clearly and slowly on the cellphones. Jack could understand most of what the guide said into her phone, but when she was talking to the driver, almost nothing.

We drove down to the beach at 10:30 AM on a Thursday. The beach was fairly busy and was very nice. We like this town best of all so far as a place to live in. We went through the high priced condo district to the higher priced house district and then to the mansion district. The driver said the mansions cost up to a million. We saw the presidents house and Rev. Sun Myung Moon's house. Our guide said that she did not like Rev. Moon. We said that we don't either.

Uruguay has one of the best standard of living in all South America. Most of the way, if I had closed my eyes and opened them, I could have been in the States. We stopped at parks and churches and took lots of pictures. One of the longest stops was at the Holocaust Memorial. It was at a beautiful spot on the beach.

The locals drink a tea called Mate. Everyone carries their tea with them from home. It isn't sold in the cafe..... you bring your tea cup filled with mate leaves from home with a thermos of hot water. You keep adding hot water all day. We took pictures of cups and “sipper straws” especially for the tea. I took a picture of the cups. They also had boxes of tea for sale with the cups. Jack had had Mate before so we passed on the tea. You can buy it in a 5 lb. Bag at Bi-Lo.

Finally lunch... Lunch was not included in the price. The guide took us to a Winery. It was a beautiful place surrounded by fields of sheep grazing and vineyards. It was very pricey though and we had only about 60.00 in cash with us. We ordered one appetizer and a steak entrée to share and passed up the bottled water and wine. We were surprised when the check came to see a charge of $9.00 for use of the cutlery and another $5.00 for two waters. The guide said that the charge for using the knives and forks was usual... but we disputed the water and $5.00 was deducted from the bill. I think they confused us with the guy sitting beside us who did have bottled water.

The excitement for the day was when we tried to leave the Winery. We were way out from town and our ship and it was getting close to time to be back on board. All 12 of us climbed back in the van and were ready to go. It wouldn't start........ the battery was dead. The driver messed with it for awhile as we all got a little anxious ..... The guide called for back up...... we got out of the van and waited in a small patch of shade in the 100 degree sun. We entertained ourselves by taking pictures of each other and the group. The driver recruited some winery workers to give him a push start. It worked and we all piled back in the van at about the same time the back up van arrived. We got out of the first van and into the backup van and back to the ship just on time. The ship sailed 3 hours late.