Monte Video, Uruguay

Monte Video, Uruguay


We crossed the river from Buenos Aires during the night and arrived in the port at Monte Video about 30 minutes late - about 8:30 in the morning. It was a beautiful sunny but cool morning - probably a little less than 60 degrees with a little wind and predicted to be about 75 - couldn’t be better.

This was our second Ensemble Experience private shore excursion for our group. We all met in the Half Moon room at 8:45 and about 5 minutes later they announced that the ship had been cleared by the local authorities. So we weren’t late at all to meet with our tour guides, Maria and driver, Jorge. Maria was a fantastic guide, she is a school teacher during the school year and also a lawyer. And as most of our guides have been, her English was perfect. We did a bus tour of the city with a number of photo stops and it was interesting to see the preparations for the inauguration of their new government next week. She did say that much extra security will be in place since “Hillary” is attending. We traveled through the downtown and government areas of this city of over a million people and then through several suburbs which enabled us to see the wealthy areas, middle class and low class areas. In the lower class areas she referred to them as shanty towns, but all the houses were brick or concrete block so they were far better than sum of the slums or shanty towns we have seen on our travels.

Then we went into the countryside to a winery where we had a short tour. This is actually a harvest and production time for them so it was very busy and smelled very ‘winey’. Then we went into the dining room and for a very large Uruguayan barbeque lunch and the opportunity to sample many of their wines. There were two local musicians playing guitars and singing and a number of the people in the group had great fun dancing. A considerable amount of wine was consumed! J Everyone was disappointed when we had to board the bus and return to the ship.

I was totally pooped… I did manage to go up to the Lido for a bowl of soup and then I didn’t move the rest of the evening except to look out the window a couple times during sail away.

Today is a sea day as we are heading north to our many stops in Brazil. I can report that we are holding a steady last place in Trivia and enjoying every minute of it. It is amazing how many times we have the right answer but decide to use a different one.