Montevideo

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Hello, hello,

Buenos Aires was simply too close to Montevideo to miss. We took a ferry and a few hours later, found ourselves in Montevideo, famous for steak, and, well, not much else! So it turns out that the city is a nice little town, built on the tourism of Argentina. The second you arrive by boat, you will be in front of dozens of cheap leather store, tourist information spots, and restaurants. The city itself is set on the port, beautiful from one angle and bordering on scuzzy port from the other, but it´s still nice to be able to stroll along the water. And, of course, next to the mean market there is a market of restaurants that sell you as much beef as you can handle. We did hit up a few restaurants and I even splurged on a Fillet Mignon. Delicious. We also tried out the local wine - not much of a competitor for Chile and Argentina, but nice to accompany the beef with.

Aside from the meat and wine though, we were at a bit of a loss when it came to things to do. There are several plazas, nice to pause at, especially with the sun shining, and the road by the sea and some inexpensive (both in price and quality) shopping areas... and after that... not much else. I do have to say though, there were a few sights that caught us off guard... the horse drawn recycling folks here. You see, unlike Buenos Aires, Montevideo does have dumpsters, but like Buenos, there are still garbage sorters... except, here, they all come with horses and a carriage to pull them and the sorted trash along! Also, the main pass time that we seemed to come across is the dusk fishing in the harbour... not too sure how tasty those fish are... but it sure is popular! And the last rather montevidean quality we ran across, was the general disdain for tourism. I get the feeling that everyone in the industry is just so sick of tourists and painful, incorrect Spanish, because any person we approached for directions, tickets, information, anything really, all but rolled their eyes at us, spoke in English and tried to get rid of us as quickly as possible - even at the cost of a sale!

What can I say, it is an interesting place, but with the feel of the town, abundance of useless things for sale, and lack of things to do, we were pleased that we had to bus out earlier than we initially thought (on account of the only bus to Mendoza leaving at noon eachFriday...) So, after a few good steaks, we were back in bus mode... heading off to the land of wines!

More to come,

Trish xx

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Photos

the only local passtime we found...
evening fishing in the harbour....?!