Montevideo Uruguay and Buenos Aires Argentina

We had a delightful day in Montevideo Uruguay yesterday, the town or the City should say of over 1.5 million people. The port is located right in Town so we had no excursion, took a map and conducted our own walking tour. The map gave several alternatives so we did them all in the old City. It is very nice, lots of colonial architecture and easy to walk. Our first visit was to the Port Market where there must have been over 20 restaurants all with a different type of Barbecue than we saw in Ushuaia, this time the fire was set on top and the coals slid under a mesh grill where all the food is cooked. Food selection, tripe, sheep intestines, liver, beef lots of sausages, we were quoted a price of $40 for a feed that would have served about 4. we chose not to accept.

 There were lots of parks and gardens and the theme for Uruguay is the Tango so there are lots of bars that encourage this dance. Last night we had another barbecue on the deck and it was the best night we’ve had possibly, tons of food, but the band played all night and everyone got into the spirit, dancing and singing. Good clean entertainment. We had a lovely sun set that topped it off.

Our cruise director Ray.

We left port late for a very short cruise to Buenos Aires and this is where we spend 3 days, but we are off to the Iguazu Falls for 2 of them. Its a 2 hour flight and we leave very early at 6.40 am. No parties tonight and also this segment ends here, so a lot of passengers are leaving the ship.

Today we did a 4 hour excursion of the highlights of BA for short. It’s a huge City 14 mill. so we only touched the surface. We had a few stops at Government House where Evita was filmed. Won’t go into the history most of you would know more of this ex President of Argentina than we would. The highlight was going to La Boca, a vibrant working class neighborhood where you don’t go by yourself or at night, Here it retains it’s early Italian heritage and there are lots of multi coloured house and restaurants made of corregated roofing iron amidst cobblestone streets. Tons of markets all selling paintings of the area and many couples dancing the Tango, plenty of singers and bands. Very colourful and busy as there are 3 ships in port also. We then drove through the upmarket part of the City some really beautiful parks and gardens, saw some really nice homes, many french styled some Italian. Its a beautiful City, pity we won’t see as much as we would like because of our visit to the falls, but you can’t see everything in such a short time. We also visited the mausoleum at the Cemetery of Evita, not as good as we had seen previously, but nice.

Well thats a little of what we have seen, the weather has been hot the past 2 days, sunny and 30 degrees. Tomorrow is another experience, more to come,

Have some really cool pics. but have no hope of getting them posted, I'll send them in a few days when I can get a good IT reception. GRRRR