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Our South American Cruise
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Santiago
We began our trip with a test of our flexibility.
Our scheduled routing was to fly from San Diego to Atlanta, have a one-hour
wait, then continue from Atlanta to Santiago. When we began our check in
process in San Diego we were told the first flight was delayed and we couldn’t
make the connection, so they had rebooked us for the following day. We
convinced the agent to try to find a different routing for us, possibly with
another airline, but we weren’t successful. Rather than to return home and
possibly go through the same drill the following day, we elected to take our
original flight to Atlanta and spend the night there. As it turned out,
our original flight was delayed even more and we eventually reached Atlanta at
about 9 p.m.
We immediately went to the hotel lounge and had hotdogs
and beer/wine for a late dinner.
Wednesday we hung around the hotel until check out time,
and then took the shuttle to the airport. We had intended to spend the
rest of the day in the USO, but it was full of troops returning to Afghanistan
and Iraq after their R&R break. They departed in mid afternoon (to loud
clapping and cheers of appreciation throughout the terminal), so we were able to
move to the USO lounge for the remainder of our wait.
Our Santiago flight was about 45 minutes late in departing
(we’re beginning to see a pattern here) and nine very uncomfortable hours later
we arrived in Chile. Delta appears to have decided to become profitable by
cramming more seats in tourist class. We had the least legroom we have
ever experienced on a flight. At least we had a free glass of wine.
After about an hour of standing in lines to clear customs
and immigration, we were met by Luis from Casa Newen, our Bread and Breakfast.
By this time we were exhausted, so we decided a quick
lunch followed by a nap was in order. We walked a few blocks to a very
nice restaurant, had lunch, and returned to crash for a few hours.
We roused ourselves at 5 p.m. and caught a “collectivo” to
the metro station. A collectivo is a 4-passenger car that follows a fixed
route, filling all the seats as people are available. It is 400 pesos a
person (about 80 cents). You just wave them down and then tell the driver
when you want to get out.
The Santiago subway system is very nice. Frequent
trains, very clean, no graffiti. Some of the
stations
are decorated with paintings and murals. We rode downtown, to the Plaza de
las Armas and walked a few blocks just to get a feel for the place. We
were getting hungry by this time, as well as thirsty so we headed back to the
Providencia area where our B&B is located. We found a little corner
restaurant with sidewalk tables near the Metro stop and shared a small pizza and
a couple of the local beers (which were quite good).
Thursday
The Concha y Toro
winery is just a metro ride away. We buy their Casillero del Diablo label
wine frequently so we decided we should try it at the source. The subway
ride takes about an hour – to the very end of the line, and then a five minute
taxi ride takes you right
to the winery. It was a very nice tour, much the
same as any other wine tour, with some excellent wines available for tasting.
We had not realized how many different brands they bottle. I think we
normally drink the cheap stuff. We decided
there was no need to buy any
wine at the winery as it is available in all the stores. Later we found
Casillero del Diablo Cabernet in a box. We will pick up some of this to
smuggle on board the ship in our luggage.
We found a nice restaurant just outside the winery and had
a late lunch. Like in Mexico, the midday meal is the largest in Chile.
We haven’t adjusted to that so we settled for a sampling of appetizers and a
bottle of wine.
By the time we returned to our B&B the wine had taken
effect and we were pretty much done for the day.
Friday
Concha y Toro was so much fun we decided to visit the
Cousiño Macul winery on Friday. It too can be reached by the Metro; in
fact it is a bit closer than Concha y Toro. We had been told it was just a
short ride by taxi from the Metro station to the winery, but there weren’t any
taxis immediately evident. We asked a couple of people for directions and
were told twice that it was just a short walk. We had plenty of time
before our reserved tour time so we set off down the road. A good lesson
about asking directions in a foreign country. If you ask someone who
doesn’t have a car how distant something is, realize that their definition of a
“short walk” may be different from yours. Instead of the couple of blocks
we expected it must have been a good mile and a half. At least it was a 45
minute walk down a road with no sidewalks.
We arrived just in time to catch up with the tour.
Cousiño Macul is the oldest winery in the country, founded in 1856. We
tasted some wines that were new to us, including a white cabernet. It is a
bit different than we are accustomed to, and quite inexpensive, so be bought two
bottles to enjoy on the cruise (assuming we can get them on board). The
tour guide was a very entertaining young lady, less formal than the Concha y
Toro tour guide. One of the cautions she gave us was that the Cousiño
Macul wine glasses can only be used for their brand of wine, otherwise they will
break!
Now we have four new wine glasses to try to keep unbroken
in our luggage.
We found a taxi to return the “short distance” to the
Metro station. It really was just five minutes by taxi.
Walking back from the Metro we passed an interesting
looking restaurant decorated in a Bavarian style. There was a sizeable
crowd in the dining room so we decided to give it a try. They offered a
“promocion” dinner which included wine, a salad dessert and a “parrilla” which
is the Chilean barbecue. The parrilla included several cuts of meat:
turkey, pork, beef and a couple of kinds of sausages. One of the sausages
was “blood sausage” which we tasted but couldn’t eat. Everything else was
very good and there was far more than we could eat.
Saturday
Santiago has a very large city park with a zoo. It
also has a large hill (somewhat the size of Cowles Mountain in San Diego) with a
funicular up one side and cable cars on the
other side. The “teleferrico” or cable cars are
a little smaller than the cars at a ski
lodge, and only hold two people.
They are also low; you ride through the trees instead of over them. The
trees hadn’t been trimmed for awhile and we hit a few branches. Our visit
to the park gave us a chance to walk around a residential district on the way
back to the Metro station (okay, we got lost) and see part of the city we might
not have otherwise seen.
We also located a self-service laundromat and washed a
load of clothes. We learned the Norwegian Dream doesn’t have laundry
facilities for the passengers so we thought we should start the cruise with as
many clean clothes as we could.
Sunday
We were feeling a little guilty about not visiting any
museums yet so we decided to visit the Museum of Ibero-American Anthropology.
We picked the right day – free admission on Sundays. It was quite
interesting, but no photos were allowed.
After our museum visit we went to the city market.
People had suggested to us that we have lunch at the fish market, as it has the
freshest fish in town. It definitely has lots of fresh fish. It also
smells. Not being a great lover of fish, I was
n’t very hungry. We
saw another market across the street and learned that it was the meat market.
Each of these markets is the size of an entire city block. Passing through
the meat market we saw still another market – this time fruits and vegetables.
And then still another market with household goods. We saw still another
market beyond this but we were ready to call it quits. We managed to buy
an additional bag to take aboard ship with our extra purchases (five or six
liters of wine).
We walked around the downtown area for awhile, watched the
artists painting in the Plaza de Armas, and returned to get packed for our move
to Valparaíso.
Monday, November 19
Valparaíso is only an hour or so by bus from Santiago and
the buses seem to run every half-hour. We had a leisurely breakfast and
then took a cab to the bus station. Our taxi driver had some difficulty
finding where to drop us off because of all the construction in the area.
We finally located the office of Tur-Bus, the line that runs between Santiago
and Valparaíso. We learned then that their busses were leaving from
another terminal because of the congestion. No problem though, we bought
our tickets and they ran us over to the other terminal in their shuttle.
We had a nice ride to Valparaíso, through vineyards and farms. We noticed
that they seemed to depend on irrigation for the crops, but the area looked
prosperous.
Valparaíso
We had reserved our B&B over the internet, based on their
web site and reviews of others who had stayed there. Valparaíso is built
on a hillside and one of the reasons for picking the location was the
expectation of nice views of the port and the ocean.
The city boasts about
15 “acensors” or elevators, and our B&B was at the top of one. Well…. the
hills are larger and steeper than we expected. Also, the B&B was a couple
of steep blocks uphill from the top of the elevator. We had taken a taxi
from the bus terminal to the B&B so we had no problem with our luggage.
After that, we began to get our exercise.
The area around El Caracol is known as an “open air
museum”. Many of the buildings in the area have murals painted on their
walls, most of which are amateurish but some are quite good. One of the
landmarks in Valparaíso is the home of the poet Pedro Neruda, winner of the
Nobel Prize for literature. He had several houses, and in his Valparaíso
house he displayed all
the quirky things he had collected during his world
travels. It looked like he had decorated from thrift shops, but it was
kind of neat.
Later, we took the metro from the Valparaíso station to
the end, to a town called Limache. We thought we were just taking a short
ride up the coast, but found we were taking an hour long trip inland, into the
arid interior. It suddenly looked like Baja California. We got to
the end of the line and turned around for the ride back. We decided to get
off at Viña del Mar.
Valparaíso is a port town, and not very touristy.
However, just a couple of miles away is the town of Viña del Mar, which is more
of a resort with lots of hotels, restaurants and a
casino. If we return to
Valparaíso we will stay in Viña del Mar.
We decided to tour the town in leisure, so we hired a
horse and carriage for a short ride.
Two days seems to be enough time to see everything of
interest in the Valparaíso area. Wednesday morning we packed our bags
again and took a taxi to the cruise ship terminal.
Underway
Checking aboard was uneventful and they didn’t find the
six liters of wine we were bringing aboard in our luggage. We have a nice
room, amidships with a large window. This is one of the largest rooms we
have had, but does not include a couple of luxuries we have enjoyed in the past,
such as a refrigerator. There are also no bathrobes and the TV is fairly
small (13 inch). Oh well, this is an economy cruise. Tomorrow we
make our first port visit, Coquimbo.
Coquimbo
Today was our first port visit after leaving Valparaíso.
The city of Coquimbo is north of Valparaíso, and as with Valparaíso and Viña del
Mar, it has a much nicer town adjacent to it on the coast. La Serena has a
nice sandy beach with its share of tourist hotels and a new casino under
construction.
As we were leaving the pier area we saw a couple trying to
find a taxi driver who spoke English. They wanted to rent a car for the
day to drive inland to the Elqui valley. We volunteered to join them to
share the cost an act as interpreters. I negotiated a reasonable price
with the driver and we set off on our tour.
As we headed inland we began to feel we were back in the
mountains of Baja California. We saw cactus plants, palm trees (Mexican
fan palms) and lots of Eucalyptus trees. The houses looked about the same
also.
After a few miles we entered a large valley which
apparently has some water available for irrigation. We saw acres
(hectares?) and acres of citrus, papaya and other fruit trees as well a several
vineyards.
We visited a couple of nice little towns, each with its
center square, and stopped at a couple of street markets. One little
market consisted of a dozen booths alongside the church. Each one had a
sign on the front of the booth extolling Christian virtues. We didn’t
learn if these sellers were trying to earn money for the church or if that was
just part of the price they paid for the location.
At another stand Pam bought some skin cream, called “Crema
de Caracol”. Literally “cream of snail”, it is made from snail slime.
It is guaranteed to remove wrinkles. (The wrinkles just slide away!)
Everywhere we visit in Chile we see street dogs, mostly
sleeping in the middle of the sidewalks. Everyone just walks around them.
Surprisingly the streets are clean and not full of dog droppings (as my back
yard usually is).
As we were driving we saw several signs for “Copal”, which
is distilled from grapes and used to make Pisco Sours. We located the
vineyard where it is made but the tasting room was closed for remodeling.
We stopped at another winery just down the road but they only carried their own
varieties of wine. They were having a promotion so we bought a couple of
bottles just for
kicks. You can’t go too far wrong in Chile at three
dollars a bottle. (We had to pay a $15 corkage fee to bring the wine
aboard ship, but that gave us a license to take our wine anywhere we wanted.
Since we had already brought some wine aboard, with a funnel we now have a
bottle that never quite gets empty.)
It was a nice day with lots of opportunity to practice my
Spanish with Pablo, our driver. He kept addressing me as “Don Miguel” and
seemed to prefer to deal with el jefe (me) instead of Pam. Talk about ego
stroking!
Talcahuano
A seaport town, the primary attraction in Talcahuano (for
us) is the Chilean Navy ship Huáscar, a 19th century ironclad Monitor.
t
was built in 1865 and for the Peruvian Navy. In 1879 it was
captured by the Chilean Navy in the battle of Angamos.
The ship is anchored at the Navy Base and maintained as a museum ship. It
is a
wonderful example of a 19th century ironclad, with the
“cheese box” gun turret of the same type as on the USS Monitor. At various
places on the deck are plaques showing where the senior officers on board fell.
One of the more famous was Admiral Prat, who was formerly a Commander in the
U.S. Navy. I guess he found his way to Flag rank the same as John Paul
Jones, who became an Admiral in the Russian Navy. There were also diagrams
of where the enemy shells hit, and they have painted these locations on the hull
and superstructure as well.
We had to ride a small barge ferry from the pier out to
the ship. It was powered by two Chilean Navy enlisted men who pulled on a
rope. I suppose all navies have some things in common.
Concepción
We caught a local bus to Concepción and arrived at the
city square just in time for a demonstration. This time it was a march in
support of a local legislator, Senator Navarro, to save him from being kicked
out of the legislature for some reason or other. We didn’t much care why,
we just enjoyed the parade. 
I don’t think there is any tradition of buying
votes, but we saw a van provided by the senator that was offering free
vaccinations for pets. They were also passing out badges with his picture,
so we wore them for the day.
It was a refreshing change from U.S. political campaigns.
We visited the city market and tried to identify all the
different kinds of fruits and vegetables. They have some dried produce
that we couldn’t recognize. Lots of beautiful strawberries, cherries, and
avocados.
Valdivia
We pulled into the river between Puerto Corral and Niebla,
two small towns near Valdivia. This was our first anchorage, and we found
it less in
convenient than we had expected. There was no waiting for the
launch, probably because we had taken a
leisurely breakfast and all the tour
groups were already ashore. We took a local bus from
the pier to the neighboring town of Valdivia. We arrived there at 10 am
and everything but the city market was still closed, since it was Sunday.
We walked around the square, got some money from an ATM, and decided to go look
at the market.
The local market was the best part of the trip. One
side was all produce, the other all seafood. They were bringing boxes of
fresh fish in as we arrived, and the vendors were busy cleaning the fish.
This is where it got interesting.
The local sea lions were on to a good thing. As the
vendors cleaned the fish, they would
throw the spines and other scraps to the
sea lions. They didn’t have to throw far, as they sea lions were right up
next to the stalls. They were well fed.
Even the local cat got his share.
It was still early so we decided to take a short boat trip
around the islands. It was kind of interesting, but
we spent most of the time chatting with a couple from
Australia. One of the things we have enjoyed about this trip is meeting
people fr
om so many other countries. They said there are passengers from
more than thirty countries aboard. About half are from the United States,
and the second largest group is from Germany.
With Norwegian Cruise Line’s “Freestyle Cruising” you have
no assigned table at meals so you always have an opportunity to meet someone
new.
Puerto Montt
Located at the beginning of the lake
district, and the gateway to Patagonia, Puerto Montt reminds us of the Seattle
area. We
decided to hire a car to take us around the area and to visit a
national park with reputedly spectacular waterfalls.
We weren’t disappointed. The falls provided some
beautiful scenery but the interesting part was how blue the water is.
Normally you see brown, white or green water, but here the water is a stunning
blue.
Later, we stopped at a few shops to see the local craft
work. A part of every tour.
Puerto Chacabuco
If yesterday we thought we were in Seattle, today it is as
if we are in Alaska! Chacabuco is on a large fjord, surrounded by snow
topped mountains. It is a very small town, population just over a
thousand. Pam and I walked around the town in a half-hour or so. At
one point we passed a small neighborhood store and I was startled to see the
sign in Spanish. As we were reminiscing about Alaska I almost forgot we
were in Chile.
We soon came upon a sleeping dog, and we immediately knew
where we were!
When we were inquiring about the location of the
(nonexistent) business district we learned that a
larger town, Puerto Aisén, was
just a few kilometers away. The city bus
line took us there in about
twenty minutes for a dollar. Aisén is a much larger town, with a business
district about eight blocks long (but only one street wide). We visited
their cultural center, looked at the stores, checked our email and had a nice
lunch in the local restaurant. We had beef sandwiches, called “churrasco
completo”, which was a slice of beef with cheese, avocado, tomatoes and lettuce.
The “completo” refers to the extras. They have a very flavorful hot sauce
called “Ahí Chileno” which we liked, so we stopped at a little grocery and
bought a bottle to take home. After a couple of hours we had pretty well
done the town so we found the bus back to Chacabuco and returned to the ship.
Amalie Glacier
Early this morning we arrived at the first glacier we will
see on this trip. The Amalie Glacier is one of the 48 glaciers spawned by
the Patagonian snow field. We have been traversing the inland passage for
a couple of days now. From the map it
appears wewill continue among the
islands until after we leave Ushuaia and head towards the Falkland Islands.
Because of this it has been a very calm passage so far, except for the few times
we have ventured out into the Pacific. In this area two ocean
currents
meet and the water is very rough even in good weather.
We have had excellent weather this week, which made for
great viewing of the glacier. We were close enough to see the front as
well as the three sections which come down the mountainside from the snow field.
There was a lot of ice in the water, including some fairly large chunks, but we
didn’t see (or hear) any calving.
The ship stopped for an hour, which gave everyone time to
take photos. We took advantage of the top deck restaurant to have great
views with our breakfast. The ship was nice enough to provide coffee and
egg muffins on
deck for those who wanted to stay outside. Unlike
our Alaska visit, we didn’t see any seals on the ice flows, and no bears on
shore. Other than that it looks about the same.
The ship’s captain is from Norway and listening to his
announcements is sort of listening to the Prairie Home Companion radio show.
After he makes his announcements in English other staff members repeat in
Spanish, German and French. The Captain’s dry, Scandinavian humor adds
interest that the other nationalities on board don’t appreciate. Now it’s
on to
As we continue southward, we are suddenly experiencing
some interesting weather. We have 80 knot winds, gusting to 100 knots,
blowing against the superstructure, which is acting as a sail. The ship is
healing over about 20 or 25, degrees. In the photo, the picture above the
bed is our inclinometer – the picture is level, the deck is tilted. Kind
of scary, but fun!
We learned that this was a “Williwaw” wind (not sure about
the spelling) which can come up very suddenly. In this case, we passed a
gap in the mountain that allowed the winds to funnel from the sea.
Punta Arenas
This is the southernmost city in Chile, with a population
of over 100,000. It is located in the Straights of Magellan, which is a
passage cutting through the tip of South America. I had always thought the
Straights of Magellan was the name of the waterway between South America and
Antarctica. No so, that is the Drake Passage, named after the famous old
pirate Sir Francis Drake.
We took the opportunity to get caught up on the internet,
and then walked around the downtown. We thought we would visit the
maritime museum but they closed for three hours during the day – long lunch.
We found a place to change our remaining Chilean pesos to Argentine pesos.
A commitment to spend
no more money in Chile. The exchange rate for
Chilean pesos was about 500 to one dollar, which made calculations easy.
The Argentine peso exchange rate is about three and a third to a dollar.
It is time to change our mental calculators.
There were a couple of interesting monuments. To the
left is the monument to Captain General Bernardo O’Higgins, liberator of Chile
and founder of the country.
In the park was another big monument, this one to
Magellan. All in all, this seems to be a nice little town.
The Beagle Channel
his passageway was discovered by the HMS Beagle in 1830,
and Charles Darwin made the passage through here on the Beagle in 1833.
This is an all day passage to Ushuaia, part of which is referred to as “Glacier
Alley”. We passed four or five sizeable glaciers, three of which are
named after countries (Germany, France, Holland). The German glacier had a
nice waterfall at its base and the Holland glacier is an impressive example of a
“hanging” glacier. (Photos to left and right respectively.)
Ushuaia
This community claims to be the southernmost city in the
world. It probably is. We were
somewhat surprised to find the
weather quite mild. It has an average annual temperature of about 45
degrees. It is largely dependent on tourism, and is
the beginning of several Antarctic cruises. The city itself isn’t very
large, but has a few sights worth visiting. On is the old territorial
prison
which was built around the turn of the 20th century
and operated until 1947.
There was no wall around the prison, just a fence, based
on the philosophy that there was no place for an escapee to go. The
prisoners spent a good deal of time cutting timber which was used for heating
and power generation.
They built a narrow gauge railroad to haul the timber
back, and this has now been converted to a tourist attraction, “El Tren del Fin
del Mundo”, the Train to the End of the Earth. It runs a short distance
from the edge of town to the Tierra del Fuego National park. We decided to
take the ride, which takes a couple of hours for the round trip.
In several areas you can see the tree stumps that are all that remains of the
logging activities of the priso
ners, referred locally as the “tree cemeteries”.
We saw several restaurants advertising King Crab, so we
decided to sample the local specialty (having fond memories of the King Crab we
enjoyed on our Alaska Cruise). We found that the crab is a different
variety (smaller legs) and that it is cooked mainly in some variety of casserole
(at nearly $20 a serving). In interesting experience. We should have
just returned to the ship for dinner. On the plus side, we had a delicious
bottle of wine, “Latitud 33” Sauvignon Blanc for $10.
Cape Horn
One of the first things we learned is
that Cape Horn is not really a cape, which is defined as the tip of the
continental land mass.
Cape Horn is really a large island, off the south
tip of South America. The island is claimed by Chile, which
maintains a small outpost and light house. We have
been blessed with wonderful weather this entire trip, and we had calm seas and
very little wind as we passed the cape. Therefore we were able to take a
few pictures. Our ship circled the island in order to provide
photo
opportunities for all. A Celebrity cruise ship (the Infinity) has been
following our route for the last couple of ports. They appeared to stay in
one place for several hours off the cape.
We were a little disappointed at the mild weather.
We had expected the kind of weather that caused the loss of over 1,000 ships in
this area. I guess they normally have rougher weather, because the ship
has little racks in the public areas with supplies of barf bags.
Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
After two days of cruising we have
finally arrived at the Falklands (or as the Argentines say, the Malvinas).
I understand the total population of the Falkland Islands is about 63,000.
That is,
3,000 people and 60,000 sheep. Port Stanley’s
population is less
than 2,000. When we pulled into Port Stanley, we
anchored next to two other cruise ships that had arrived before us. I
think the Celebrity Infinity alone carries close to 3,000 passengers so you can
imagine what the town looked like when we arrived.
We were reminded about dressing in layers. When we
arrived it was sunny and warm. Within a half hour we were in a sleet
shower – nothing like a little freezing rain to help you enjoy your sightseeing.
We declined the opportunity to go see some more penguins
and there isn’t a whole lot more to see. There are a few remnants of the
Falklands war of 1982 (including a little museum in the church basement).
All in all, kind of a dismal place. It would have been much nicer with
fewer tourists.
Back at sea (enroute to Puerto Madryn) we began to get a
little rough weather. Fortunately it didn’t get real rough until the
middle of the night, so most of us slept through it. (Pam told me about it
this morning.)
Puerto Madryn
This city is considered a beach vacation spot for
residents of Buenos Aires. It certainly has the look of a vacation spot, a
little
like Pacific Beach in San Diego. There are a lot of small
apartments offered for rent by the day or week. We are here at the very
beginning of the summer season and there are apartments and condos under
construction in the residential districts. It is a small city, and the
residential areas end abruptly with not much but sand and open land outside the
city limits. We saw this when we
were riding a city bus trying to find our
way out to the EcoCenter, which is at the very edge of the developed area.
Our bus trip was interesting. With two ships in port
(we keep following the Celebrity Infinity) there was not a surplus of taxis and
we were told we could ride the bus most of the way. The fare is $1.20
pesos, exact change. That is the complicated part. As part of the
local modernization, the buses were all upgraded to have ticket machines that
accept coins (or a pre-paid multi-pass card) and dispense a printed ticket.
However the machines do not accept bills, and the driver doesn’t make change.
The catch is that there is a real shortage of coinage (moneda) in Argentina.
You cannot change a bill anywhere. Fortunately we had $2.50 pesos for the
trip to the EcoCenter and we thought we could get more change there.
We rode the bus to the end of the line and then walked the
remaining half-mile to the Eco Center. On the way there we passed a statue
of one of the former indigenous residents of the area, standing with his bow,
looking out over the city. Probably wondering what the hell happened to
his home.
We were very impressed by the EcoCenter (more properly
EcoCentro). This very modern museum addresses not only the sea and
seashore life but the offshore currents and their effects on the entire food
chain. Some of the exhibits were developed in
partnership with the Monterey,
California center.
The plastic Orca to the left is a replica of Mel, one of the offshore
inhabitants of the area. We learned they have also named several of the
whales that are regular visitor to this breeding area.
When we left the museum we decided to walk back toward the
bus stop in hopes of finding a taxi enroute. No such luck. We didn’t
have any coins, so our next plan was to play dumb and hope the bus driver would
make change for us. We didn’t find an available taxi, but we caught the
bus when there were practically no other passengers. The driver took pity
on us poor foreigners and let us ride free! He was doing his part to boost
tourism. When we returned to the shopping area near the pier we saw
evidence we were back in Argentina. A string ensemble was playing, trying
to collect a few coins (probably so they could ride the bus). We were back
with a cultured populous!
Montevideo
Another day at sea, then we stopped for
a visit at Montevideo. We decided to take a walking tour of the historic
center of the city. We were there on Saturday so most everything was
closed. The first stop on the tour was the most interesting – the old
city market. Unlike most city markets, this has been
developed into mostly restaurants, and seemed to be the center of activity.
The place was packed, with local residents all sitting at the tables eating from
huge platters of meats and drinking beer and wine, and hundreds of tourists from
the two cruise ships wandering in the aisles taking pictures. I include us
in this latter group. We had already eaten lunch and couldn’t be tempted,
although the parilla looked delicious.
Later we walked to the Plaza Independencia to visit the
tomb of José Artigas, hero of the revolution. His tomb is below the
imposing statue in the center of the square and is guarded 24 hours a day by two
soldiers.
The other interesting monument is located near the pier.
It is the optical range finder from the German pocket battleship, Graf Spee.
The ship entered the neutral port of Montevideo after being damaged in a sea
battle with two British cruisers in 1939. After 72 hours it was 
forced to leave the neutral port and the commanding officer scuttled his ship
rather than to let it be sunk by the British. There is, of course, a lot
more to the story.
We left Montevideo late in the evening to make the short
crossing of the Rio Plata to Buenos Aires. We arrived on schedule, but
disembarking was disorganized and delayed an hour or more. I looked across
the pier at the Celebrity Infinity, which had arrived well ahead of us (as
usual). Just ahead of the Infinity was an MSC ship, the Sinfonia.
Unfortunately, the Sinfonia was also disembarking passengers, and we all arrived
at the terminal (and taxi line) at the same time. There was no clearance
of customs or immigration. Still, it took us over an hour after we had
retrieved our luggage to make it into a taxi. Finally, we were on our way
to our B&B,
Mansilla 3935.
Buenos Aires
