Feb 28, 2023 – Montevideo, Uruguay
On Monday Feb 27th, we took our time checking out of the lovely Melia hotel and headed to the cruise terminal in Buenos Aires for embarkation. The cruise terminal is very nice with indoor seating and wifi. We had little hassles and I am still glad we have minimal luggage to deal with. We were a little surprised when we were asked for vax cards at immigration since the cruise lines had dropped their requirements for tests and vaccinations. However Chile apparently hasn’t done the same so all the passengers had to either have a vax card or take a PCR test for Covid.
We are on a 20 day cruise with Oceania Cruise Lines on the ship Marina. We have been on this ship before on our 2019 Baltic cruise. So far we are very happy with the cruise and the trip. Cabins are roomy and we have a small veranda on the starboard side – which should face the continent if land is visible. Food is varied and mostly excellent. We are starting to meet some of the other passengers – mostly through a group of cruisers from cruisecritic.com roll call boards where I connected with other people to organize shared private excursions.
We left Buenos Aires in the evening on Monday and our first two stops were in Uruguay, Montevideo and Punta de Este. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, located east of Argentina and South of Brazil. Montevideo is the capital city with a population of 3.5 million. They have a happy looking flag with a Sun representing the Revolution of 1810.
We were signed up for excursions offered by the cruise line at both ports.
We had an excellent former school teacher named Betty as our guide in Montevideo. We got a tour of the new city with a stop at Constitution Square which is surrounded by a cathedral, a town hall, the stock exchange and customs house and a mix of 19th century European buildings and some quite ugly apartment buildings. The statue in the center is dedicated to the nation’s hero, Jose Gervaiso Artigas, who was a political leader, military general, statesman and national hero. He is considered a liberator of the Río de la Plata region and sometimes referred to as “the father of Uruguayan nationhood”.
Our tour followed the seaside road (La Rambla) through resorts lined by high rise condos. The water that Montevideo sits on is the Rio Platte which is actually a huge estuary that took our ship all night to cross when we left Uruguay. The river is the border between Argentina and Uruguay. We learned that all of the beaches in Uruguay are public – Feb is the end of their summer season and the beaches were crowded.
After several stops at scenic parks we headed out of town to a winery in Juanica. The Deica winery is one of the larger family owned estates. We had a chance to pick some lovely sweet grapes off the vines in the fields before heading inside to see their cellars. Afterwards we were treated to a lovely lunch with a Uruguay barbeque, salad, sides and five of their wines. After the luncheon, we watched another Tango performance. Brenda and Bill both “volunteered” to learn a few steps with the performers!
On the way home we walked the Old Town on the hunt for a deck of playing cards and Uruguay postage stamps and cards. The cards were a bargain for $3 but the 2 postcards and stamps were a pricey $15 – a special for cruise passengers I think! Back on the boat to enjoy the food and shows on the Marina. The boat left Montevideo and headed to Punta del Este, another stop in Uruguay.
Mar 1, 2023 – Punta Del Este, Uruguay
Brenda, Craig and Bill went off of a shore excursion to see the sights in Punta Del Este and to mail post cards to Sophia and Nikko. I stayed on the ship because my knee was really hurting. So Bill and Brenda wrote this blog about their shore excursion.
Punta Del Este is a nice upscale sea coast town in Uruguay with about 150,000 residents. It’s located on a peninsula where the River Platt meats the South Atlantic Ocean. Ronal (our tour guide) was convinced that this was the best place to live in Uruguay. Much of the prime real estate is owned by foreigners who have priced most of the locals out of the better neighborhoods. The town is neat, orderly, clean and safe. There is a beautiful harbor and marina that is the focal point of the south side of town. There are several public beaches on the north side of the Peninsula.
The first big stop was at the Ralli Museum which housed a collection of contemporary Latin-American art. This included both paintings and sculpture. In addition, there was an interesting collection of 17th century Flemish paintings which showed contemporary village life. The museum was founded by Harry Recanati who made his fortune in banking. Later in life he sold some of his banks and set up an art foundation which established five art museums around the world.
We visited the incredible home/studio of Carlos Paez Vilaro, Casa Pueblo, a must see structure which started as a tin shed in 1958,and over 64 years became a rambling edifice of pure white cement which sits on a cliff overlooking the sea. Intentionally, there are no straight lines in this many spired, castle like retreat that Vilaro called his “his spotless white boat, stepping stone for set off to the world”. Casa Pueblo was modeled with the concept of the bird nest, to make it more organic as a living sculpture. It was built by various friends over the years. The rooms are laid out like a maze, many of which contain Vilaro’s work. A self-taught abstract artist, Vilaros prolific work throughout his lifetime spans the mediums of painting, sculpture, architecture, film and music. He called Casa Pueblo his homage to women and the sun. His remarkable life was a journey that included friendships with Pablo Picasso and Albert Schweitzer and much of his work reflects the struggles of African people and natives in general. One room of the casa documents the miraculous recovery of Valero’s son, also Carlos, who was one of the survivors of the 1982 plane crash in the Andes that killed most of the Uruguay rugby team. Casa Pueblo is maintained by his daughter and a portion of it has been converted into a hotel.
The final stop was to see the Mano de Punta del Este, a sculpture of fingers on a hand reaching out of the sand. This picture was probably taken with a drone as it is not possible to capture the entire sculpture from the ground.
There was only time to snap a few pictures and then Brenda and Bill made a mad dash to a post office several blocks away to mail the Uruguay postcards to the grandchildren – with only minutes to spare before they closed.
And Maria decided to try a new approach to her leg pain and went to see an acupuncturist on the ship. I though it was going to be a lot of mumbo jumbo but I will admit I was wrong. It has improved the situation so much more than the drugs and shoe inserts and miscellaneous other advice I got from two podiastrists!