We awake at about 10am, couldn’t believe we slept this long
but it must have been needed. We have
breakfast and then ring up the airline to see the status of our luggage. The airline informs us that our luggage was
on the morning flight to Montevideo from Sau Paulo, Brazil and will be
delivered to our hostel mid to late afternoon.
We are happy with this but still not overjoyed which we will be when we
get our gear back. Knowing this we go
out and explore Montevideo. The weather
is fine, but it very cold. I am enjoying
the crispness of the weather much more than the hot humid weather we had in Cartagena
(although the time at the beach was fantastic).
We walk into the city centre, it is a nice walk. The city reminds me of Christchurch a lot,
tree lined streets (although since it is the middle of winter the trees have no
leaves), wide streets and a crisp winters morning.
We are heading towards the Ciudad Vieja (Historical part of
town), and on the way we have to walk through the main commercial hub of the
city which is good. We enter the Plaza
Indepencia, which is effectively the barrier between the old and new part of
town. In the middle of the plaza there
is a huge statue which tops the underground Mausoleo Artigas. This is where quite a few famous dead people
are lying in tombs. This however is
currently under repair so we can’t go down here and also the statue is covered
in scaffolding. On the outskirts of the
Plaza is the 26 storey Palacio Salvo building.
This is a nice building and was once South America’s tallest building.
We then walk through the historical part of town. There are many old buildings here and it is a
nice area. We make our way to the port
which is not very nice. As Mum (or Dad?)
rightly put as a comment on facebook, it reminds me of the tip head in
Greymouth, only difference is it does not have road access! Also the water of the Atlantic is dirty,
probably because it is close to a major river mouth (Rio de la Plata). This river is mud based and is dirty. We make our way back into the historical
centre, and enter the Mercado del Puerto, which is a market with a lot of
restaurants. This was very busy as it
was a Saturday, with the majority of stalls cooking mammoth barbeques, a
Uruguayian specialty! We continue our
wander through the area and have a look in the Teatro Solis which is Montevideo’s
leading theatre. We then walk to a
restaurant which is recommended in the Lonely Planet as having the best
empanadas in town, called La Cibeles.
Empanadas are a type of pie and are fantastic. We tried them when we were in Argentina in
March and loved them so were happy to be in this part of the world again to try
more. We each got three empanadas (they
are smaller than NZ pies) and also a beer.
At this stage it was late afternoon and we had finished everything we wanted
to do in Montevideo, the place is a very nice city but there is not much for
the tourist to do. We wander back to the
hostel in the hope that our baggage had arrived from the airport, it hasn’t. 4.30pm and no luggage, we could be spending
another night in Montevideo. We sit
down, relax and have a look on the internet and by about 5pm a guy turns up
with our bags. We are very
relieved. We then take a taxi to the bus
terminal and get the next bus to Colonia del Sacremento, which is about 2 and a
half hours away. When we arrive we get a
taxi to a hostel which is in the Lonely Planet and hope it is not fully booked,
which it isn’t. This place is not a very
nice hostel but we are only going to be here for two nights and we hopefully
won’t be spending too much time here.
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