Montevideo

Mercado del Puerto
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DAY 64 - 5 FEBRUARY 2008 (TUESDAY)

We walked to the ferry terminal at the top of Puerto Madero in 40 minutes, it was nice and quiet, but already hot and steamy at 7am.  At the ferry terminal we checked in and then went through immigration - Argentina and Uruguay were sitting next to each other, so it was very quick and painless.  We boarded the ferry which is large and has duty free etc on board.  I read and Scott slept for the 3 hour journey to Montevideo.  We disembarked and caught a taxi from the port to our hostel.  At the hostel our booking was all confirmed and we checked in and called Daniel who lives in Uruguay and is coming to meet us and take us on a tour of his city.

Surprising - lovely old architecture, lots of friendly people and great food

Government building in Montevideo
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Daniel and his son Gus came and we headed off through the old part of the city and then along the coastline.  Montevideo has the same population size as Perth.  The coastline has lot of apartment buildings, but they are built back from the coast, with a road and large beaches, grassed areas etc separating them.  The beaches are clean, although it is very weird to see brown water instead of the blue waters we get at home.  The water is clean, it is brown because of the sand etc washed down from the rivers.

The new telecommunications building in Montevideo
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We then headed into town for a look at some of the old style architecture.  There are some beautiful buildings remaining, although a lot of it has fallen into terrible disrepair.

We went for lunch at Mercado del Puerto which is a lovely old wrought iron structure built back in 1868 and now has lots of different restaurants inside it.  This place is a meat lovers parilla paradise, all the restaurants have large barbecue grills with every type of meat possible.  We started at a place called Roldos for a medio y medio, which is a champagne and white wine speciality mixed for this place, plus a sandwich.  We had a mixture of Roquefort-walnut, Salmon-egg and Roquefort-parsley - they were absolutely huge sandwiches, but this was just a snack to tide us over while we were choosing from the lunch menu!!  We then headed to Cabana Veronica where I had an omelette and papas fritas and Scott, Daniel and Gus had a selection of Cubierto, Asaod, Chorizo, Choto and Molleja - all different types of sausages and meats and we also shared a dish of grilled cheese with oregano.  To top this off we had a bottle of Tannet, which is a locally produced red wine.

Us with Montevideo in the background
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We headed back into the city for a closer look at Plaza Independencia and the Mausoleo de Artigas.  A lot of the museums etc were closed as today is a public holiday.  We did however go into the Museo Torres Garcia, who is one of Uruguays most famous painters - he started doing portraits etc, fairly conventional stuff and developed into an abstract artist.

The old city, Ciudad Vieja has a lot of atmosphere, but is extremely rundown in parts and requires some massive investment to retain the remaining heritage, which can be done as shown at the Teatro Solis, which is the restored theatre.  Even weirder is that Montevideo has a World Trade Centre with twin towers.  The government has built a massive new building, which was the first thing we saw from the ferry, but it looks out of place.  The new building also has a nice new train station, but the beautiful heritage train station just up from it has been left to ruin.  The old train station is in a similar style to the Musee DÓrcy in Paris.

All that is left of the original city gate and walls
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Daniel drove up back to the coast so we could see the sunset, before he went off and joined his wife in packing for their holiday the next day, so we appreciated him spending the whole day with us and showing us around the city.  We would never have seen as much without him.

We walked back along the beach and watched the sunset, and more funnily the people exercising holding their thermos and mate mugs.

We headed back to the hostel absolutely stuff - both from food and tiredness.