Montevideo - February 11th

I begin the day watching Manchester United v Liverpool on the TV.  With Luis Suarez playing it is a big match in Uruguay as well as everywhere.  The handshake incident got glossed over, and when he scored they went wild, but other than that I was happy with the Man Utd win.  However I can’t let this trip to Uruguay pass without mentioning the whole Suarez-Evra affair.  Since being here it has been obvious that one part of his defence, that negro is a commonly accepted term here, is correct.  There is no stigma attached to the word, and in fact the whole carnival seems to be a celebration of negro culture.  So he may have been right on that fact but he still knew what he was doing using it in the UK.  One other point, pride of place in the football museum yesterday was the football he handled in the Ghana match at the world cup.

Today is our final day in Montevideo so we try to get all the things we have missed done.  First on that list is going back to the restaurant which we missed yesterday, but when we get there we find that it doesn’t open for lunch on a Saturday.  Luckily Lonely Planet has a recommended restaurant which does open on a Saturday nearby, via a walk along a beach where it seems half of Montevideo is hanging out, so we go there and have a really nice lunch (steak of course).

Our second failed thing is shopping in the local craft market (I could take or leave this one) so we go there, but it isn’t open after lunch.  So that is a fail as well.  We then walk to the Theatro Solis, the main theatre in town, to get a tour, but when we get there it is closed just for this Saturday because they are preforming a Wagner Opera, so they need more time than usual.  As it is now coming up to kick off in the France Ireland rugby match we go to the Irish pub to view it (Dorota could take or leave this one), only to find it too is closed (until 8pm, after the final whistle).

So with that success record our day seems like a bit of a failure but then it improves.  First Dorota finds a cut down craft market in a plaza in town, and I find a pub (not Irish).  Then the Irish pub opens early so we catch a pint there, but not the game which was abandoned minutes before kick-off due to bad weather (so that’s another country ticked off then) before we head to our final destination, the Museum of Carnival (again).

This time we are going to a carnival show, so we have seats.  Unfortunately we have to deal with Uruguayan timekeeping, the tickets say 8.30pm, but we are pretty much the only ones there at that time.  It is over an hour before it starts.  Again I’ll leave the explanations to Dorota’s blog, but the extra parts we see here (besides candombes) are murgas and paradistas which are basically forms of satirical comedy.  While I’m sure they are good if you understand Spanish, they weren’t great, and in fact reminded me of a cross between a British pantomime (down to having a pantomime dame) and the old Irish Tops of the Towns competition (amateur).  I’m not sure it’s very unique to Uruguay as they claim, and may explain why only the candombes have UNESCO listing as a unique cultural heritage.