Montevideo - February 8th

Like always the overnight rain has cleared by the time we wake up.  After breakfast and checking out we walk the short distance to the bus station to get our bus to Montevideo.  I am a bit sad to be leaving Colonia, although we have seen and done everything, it is such a picturesque place that you could easily hang around for a few more days.  I’ve been to many places in South America, on this and my previous trip, and I don’t think I’ve been to a prettier place.

The bus journey itself is a simple two and a half hour affair, one of the advantages of Uruguay is that it is a lot smaller than Argentina, it is just over half the size of Poland, or 3/4s the size of the UK, so most places are within 6 hours of each other.   As we drive we see a number of yards filled with old classic cars, being used for spare parts.  As we had seen in Colonia there are a number of old cars still in use in Uruguay, which we are told is because of the high costs to import new cars, and the relatively short distances mean less wear and tear.

After checking into the hostel in Montevideo we go for lunch, a local specialty, the Chevito.  This is just a steak sandwich, but the meat and cheese are pretty good.  At first glance Montevideo is a lot poorer looking than BA, but there are no slums on the outskirts.  In fact the drive into town reminded me more of driving into Dublin about 25 years ago than anything else.  The city just looks like it has less money now than it had then (so maybe like Dublin 25 years from now as well).

In the evening we go to the cinema.  Finally we get to see the Iron Lady.  As this is not a film review blog I’ll leave reviewing it, one thing I will say though is that the audience did seem a lot more engaged when it got to the part about the Falklands War.  The cinema was located in an area with a lot of local restaurants so when the film was over we had dinner in a local restaurant watching as a local team Nacional, beat Vasco De Gama from Brazil, in the Copa Libertadores (South America Champions League) in Rio.