Under sail to new ports

During the night we sailed the de la Plata 113 nautical miles to Montevideo, Uruguay, located on their southernmost point on the Rio de la Plata, and arrived the morning of Monday, March 2.  Uruguay is the second smallest county in South America, and is between two country giants, Brazil and Argentina.  Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay and we had a city tour planned. 



As we arrived at the port, we could see some beautiful buildings that made up the skyline.

The scuttled ships are beyond the breakwater.

Montevideo is nowhere near the size of Buenos Aires, with about half of their 3.5 million in population residing here.  However, the port is quite significant, and, interestingly, has an array of tied down and scuttled ships and boats as you enter it. 

There I quite a mass of boats and ships laying on the rocks, many of them half submerged.

The city itself seems a little slower, not quite as busy and bustling as Buenos Aires.  Not quite.  There is still road sharing but I didn’t hear the honking horns quite like in Argentina. 

Apparently there was a wall around the city and this is a remaining piece of it.

Our tour took us to the Legislative Palace that houses the Uruguayan Parliament.  It’s another architectural marvel, had its own palace guards and is considered one of the three most beautiful legislative buildings in the world. 

It is a beautiful building, but close up is better.

The entrance to the building is made of huge pillars that make you feel quite insignificant.

There's stained glass everywhere as in many other buildings that we've seen this trip.

There were guards at the entrance, guards at doors inside guarding whatever was on the other side of them, and guards everywhere guarding, guarding and guarding.

                                                         I do enjoy seeing the uniforms.

The inside was captivating, like so many of the buildings we've seen.  So much history and not enough time to take all of it in and learn about the people and their country.

There's nothing like another pretty building.



There's a statue dedicated to stagecoaches.

There were street tango dancers.  That was interesting.

We rode past historical statues, a fair amount of gorgeous old buildings, and went to the Estadio Centernario, the national futbol stadium, opened in 1930, where the Uruguayan team has claimed four World Cup Championships. 

The statues are beautiful.  This one had a guard shack and if you passed the alarm signs, he sounded an alarm to warn you to step back behind the signs and not get too close to the statue.  It went off a number of times while we were there ... people who do not read signs, or don't know the languages it's printed in. 

I don't even care for either football or soccer.

The stadium is huge.

Not a great shot of the little parrot.

From there we visited a beautiful park filled with gold and green parrots and then back to the ship.  It was a busy day.



Before we boarded there was a small park with various equipment.  This looks like part of a gold dredge.

Here is the welcoming gear.

The cutest and most colorful crane was here. 

This statue was dedicated in 1930 to the longshoremen, or so it appears by the plaque and my limited Spanish.

There are names, or maybe graffiti, on the dock.

Our beautiful ship looks like it has a shark's snout.

We saw churches although there didn’t seem to be as many as in Argentina.  Our tour guide told us that about 66 percent of the population is Catholic.  That’s quite a difference from the 96 percent being Catholic in Argentina. 

 

One of the main exports of Uruguay is beef, with a ratio of about four cows for every person.  Soy beans is the second although tourism is a huge economic factor.  Argentina does the same although they don’t raise as much beef as they used to because it’s not as profitable as soy beans.  Uruguayan beef is exported to Argentina, but we were told in Argentina that they don’t think the Uruguay beef is as good as Argentina beef. 

A ship passing to our stern appeared quite close.  There wasn't much room in the dock area, and it was quite close quarters for all.

Cranes can actually be quite attractive, too, colorful and all in a row.

The mooring lines were pulled from the ship at about 6 p.m.  We stood on our outside deck and watched as the tugboats, pilots, captain and crew once again maneuvered the large Golden Princess from a seemingly small space into open water.  I’d liken it to parallel parking a car in an exceptionally tight space, cars crowding yours on both ends.  I have to give a lot of credit to our crew for their amazing work.  Photos don’t do this justice at all.

The ship had to be swung around and it seemed as though there would not be enough room. 

Heading out.

Past a ship unloading fish and out to the open sea.

A bite to eat, a show with a comedian who was very good and then back to the room to do a bit of work.  Our jobs are never done. 

March 3, Tuesday,  was a day at sea, filled with exercise in the gym, a lecture on our next two ports of call (Puerto Madryn, Patagonia, Argentina and Port Stanley, Falkland Islands), a Spanish lesson, a drum circle and a tango lesson.  There are always things to do. 
 

However, most of our time March 3, was spent looking for a toilet.  Ours quit working at 6:30 a.m. with its final flush.  We asked our housekeeper and it was an apparent blockage somewhere.  A few hours later we checked with the front desk, but there wasn’t much information forthcoming.  Nothing that we hadn’t already heard. 
 

More time passed and we spent it going from restroom to restroom.  The only problem in the search was that many of the restrooms had limited usage, with maybe two of the three toilets out of order, one of the three sinks out of order, and two of three soap dispensers with no soap.  The trash was also overflowing.  While being unsanitary was the first concern, it also was not what we expected on a Princess ship.
 

We waited.  Then we went to the desk again.  No new information other than there was more than one deck involved, and apparently it was only affecting 600-700-800-numbered cabin.  Guess which ours was … B634.  Ugh!!!! 
 

By 6:30 p.m. the toilet flushed on its own.  We thought it was now fixed.  Nope.  Two hours later it flushed on its own again.  Tested it.  Still not fixed.  At midnight it flushed again.  This time it appeared to be working. 
 

In between of that nonsense, we went to the production show.  These are usually song and dance numbers and are quite good, with the seats in the theater filling quickly and early.  We learned on our last cruise to go down early.  Yep … we got good seats.