Whoever said it was better to travel than arrive has never tried getting to Montevideo from Iguassu. It was not a great deal of fun, it involved an 18 hour bus to Buenos Aires (which arrived at 6:30am) followed by a ferry the following morning at 9.
Now had we been less panicky travellers we could have tried to get from the bus station to the ferry port on the same day, but our tickets indicated that we should be at the dock 2 hours before departure as that is when boarding starts.
Looking back now this is South America and we should have realised it was bull**** to make sure people turned up at least 10 minutes before departure (which was when most people arrived) but it worked out Ok for us as chaining the two would have turned a long and not particularly great journey into a horrifically long one (the catamaran ferry takes an hour and a half and this is followed by another bus from Colonia di Sacramento to Montevideo which takes 2 and a half hours)
The day in Buenos Aires gave us time to recover from the not particularly great trip with Crucero Del Sur, they have a good reputation and to be honest the bus had the best food and ambient temperature of the litany of busses we've taken in this part of South America. The main issue was the fact that there were cockroaches living in the plastic window ledge next to my fiancées head and it soon became apparent they were going to spend the night popping out to say hi.
Despite the insects we did manage to get some sleep (after she killed 15 or 20 of the buggers) but this seemed to be interrupted every couple of hours by Argentinian police checkpoints who decided they were bored and were boarding our bus and searching 2 (not particularly dodgy looking) guys for something to do.
As you can imagine after that trip a night (and part of the afternoon) asleep in bed was a good thing before having to do anymore travelling. We eventually got to Montevideo 3 days after leaving Iguassu.
We were looking forward to Montevideo as a number of people along the way had told us they really liked it (this may have been part of the reason we ended up in Uruguay) but to be honest it left me a little cold in terms of a travel destination.
Most of the colonial architecture is in the ramshackle old city, which although blessed with some nice parks is pretty dilapidated (an apparently not particularly safe after dark). The new city is in much better condition and safer, but would only class as a functional place rather than one of astounding beauty, although the theatre Solis and the palacio salvo are both worth seeing.
We also expected it to be lively but as our first two days there were Easter Monday and a Tuesday so it is understandable there also wasn't much going on.
This also really covered our experience food wise as well, there was a lot of steak and fish but nothing particularly to write home about. The place we did find some decent food was the Cafe Barraca (opposite the beautifully restored theatre) where we had a couple of good meals and on Saturday night (we returned to Montevideo after a trip to punta del diablo, which i will cover in my next blog) got to watch the a large number of Uruguain girls celebrating their 15th birthday.
According to our waiter when girls in Uruguay turn 15 they are given either a party or the chance to travel. If they choose the party apparently one thing that happens is that they get to wear a giant dress (think my big fat gypsy wedding) and have photos taken all over town. There were a constant stream of them (maybe 1 arriving every ten or 15 minutes) while we enjoyed our dinner and perhaps a bottle too many of Uruguain tannat wine.
Pictured are the theatre solis and some of the birthday girls, my chicken in honey and citrus sauce with stir fried vegetables and a fillet steak with salad from Cafe Barraca and my favourite building in Montevideo, the Palacio Salvo formerly the tallest building in South America!
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