We had another great breakfast and still struggled with the wifi being ridiculously slow and the internet dropping out – very frustrating. We checked out at 11:00am and were told that breakfast was not included and I had to pay for it at checkout. We then sat in the hotel lounge next to a power point and the internet was super fast there – so we finally managed to get 3 blogs out and download all the pictures from the Buenos Aires city tour.

We left at 2:00 pm from the hotel up the very steep ramp out of the carpark to ride to the ferry terminal in the drizzling rain. When we arrived, we were pointed to where to park the bikes under cover by friendly staff. When I got off the bike, I realised that I had forgotten to put my backpack on and it was still sitting on the top box 🥹👍😂 We then had to go inside the terminal to check in and get our boarding passes printed. Then we had to go upstairs for immigration and we got finger printed and stamped into Uruguay. Next we had a croissant and a drink and then went back downstairs to our bikes where a group of guys were standing around and checking our bikes out 😉- it was both staff from the ferry as well as customs officials. They took our TIP off us and we were ready to ride onto the ferry, Francisco, which was built in Tasmania and is the fastest ferry in the world travelling at 100 km/hr powered by gas turbines 🙂. Staff directed us where to park right at the back of the boat and then tied our bikes down. We then walked up to the Tourist class section and chose seats at the back of the boat. There was a tour desk on board and we ended up booking a full day city tour of Montevideo for the next day.

Andrew had a little snooze and I did some Sudoku and we arrived on time at 18:45 in Montevideo just after the sun had set and it was not raining but the roads were very wet – we embarked before all the cars and were directed through roads until we were stopped and asked to park our bikes on the side of the road and walk back 300m to a glass building to go through customs to import our bikes. We took all our paperwork with us and left the bikes parked where they had told us to. When we arrived at the customs building, a female customs officer asked us to follow her to a container where she started to process Andrew’s bike first. A second female officer who spoke English came and processed my bike and took photocopies of all my insurance papers (the ones we had gotten printed out just the night before in the hotel) and then printed and signed our new TIP. We were then allowed to go back to the bikes and leave the port terminal without any further checks.

I messaged our host that we would be at the apartments in 10 minutes and was told that Helen would meet us there to show us in. We rode on very wet roads and had to do a sharp right turn at an intersection where the road was flooded – I moved slowly and had to find the shallowest section to ride through safely when a taxi passed me on the right side (even though I had my right indicator on which was working 👍) just as I was about to turn right and he sprayed me with water that I was totally saturated up to my hip – thanks for the wet welcome to Montevideo 😂😳 but at least I did not get taken out by him while turning. A few minutes later we arrived at the apartments and a young girl let us into the parking garage. She then showed us to our apartment on the 4th floor and explained all the keys and she said we could pay the next day.

We got out of our motorcycle gear as we were very hot and sweaty and got changed into street clothes and walked 50m to a grocery store and got supplies for dinner and breakfast. Back at the very comfortable, spacious, modern and well equipped apartment, we cooked dinner and had a shower and organised to meet up with Gerry the next day for dinner.

We made it to Montevideo, Uruguay 🤗❤️🏍🏍👍

The next morning we got up early, had delicious breakfast in our amazing apartment, hand washed some clothes and got ready to walk back to the ferry terminal where we had arrived the previous day to start our city tour at 10:30am. Before we set out for the walk, we paid for the apartment at reception and Andrew met a German guy from Frankfurt who had been travelling in Uruguay for 3,months and he gave us some hints and tips of where to go on our way North through Uruguay and the lady at reception provided recommendations for good places for dinner.

It was an overcast gray cloudy day and we walked to the ferry terminal where we were shown to our tour bus – a big Scania tourist coach with wifi on the bus – and our tour guide told us to scan a QR code and choose our 3 courses for lunch while waiting for the other 18 guests to arrive. They were a tour group from Serbia with their own tour guide who translated everything the guide said into Serbian – most of which I understood from my childhood days holidaying in former Yugoslavia – and then repeated it in better English than our Uruguayan tour guide. We took off and our first stop was the main plaza (Plaza Independencia) with the iconic building (Palacio Salvo) designed by the Italian immigrant Mario Palanti) which is the main landmark of Montevideo – it nowadays has offices and apartments and apparently the famous tango “La cumparsita” was first performed in a cafe on the corner in that building. On the Plaza Independencia is a statue of the Uruguayan hero, Josė Artigas, on horse and in front of it were the ceremonial guard was practising walking and taking stairs synchronised. The surrounding buildings on the plaza are a mix of modern glass fronts, older European style buildings with ornate facades and some very run down concrete high risers – very stark contrasts right at the main square and as we noticed everywhere else too. Our second stop was a market to go shopping – apparently most people come across from Argentina on the ferry to go shopping tax free and return on the same day. When we stopped, the building I saw looked like an abandoned place and I wondered whether that was the most worthwhile things to show off on a city tour 🤔 but the actual market place we were ushered into was on the opposite side of the street in a renovated market hall. We had quite some time to walk around and ended up buying another packet of cereal in a health store and coloured marker pens to start tracing our trip on a map. From there we returned back to the ferry terminal for lunch in the cafe del puerto canteen which turned out to be a very nice place and the food was delicious with 3 courses each with manageable portions and not too big.

After lunch we went to the famous soccer stadium (Estadio Centenario) built in 1930 for the first world soccer championship. We took pictures outside and the tour guide said there is a shop inside but he was not sure whether it was open – we walked in and there was a restaurant and the Serbian tour guide started negotiating with staff for us to be able to enter the stadium – we had to buy a drink and pay extra money but the Serbians all wanted to go into the stadium so we paid and got a bottle of water and went inside the stadium too. There are concrete seats in the original section and apparently a big renovation and upgrade is planned for the 100 year celebrations in 2030 when the first match of the FIFA World Cup will be played there👍⚽️. I managed to step into some dog 💩 outside the stadium and tried to clean my shoe off while walking on gravel, through water puddles and grass 😂

Next stop was the Carrera Monument, a bronze sculpture of a traditional cart pulled by oxen. After that we rode along the foreshore to the colourful Montevideo sign and took pictures there. There is a row of tall high rise buildings including some very expensive ones and some looked really run down – the stark contrasts again. According to our tour guide though only 10% of the population of Uruguay is living in poverty, 10% is wealthy and 80% are middle class 🤔

We then had a stop in the Hilton hotel for coffee and were then supposed to have 1.5 hours for shopping at a shopping mall. The Serbian group did not want to go shopping and we were asked if we were ok with going to the main plaza and strolling around the old part of town instead which we also preferred so we went and stopped at the main theatre ( Teatro solid) and then walked through the old part of town and stopped in a book shop, where I bought a new sudoku book and looked at an art gallery where Andrew liked an oil painting of a gaucho on his horse with sheep and a cattle dog that reminded Andrew of Australia. We also found a back street with a little place celebrating and honouring sexual diversity.

We returned to the bus and told the tour guide that we would not continue back to the ferry terminal as we were close to the restaurant we were going to meet with Gerry. We walked towards the restaurant and one street before the restaurant there was a police car and in the middle of the road was a blocked off area with a deceased body behind 😳 – we do not know if it was a road accident, a crime or a medical episode? We got to the restaurant and Gerry was waiting outside for us – we went inside and all of us ordered seafood for dinner. We had another great evening with two bottles of wine and more liqueur and coffees afterwards. We were there for 6 hours and the restaurant organised us a taxi when we showed them where we had to get to as they did not recommend walking at that time of the night. We were safely at our apartment 6 minutes later.

The next morning after a bit of a sleep in and lovely breakfast, we checked out the view from the roof top swimming pool before heading to get Uruguayan pesos from a Western Union nearby. We then visited the museum of the Andes 1972 crash of flight 571 which was an excellent museum with everything in English and Spanish. We had crossed the Andes very close to the actual crash site a few days prior.

After the museum visit, we walked back to the main plaza to take pictures in the sunlight and with blue skies. We then had a late lunch and returned to our apartment after grocery shopping in time to watch the sunset from our roof top. We met a Canadian couple whom we talked to before returning to our room.

We spent the evening and most of the night fighting with websites and internet issues to get the visa application for Andrew to enter Brazil submitted and paid, apply for a tourist card for the toll roads of Uruguay, and I worked on the blogs. The internet was so slow that sending a single image took 45 minutes 🙁🥺