Uruguay

Just before dinner on the 13th night of the cruise the Captain told us that we (the 600+ guests on board) had to that point drunk 5189 bottles of wine.  We then went to dinner hoping to raise that number a bit.  It turned out that I was the youngest at a table for six.  I talked golf to the 85-year-old British woman next to me, as she matched my wine refills glass-for-glass.  At some point I mistakenly referred to her dinner companion as her husband.  She very emphatically told me that her husband had died five years ago.  I did notice, however, that she and her companion were holding hands as they walked off toward their stateroom.

We had two days in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay (do not pronounce the "r").  Montevideo has a population of 1.4 million although the population of Uruguay is only 3.3 million.  However, for each person there are four head of cattle.  Beef production is the number one industry, and all the cattle graze on grass while being herded by gauchos (cowboys).  This is a very different system than in Canada where (at least in Alberta) hundreds of cattle are crammed into stock pens where they stand in knee-deep shit and eat dried fodder.  Uruguayan beef is considered the best in the world (and also gets the highest prices) and most of it is exported to countries where the consumers have sophisticated tastes.

Montevideo is consistently rated as the the most livable city in Latin America.  Uruguay has a very low crime rate and is rated as the 10th best country in the world in terms of civil rights.  Canada ranks 11th.  The USA is way down the list.

On our first day we took a longish bus ride of the city. 

 

The tour ended at a brewery where we tasted four beers.  As the temperature was above 30 degrees this was a great end to our tour.  

On our second day Betty stayed on board, shopped, and had a massage at the spa.  All this was an attempt to use up our non-refundable shipboard credits before we disembark the ship for our time in Buenos Aires.  I walked from the ship to the old part of the city.  

After beef production Uruguay's next source of income is tourism.  Most of the visitors come from Argentina and Brazil to visit the 500 miles of white sand beaches.