34 54.485 S, 056 07.855 W
We arrived on Friday morning at the Yacht Club Uruguayo at Puerto Buceo and were tied up by 9:30 am. After getting settled and a quick shower we went to see the Prefectura which was conveniently located here at the yacht club.
Everything was fine with our paperwork so we got a taxi and went to Immigration to get our passports stamped. This was a bit of a bummer as the taxi driver told us we owed him 2400 Uruguayan pesos instead of 240 pesos. So we paid him only to find out that we actually gave him $78 instead of the $7.82 we should have paid him. Argh.
Anyway, we went to find the Immigration office. It looked a little like the office in Beetlejuice, with papers stacked up along the walls, older desks and nothing resembling a computer but we got our passports stamped after paying a fee of 80 pesos or about $2.60. That was easy.
We got a little lost trying to get back to the main thoroughfare but we met Sylvia. She works in the area and speaks excellent English and took us under her wing! Through Sylvia we got tourist maps, found out where the Brazilian consulate is, found a place to catch a tour bus to see Montevideo and an excellent place for lunch. All good and certainly made up for the taxi driver.
Today we walked to the Montevideo Mall next door to the World Trade Center and just a few blocks from the yacht club. The mall has a great supermarket which we checked out. It even has peanut butter (could not find this in Argentina). So we will definitely provision there. After a quick lunch we caught the tour bus. We managed to see a lot of Montevideo in 3 hours! I will try to send some photos later. There is a mixture of architecture styles from French to Spanish to Neoclassicism to Art Deco (Rich's least favorite). It is quite an interesting place. In the center old city we found pedestrian malls with great shops and outdoor cafes. We also heard a band with a woman in a very skimpy costume dancing like Carnival which is very popular here and lasts for a month. There is even a Carnival museum!
Since Montevideo is along the Rio de la Plata there are numerous beaches with people enjoying the sun and playing beach volleyball. The yacht club has two pools as well.
As tomorrow is Sunday we plan to do a few boat chores before we do any more exploring. Monday we will visit the Brazilian consulate to see about getting our visas.
Cheers,
Elaine and Rich
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