Montevideo, Uruguay is the capital and largest city in Uruguay, with about 3 million people. Uruguay is one of the most stable countries in Latin America; a democracy, with a currency that doesn't fluctuate much, and it's not in a strategic-enough location (sandwiched between huge neighbors Brazil and Argentina) for anybody to want to take it over, we guess.

It seemed a little strange to start our cruise "down" to the tip of South America, by going "up" and over (East) to Uruguay. We understand there had been some other port we were supposed to visit; Montevideo was substituted. Hey, it made for a new entry on the "countries" list for both of us.

The briefing from the ship warned us to remove jewelry, don't carry a lot of money... many dire predictions about street crime. So you won't be seeing many pictures from Montevideo — Scott didn't bring his camera (Kathy has a few "regular" pictures that much show up sometime). The warnings were needless; perhaps there is a pickpocketing problem in Montevideo, but there are also police out in force when a cruise ship arrives... crime is bad for business. We saw none of the demonized "marauding 12 year olds" we were supposed to be wary of. Nowhere we went were we the least bit uncomfortable. But, better safe than sorry, we suppose. However as a side-effect of our paranoia, the only pictures (Kathy will have a few on her film camera) were taken from the dock.

It wasn't terribly exciting. It's a reasonably modern city, with some nice parks (but nothing on the scale of Buenos Aires'); would have benefit from a lot less dog poop on the sidewalks than it had. Actually the city is divided into "Ciuidad Viejo" (old city) and Cuidad Nuevo (new city). The difference was pretty obvious — older architecture vs. newer, glass vs. stone, modern vs. ancient.

We did a lot of walking (we have to do a lot of walking, or we'll be needing new clothes before the end of this cruise), and got off the beaten path where Tourists (and in particular, cruise ship Tourists) visit, but still pretty much center-city. We did get into one interesting museum by the highly descriptive name "Gaucho (cowboy) and Museum of Money". A non-sequitur combination perhaps. More interesting than the museum artifacts was the building that housed it. Elegant wooden inlaid floors, towering staircases. Quite the architecture.

We got back to the ship in plenty of time. We'd pretty much circumnavigated both the old and new cities, and we were ready for a rest. Montevideo won't be on our "must return" list — but it was OK and the weather was cooperative.