After leaving the port of Buenos Aires, I had one goal: to board the HMS Francisco ferry, connecting Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay. This ferry not only is the fastest in the world, but was built by Hobart-based shipbuilding company Incat and supposedly has a big map of Tasmania in the main cabin area (also named after the late Pope, BA-born and raised of course).
Somehow I managed to book the one ferry of the day that wasn’t this one, so I failed my mission. Oh well. I made it to Uruguay nonetheless. The journey only took a couple of hours, heading downstream the Río de la Plata.
Montevideo
Montevideo is a lovely city, and very pretty. Some of the streets lined with Victorian terrace housing and sycamore trees were reminiscent of Melbourne. Culturally, it is very similar to Buenos Aires — the gastronomy is much the same (lots of barbequed meat, Italian food, dulce de leche and alfajores, and of course yerba mate), although the Uruguayan national sandwich, the chivito, is one point of difference on menus. What I loved about Montevideo is that I could enjoy a similar culture to that of Buenos Aires, just on a much smaller scale. While Buenos Aires is an enormous megacity of 15 million, Montevideo boasts a humble 1.3 million (which, matter of fact, is more than a third of Uruguay’s overall population! It’s a tiny country).
In many ways, Uruguay is to Argentina what New Zealand is to Australia. A simplistic (and perhaps naive) comparison, but you can’t deny the parallels.
Anyway, I was only in Uruguay for a total of five days, so I mostly took this time as an opportunity to relax a bit and go low-key. I spent a lot of my time walking the streets of Montevideo, admiring the architecture (which this city does really well), and taking leisurely strolls along the waterfront. A lot of the photos I’ll include here are buildings that tickled my fancy.
The hostel I stayed at was very central, yet still only a 15-20 minute walk away from a beach!
One thing I noticed about Montevideo is that they love a market here — in my five days I probably walked past three or four different street markets, plus more upscale indoor ‘food halls’.
The city centre, like most Latin American cities and towns, was built around a main plaza. Montevideo’s Plaza Independencia boasted giant statues of mate gourds, ie. the herbal tea-like beverage drunk throughout many parts of South America (but Argentina and Uruguay seem to have a particular affinity for it).
This week’s entry was more of a photo dump, but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless. I loved Uruguay, despite being there for such a short time — it was a nice break from the chaos of BA, without being too far away. Indeed, after my five days were up, I jumped back on the ferry (again, not the Tasmanian-built one… just my luck) and returned to the Big Smoke.
Delightful summary Hannah, you clearly enjoyed the slower pace and beautiful surroundings. Fancy meeting Elvis at the youth hostel!🎶🎶