Carioca Sunshine: In the Land of the Nachos

To get Uruguay, we took a high-speed ferry across the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, which was a three-hour trip. Another (cheaper) way to get to Montevideo is to take the ferry to Colonia, Uruguay, and then take a bus from there to Montevideo. However, that’s a trip of at least five and a half hours, and while it would have been interesting to see the Uruguayan countryside, we decided that in the interest of time it was better to take the ferry straight to Montevideo.

High-speed ferries may just be my new favorite form of transportation. The seating area was entirely enclosed, and though I wished there were an open deck on top from which to take pictures, other than that I didn’t really have any complaints. Seats were arranged mostly in groups of threes, and they were cushier and more comfortable than airplane seats. There was a decent amount of space in which to walk around, including right at the front of the ferry so people could watch the progress across the water. Unlike in the United States, the onboard café actually served very reasonably-priced food. There weren’t seatbelts, and the rocking of the ferry on the water was only the slightest bit perceptible when walking, so overall it was a very comfortable way to travel.

I couldn’t believe how relaxed the border between the two countries was. Tourist visas aren’t required in either country, and we basically just walked straight through, pausing only to get our passports stamped and to turn in our entrance/exit forms. After going through the huge hassle of acquiring a Brazilian visa, this process seemed wonderfully simple. Brazilian officials always carefully scrutinize my passport and visa, which always makes me slightly uneasy, but these officials only glanced at it long enough to put stamps in it. Another guy at our hostel said he had about US$2000 of “devices,” as he called them (he was a salesman making some sort of delivery), “confiscated” (that is, STOLEN) by a corrupt customs official going into Uruguay, but we didn’t have any problems.

Getting money, on the other hand, was another story. We need to do that first thing, of course, in order to pay for the taxi that would take us to the hostel, but the ATM at the port didn’t work right. We then proceeded to wander all around the neighborhood outside the port looking for a usable ATM. Nothing says “target” quite like a couple of lost-looking tourists toting huge backpacks, but luckily for us, Montevideo’s crime rate is also pretty low. I quickly got well-acquainted with Montevideo’s police force, as I repeatedly questioned, “Good morning, Sir. Do you know where there is an ATM?” That’s one Spanish phrase I certainly learned well. Even after all that asking, the ATM that finally ended up working we found on our own. Apparently Uruguayan ATMs don’t like American and French cards.

While in Brazil the exchange rate is about two reais to a dollar and in Argentina it’s about 3.5 pesos to a dollar, in Uruguay the rate is something like 23 Uruguayan pesos to a dollar. That meant that we were always dealing with ridiculously large sums of money. I bought four magnets at a street vendor for UR$140, and dinner that night cost us over UR$500. It was slightly unnerving to be paying 500 anything for a meal, though in reality it wasn’t really that expensive for the amount of food we ordered. I can divide by 2 and 3.5 pretty easily in my head, but it didn’t take long to realize that dividing by 23 is beyond my abilities. I soon gave up trying to figure out what prices were in dollars, and just hoped whatever I was buying was cheap. Even though there are notes of more than 1000 Uruguayan pesos, coins go down to at least 50 cents. That’s a pretty huge range of currency.

Why is Uruguay the Land of the Nachos? Simply because not one, but two of the workers at the hostel were named it. I needed a title for the post. I knew that Nacho was a male name in Spanish, but I’d never actually come across one before. It seems that the name is very much alive and well in Uruguay.

Our hostel was located in the neighborhood of Pocitos, which was a ways from the Ciudad Vieja (Old City), where we spent most of our time. Pocitos has an ugly beach, but other than that, there isn’t much to do there. We only had a single afternoon in Montevideo, so we spent it in Montevideo’s most well-known neighborhood.

There’s a gate that separates the Ciudad Vieja from the rest of Montevideo, and when the guy at the hostel told us about it, I envisioned something grand and imposing. Nope. In reality, the gate is really ugly and awkwardly situated on the edge of an otherwise nice-looking plaza. It doesn’t even serve its purpose as a gate, since one can just walk around to enter the Ciudad Vieja.

The Ciudad Vieja is mostly just a collection of photogenic buildings. Some areas off the usual path look a bit worn-down and sketchy, but the main sections of it are very nicely maintained. There are several good restaurants around. We also came across a Carnival museum, so we stopped in for a look around. I wasn’t particularly impressed, but at least now I know a little more about the history of Carnival in Montevideo. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as Carnival in Montevideo, but apparently there is. They have elaborate costumes and floats and parade down the streets, not unlike what they do in the Sambodrome in Rio.

I was happy to have the opportunity to visit Uruguay, and Montevideo was cool, but the city is fairly small as far as national capitals go, and I really didn’t feel like we needed much more than an afternoon to explore it. We tried to go to a gaucho museum, but it was closed by the time we got there. Other than that, even though I was only there for about 24 hours, I really don’t feel like I missed out on much.