Uruguay, Welcome to the World

Bye Bye USA

We flew NY to Sao Paulo, Brazil, then onto Montevideo, Uruguay on TAM airlines late on December 31, 2013. Therefore, we rang in New Year's Eve on the plane!

Though most everyone else on the plane spoke Portuguese, we made sure to count down in English to midnight (hard when there is no broadcast or second hand watch to reference... a lot of 3-2-1--2-1--2-1). Eli was able to capture the exact moment of 0:00 midnight on our handy Flight Info TV station...

And I was able to grab two champagne glasses as the cart happened to pass at one minute to midnight. Not a bad way to start the year!

[1 Enero, 2014] Well what happens when you ring in NYE on the plane is that you land on a public holiday. No buses were running to and from the Montevideo airport all day. Darn, didn't plan for that. One crowded cab ride later we arrived in Uruguay at roughly 3 in the afternoon. Our hostel was walking distance to the beach, but it also had a bed and I was exhausted so Eli went to the beach and I took my first siesta :)

Much of our stop in Montevideo was admittedly slow paced. We had had a busy few weeks to get here so, I don't know, when in Montevideo... no need to rush. What you need to know about Montevideo is:

1- It is hot in summer! We used the heat as our excuse for many things. Then we learned it was below freezing in most of the US and stopped complaining.
2- When you don't live in Seattle, and it's hot sticky summer, there are bugs. Our arms and legs are still speckled but fortunately we are less itchy now. What's a mosquito?
3- The urban beaches are pretty. The city is majority city but then there is this beach town feel all along the edge: a wide promenade, sandy beaches, beach cruisers- and all the while you are in the capital city.
4- Dinner is late. Even for Eli and I. Welcome to Latin America.
5- There aren't a lot of people. The downtown "old town" is actually on the City's peninsula, so unless you are a tourist, you have little reason to be there. The result was a somewhat ghost town feel. We of course blamed that on the heat.

To put that all into photos, here's a summary of our first days in Montevideo.