South America, Day 6: Montevideo, Uruguay

The nice thing about staying in hostels rather than hotels is meeting the other folks traveling through the area. Last night while writing my blog post, I met a girl from Austria who had been studying in Argentina for six months and was taking a quick vacation before heading back home to continue school. Karin was a great sport and we had a good time practicing Spanish over dinner. (And I forgot to get a picture.)

After yesterday, I had mostly exhausted the suggestions from the (very limited) Lonely Planet South America guidebook, so I didn't have much of a plan for today. The Fodor's guide had a few suggestions that I figured I ought to check out, in a different district named El Prado. At breakfast I ran into my Austrian friend and accidentally startled her breakfast partner, a Dutch girl, by conversing in Spanish. As it turned out, though, Tialda not only spoke fantastic English, but had some new sights to see and had lost her traveling partner for the day. Serendipity strikes!

First on the list: every Wednesday at 11am, the Teatro Solis has a free guided tour in Spanish. Except for this particular Wednesday, unfortunately, as the Teatro was hosting a TEDx conference:

We weren't on the guest list.

Next stops: The Museo Torres Garcia (dedicated to Joaquin Torres Garcia, founder of the Constructive Universalism school of modern art; museum didn't allow pictures), the Catedral Metropolitana, and the Museo Historia Nacional - Museo Romantico (Museum of National History, Romantic Period). The Catedral is a very Spanish grand cathedral - tons of marble, gold leaf, and rich colors. The Romantic Museum (like many others in Montevideo) is set inside an old house; walking between the different rooms (each its own exhibit) had the feeling of strolling through a 18th/19th-century European mansion that you might see in Paris or Potsdam.

Musical instruments in the Museo Romantico

 In Plaza Zabala, we discovered that the Uruguayan love for cavalry statuary is not limited to Jose Artigas; the plaza features a large statue of Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, the founder of Montevideo.

Next to the Plaza Zabala was the Museum of Precolumbian and Indigenous Art - the only museum all day to charge us an entrance fee (60 Uruguayan Pesos, or a bit over $3). While MAPI was housed in the grandest building of them all, most of the rooms were closed (either unused or undergoing renovation), so the exhibits were mostly confined to one floor of three (certainly not what you expect when you go in!). I was a fan of a pair of modern pieces inspired by Precolumbian art. First, a room-size sculpture of hanging faces, hands, feet...:

 Second, a gallery of textile art. The "painting" of Paul Klee below is actually a woven piece of fabric, about the size of a rug made of threads a few mm wide. The neatest thing about it is that the hair (top of the head and the beard) are rendered in a different thread, such that some kind of fiber (maybe hair) actually comes out of the surface like an actual beard would.

For lunch, we went to a small restaurant recommended by the hostel staff as good and cheap (the Manchester bar and pizzeria, on Av 18 de Julio), and ordered chivitos naturales. The chivito is a traditional Uruguayan sandwich; I was informed that today's chivitos (bread, cheese, lettuce, tomato, steak) were actually smaller than the norm, which are often gigantic:

Yum!

After lunch, we decided that we'd pretty much exhausted the Ciudad Vieja, and that it was time to follow the suggestion in my Fodor's guide and take a taxi up to the El Prado district to the Botanical Gardens. On the way, our friendly cab driver cheerfully pointed out a crack house (glad we didn't walk the 6km) and then tried to rip us off at the end. Uruguayan taxi meters count off puntos (which I think are distance-based, but may have a time component to them as well). At the end of the ride, the driver pulls out an official chart converting puntos to pesos, with different rates depending on the day and time of day. Our driver tried to charge us the Sunday (higher) rate, and almost got away with it if not for that meddling Tialda noticing. He still got a 6 peso tip on a 134 peso tab because we didn't have exact change to leave zero. Oh well.

The Jardín Botánico, as the name suggests, is a region of the Parque del Prado reserved for the exhibition of specimens of exotic plants from around the world. There are fountains scattered around the garden, as well as a museum inside. Protip: the museum is free and you get exactly what you pay for, plus a few lungfuls of bug spray. As a botanical garden, this one is not particularly impressive compared to the diversity you would see at the conservatory of flowers in Golden Gate Park or the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney (yeah, I'm spoiled); I'm sure its funding is far, far less. However, it's a fantastic place for an afternoon stroll, especially if the sun is shining. It's almost better to think of it as a great park that just happens to have several exotic plants and nice fountains around.

This fountain looked really cool from the back and totally terrifying from this side. Who thought crafting the mouth like that was a good idea?

The roots of this tree pop up from the ground around it, like big mushrooms or small termite hills. A tree right next to it had even more dramatic root formations, but the rest of the tree was not nearly as strikng as this.

Finally, we struck out to see a large Gothic cathedral that the taxi had passed on the way in. We assumed it was the Sagrada Familia cathedral mentioned in the Fodor's book, but it instead turned out to be the Iglesia de las Carmelitas. We didn't really have any idea where the church was, but some dead reckoning (due to Tialda, since my sense of direction was completely dead today) and directions from strangers (due to me, since she didn't speak Spanish) got us there. Also saw a totally sweet graffito on the way:

When we got there, the cathedral was closed, so we took some pictures of the outside and prepared to head off to find a cab back to Ciudad Vieja:

But, just then, two old women walked up to the side door of the church, mats in hand, to attend a yoga class being held there. We asked if they knew if it was possible to see the cathedral. Completely unbidden, one of them assumed that we were interested in the cathedral as a possible place to get married (...what?) and assured us that she could talk someone into letting us in. Even after we denied any matrimonial intentions, she was still very excited for the church to have visitors (in particular, she wanted to hear the priest speak English, for some reason). After sitting around for a minute or two, one of the church officials very kindly let us in to the empty cathedral. I think this is the first time I've ever been granted a private viewing of a church!

It was dark in there. Long shutters are amazing. Why is it so hard to make a decent HDR image (this isn't one)?

After seeing the church, it really was time to head back. This taxi didn't try to cheat us, but the driver did seem quite annoyed that he had to make 80 pesos change (120 peso fare, and we each only had 100s). Whatever. I got a picture with a most excellent travel buddy, and started working on this blog post for my dear readers:

Next time, I'm bringing conditioner and an clothes iron so I don't look like total crap in all my pictures.

Check in to the boat back to Buenos Aires went very smoothly; while waiting for boarding to commence, I discovered that I'm past yet another important language threshold: I know enough Spanish to coax a wireless internet username and password out of a random Uruguayan guy with a laptop. On the boat itself (same vessel I took yesterday), I ended up with the exact same seat. Nothing to see at night, and it's just as well - it was pouring rain outside, with plenty of lightning. A quick remise (hired car/reserved taxi) ride from the terminal brought me to a new hostel, and with any luck this bloody rain will be gone by morning.

Tomorrow: Buenos Aires, part II