Montevideo, Uruguay

Sunday, March 3

Internet on board ship is dodgy.   We are writing the blog everyday but not always able to send it.

The ship left late last night (maybe it had something to do with the crew announcements in code that we heard), so the ship really booked it during the night.  

There was a tugboat that helped us dock.  Could the reason be all those sunken ships that we see?  We can see at least 20 from our balcony.

We docked at 9 am in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was a beautiful hot day. 

Montevideo is Uruguay's capital, population 1.4 million.  It is the southernmost capital in the Americas.   Montevideo hosts the longest carnival in the world, starting in January and going through March.  It is said to be the city with the best quality of life in Latin America (I guess that's why everything was so expensive here???). 

As we were getting off the ship this morning, we saw a line of several dozen people with luggage waiting to get on.  Did they miss their connection in Buenos Aires?  Was it because of the strike???

Today we booked our own tour with Baja Bikes, starting at 11 am.  The name Montevideo supposedly comes from the Portuguese "Monte vide eu" which means "I saw a mountain".  Oh oh, does that mean there are a lot of hills on this bike ride????  Frankie was biking at the gym 3 days a week to get ready for this one tour, but it turned out to be easy peasy.

The tour was 3.5 hours long. There were 9 of us and our guide Michael.

Some of the sights we saw in the city:

Then he took us to the Rambla.  Rambla is a 22 km long promenade along the beach. He says it is the longest continuous walkway in the world.  It had a barely marked bike lane.

We stopped in a park where we ate boxed snacks. Frankie's gluten free one was better than Anton's.

Uruguay has a Holocaust Memorial!

After the bike tour, we walked around the Mercado (Market).  The smell of Montevideo is bbq beef.

The ship sailed at 6 pm.  The show was supposed to be Rock City, but apparently some of the dancers were sick, so a singing trio did an impromptu show doing Michael Buble-ish music.

Buenos Aires

Saturday, March 2

Hotel Ex Own Madera was very nice, just renovated 2 years ago.  We were on the 2nd floor.  Get off the elevator and there is a landing with 3 doors.  Our room faced the road, so we found the traffic a bit loud.  When we woke up, we found out the window had been open.  No wonder! 

They obviously got their water pressure from Iguassu Falls!  Got the shampoo rinsed out in 10 seconds flat.

Breakfast was awesome.  We went down fairly early, 7:30 am, so we had all the attention of the 2 girls working there.  They showed Frankie each and every item that was gluten free, and kept bringing more.  They made up an omelet for her, and brought her gf toast and a plate full of biscuits that we brought along for the day.  

Our cruise did not depart until 6:45 pm today (our check-in slot was 4 pm), so we thought we would take a part of the day to actually see more of Buenos Aires than just the airport!

At 9:15 am we were picked up for a 3 hour highlights tour of the city, tour guide Veronica. There were 10 of us on the tour.

It began at the Plaza de Mayo (May Square), where lots of historical events happened. Madonna filmed some scenes of Evita at the government building.  This is where the president usually works from, but the current president has decided that he would rather work from home.

This painted nappie is a symbol of the 30,000 people that went missing during the last dictatorship of 1974.

Buenos Aires has 48 neighbourhoods.  We drove through some of them, bright and colourful.

They make a big deal of soccer ("football") here, especially after they won the World Cup.  For one day, the population of Buenos Aires increased from 3.5 million to 7 million.

The stadium is painted bright blue and gold (NEVER call it yellow!).  Apparently nobody could agree what colour to paint it, so they decided that they would choose the colours of the first ship that came into port.  The first ship happened to come from Sweden.

We had a quick rain shower, and of course everyone left their raincoats in the van.

The tour ended at Recoleta Cemetary. It was hot and sunny here. It's quite famous because Evita is buried here.  It is a maze of huge family mausoleums, some as old as 200 years. There are 4,691 vaults over 14 acres.  The mausoleums are passed down through family members, and multiple family members are buried there.  When there are no longer family members, the mausoleums are put up for sale, starting at $50,000.

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imagecredit https://vamospanish.com/wp-content/uploads/map-recoleta-cemetery-cementerio-mapa.png

The mausoleums that we could see into had stairs leading down several levels underground, so there might be family members stacked upon family members.  Here are a few of the interesting mausoleums that we saw:

The most historical mausoleum in the cemetery belongs to the Duarte family (#21 on the map). You may not recognize the name Duarte, but you WILL recognize the name Evita!  Duarte was her maiden name. 

imagecredit https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1297/eva-per%C3%B3n/photo#view-photo=13240163

Her story in brief (sorry, as brief as I can make it!).  Skip the starred section if you're not interested, as it doesn't relate directly to us (you can resume our trip after the starred section LOL).

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Eva was born in 1919 in a small Argentinian town.  In 1945 she was married to Juan Domingo Perón, who became president of Argentina. She was extremely charismatic and helped his government to become very popular through her work for the poor, but she was not so well-liked by wealthy Argentinians.  She was stirring up the masses! 

imagecredit https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-maria-eva-evita-peron-2136354

imagecredit https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18616380

She became sick in 1952 (she actually never realized that she had cervical cancer, which coincidentally killed Juan Peron's first wife).  It has recently been discovered that at this point Juan Peron had a lobotomy done on his wife, justifying it as a way to alleviate her pain, but perhaps wanting to modify her behaviour while he was at it????  In all fairness to Juan Peron, it seems that he actually wanted his wife to survive the lobotomy, as he ordered the doctor to practice on prisoners first.

imagecredit https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.renalandurologynews.com%2Fslideshow%2Fcartoons%2Fmay-2019-cartoons%2F&psig=AOvVaw2z8jj-fRaxM1FGZHoo5gbI&ust=1703101735062000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCMiGgsSinIMDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAY

After the lobotomy, Eva stopped eating and grew weaker.  Shortly before her death, the Argentine Congress gave her the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation". She was nicknamed "Evita" which means "living one".

On her death bed, she supposedly ordered 5000 automatic pistols and 1500 machine guns to arm workers of the trade unions.  She died on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33.  For 13 days, millions of people gathered to view her embalmed body. After 8 people were crushed to death and over 2000 people were hospitalized due to injuries, the public viewing was withdrawn.

imagecredit By Unidentified photographer - Caras y Caretas 2236, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7350281

But the story doesn't end there! Three years after she died, her body disappeared.  It was stolen by the new military dictatorship after Juan Peron was deposed.  She was still so popular that the leadership made it illegal to possess her picture or even say her name. 

Her body went "missing" for the next 16 years.  It was eventually located in Milan in 1971. 

imagecredit https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/eva-peron-how-evitas-embalmed-1142321

There were signs of trauma and injury to her body.  Juan Peron had the body flown to Spain, where he displayed her on his dining room table and his third wife Isabella tended to her. After Juan Peron (who was once again in office) died in 1974, Isabella returned Eva to Argentina and placed her in the Duarte family tomb. Her coffin lies beneath 2 compartments with trapdoors.

imagecredit http://ddfitzgerald.weebly.com/blog/breathtaking-eeriecementerio-de-la-recoleta

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After our visit to this fascinating cemetery, we called an Uber to go back to our hotel to get our luggage, then make our way to the cruise ship.  Our (NON-REFUNDABLE) hotel was conveniently located right by the cruise terminal, BUT on December 17, there was a huge storm in Buenos Aires which damaged the embarkation terminal. So basically, we had to travel 20 minutes south to our hotel to pick up our luggage, THEN 20 minutes north to the meeting location, THEN be shuttled 20 minutes south again to the cruise ship!!!  Argh!!!  😕 We looked at it as a way of getting to know the city LOL.

The poor uber driver kept thinking we wanted to go to the airport.  When we finally got to the new location, they took our luggage and gave us a bus number.  We waited about half an hour for our bus.  Then when we got to our terminal, another lineup to check in, immigration, passport control, then another bus to somewhere else, more checking in (we lost track).  We arrived at 2:30 and finally walked onto the boat at 4 pm.  At which point we promptly found the buffet!

After the buffet we toured the ship from top to bottom.  We found a small pickleball court and played an impromptu game with Mark and Amy (they were much better than us).  

At dinner we got serviced to the hilt.  We were going to go back to the room to unpack, but our steward was making up our room, so we thought we would check out the show that we were going to skip.  We ended up staying for the whole show because it was an Argentinian instrumentalist who was very good.  

Unpacking after the show.  There are only 5 small drawers in the room???  We were pretty much finished when Anton discovered a huge space right above the bed LOL.

Iguassu Falls Day 2

 Friday, March 1

35C today.

This morning we were met by Amanda who would be our tour guide for the day.  And a driver who would come and go as we needed him.  Amanda turned out to be Maurizio's sister.  But her English wasn't nearly as good, she kept having to translate things on her phone. When she told us that there were 7 varieties of flins in the park, it took us awhile to figure out that she meant "felines". But she was nice and she tried.

Today we went to the Argentinian side of Iguassu Falls.  After we bought our tickets, there was a tram which they called a train.  There are 3 trails on this side, but the Devil's Throat trail is closed.  

We started on the Upper Trail.  It was a one way raised metal walkway, with gorgeous views.  It's supposed to take 2 hours but we're pretty sure that we did it in one hour.  

Then we took the Lower Trail.  They called it the Inferior Trail but we think that just means Lower ha ha.  This trail went through the jungle and was equally as beautiful.

We finally saw the Brazilian racoon we had heard about.

Amanda asked what we wanted to do after the park.  We said if there was time we would like to visit the Bird Park that we drove by yesterday.  We're pretty sure she interpreted that as we didn't want to finish the Lower Trail????  So we headed to the entrance feeling a bit bewildered and disappointed to possibly not finish at the Iguassu Park???

We actually had to cross back into Brazil for the Bird Park.  We just gave Amanda our passports and she took them in, they didn't even need to see us.

Our disappointment went away quickly once we got to the Bird Park!  They had some birds in caged areas, some free, some areas had huge netting, and there was a butterfly house and a hummingbird garden.  And some nice koi ponds.

We spent an hour and a half there and loved it.  Our favourite part was getting to the macaw area just at feeding time!

Afterwards when we were waiting for our driver, we ran into Maurizio again, which was fun.  He told us that he would have been our guide again today, but he was needed to do a French tour for somebody.  

Amanda and the driver dropped us off at the teeny tiny Iguassu airport.  The only thing Frankie could find to eat was a bag of chips.  And then we translated the ingredients, and the chips were coated with wheat.  Sigh.  

This morning we had contacted our Buenos Aires hotel and they arranged an airport pickup for us.  Then when we were boarding, we all of a sudden realized that we told them the WRONG airport!!!  Can you believe that Buenos Aires is so big that it has TWO airports?!?!  So we quickly updated the hotel (everyone uses WhatsApp here!) and hoped for the best before we put the phones into airplane mode.

Our 4th flight in 4 days!  After literally weeks of stress trying to get the luggage AND carry on under a certain weight just for this one flight, they didn't even bother weighing anything. Sigh.

Another 2 hour flight, at 7 pm.  This one was the worst by far.  It was a flying tin of coughing people.  We think it was some sort of tour group and they must have all shared.  The lady in front of us was so bad that Frankie caught her eye and pointed to the masks that we were wearing.  The lady caught on and put on a mask, good for her.  Then to make matters worse, when we disembarked the plane, we had to take a bus to the terminal.  Full of the same coughing people.    

We picked up our luggage (again) and lo and behold, there was Walter waiting for us holding a sign with our name.  It was a very quick 30 minute drive across the city to our hotel, for only $35 US.

Another late night!

Will we ever make it to Iguassu Falls????

 Thursday, February 29

So alarm for 5:30 am, a quick breakfast, and then we headed back to the airport with all our luggage to try to catch our 9:30 am flight. It was rush hour but traffic was moving pretty quickly.  Especially the motorcyclists using the dotted line as their lane.

It's pretty weird when you recognize everyone in line at a foreign airport.  We ran into a couple we met last night, they were the first to get the voucher.  But after getting their voucher, they stopped for a bite to eat, and by the time they got to Intercity, the hotel was full.  They had to be taxied to another hotel, and didn't check in until 2 am.  Yikes!

The pilot did not look stressed as we boarded, maybe we would make it this time???

We made it!  Everyone on the plane cheered.

We booked a 2 day package so we were picked up at the airport. The company changed the order of our itinerary so that we ended up doing the Brazil side today instead of tomorrow.

Note: the English spelling is Iguassu, the Spanish (Argentinian) is Iguazú , and the Portugese (Brazilian) is Iguaçu.  

Some interesting facts about Iguassu Falls:

• They are taller than Niagara Falls and wider than Victoria Falls

• There are normally about 275 individual waterfalls, but it varies between 150-300 by season

• The name Iguazu comes from the native Guarani for ‘big water’ 

• The flow over the falls is strongest between November to March, increasing from 60,000 cubic feet per second to 450,000 cubic feet per second.

• The falls have been in movies such as Black Panther, Indiana Jones, and The Mission.

• They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Day one of our tour was a half-day tour to the Brazilian side of the waterfalls, which is the smaller side. The Argentinian side has 70-80% of the falls, making the view from the Brazilian side better.

Maurizio was a great guide today.  Just twice he didn't go with us, we suspect because both places got us wet LOL.  His excuse was that his ticket didn't allow him, but we didn't believe it for a second.

So here are a few pictures of the Falls from the one trail that is on the Brazilian side:

After lunch, we decided to take the boat tour.  It began with a "jungle cruise" (we saw a deer ha ha, although they did play up the local jaguars quite a bit).  Then a funicular took us down to a dock and onto a zodiac style boat.

The rain was so strong, it felt like sleet in our faces.  Then he stopped a nice safe distance from the Falls and lured us into a false sense of security. 

Before we knew it, he was zooming in and out of the different Falls.  The rain ponchos did NOT help.  But it was a blast. Here is a short video clip we took:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79iLjWxIqZs

Then the sun came out and there was a nice rainbow.  

To leave Brazil, we needed to park the car and go in to get our passports stamped.  Then the Argentinian side had a drive through checkpoint.  Maurizio dropped us off at our hotel.  Here we spread out all the damp clothes from our suitcases. Yesterday when we left the airport (for the first time), it was pouring rain, and that's when we figure some of our clothes got wet.

We took a short walk down to the obelisk, which signifies the spot where 3 countries meet:  Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.  

We're Calling it an Adventure!!!

 Wednesday, February 28

I can't believe our last blog was 4 years ago! Stupid Covid. So here we go!

So we've had quite a bit of flight stress in the last few days.  Our flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina, was a "direct flight" with a stop in Brazil.  We would be required to exit the plane and reboard.  Then a few days ago we heard about a possible one day strike at the airport in Buenos Aires ON THE DAY THAT WE LAND (the 28th).  On the 29th we were supposed to fly out of Buenos Aires for a 2 day trip to Iguassu Falls.  But this wouldn't happen if we didn't get to Buenos Aires in the first place.

So Tuesday morning Frankie called Air Canada and asked if we could just disembark in Brazil instead of Buenos Aires on the 28th.  She received a hard NO!!!  

Two hours later we found out that the flight to Buenos Aires was cancelled.  Not really surprised.  Air Canada kept us on the same first flight and generously changed our connecting flight to Buenos Aires to the 29th.  So a 24 hour layover 😔.

Another phone call to Air Canada.  A different person this time.  She said it made perfect sense for us to get off in Brazil.  She made it happen! But it means that when we landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we  had to make our own way to Iguassu Falls.

Why why why do all the flights have to be Red Eyes????

Our plane left Toronto at 10:40 pm. Already way past our bedtime. It should have been easy to sleep, right???? Ha ha ha.

So the flight actually left Toronto late because a ton of people had to get new boarding passes for the flight. It arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at 10:30.  Since Anton was born in Brazil (even though he left at the age of 2), he was not allowed to enter Brazil with a Canadian passport.  He went through a long process to obtain his Brazilian passport.  After all this effort, we are thinking that another trip to Brazil in the future may be in order!

We had to pick up our luggage, exit through the perfume section (ugh!) and find our way to LATAM airlines to book our own flight to Iguassu.  We got there just a few minutes too late for the noon flight, so the soonest flight we could get was 5:30 pm.  

We spent a boring afternoon in the Sao Paulo airport, but we did find an Olive Garden for lunch!

Finally time for our flight to Iguassu!  They even gave us emergency exit seats.

There was a nice view of Sao Paulo as we left:

It was a 2 hour flight.  We got to Iguassu and the pilot announced that there was a thunder and lightning storm, so he would have to circle for awhile.  Then he said it was all clear and we were going to land.  Um, it's taking a LONG time to land....Does the plane normally accelerate on landing?????

So we had a nice view of Sao Paulo as the plane turned around and returned to the airport in Sao Paulo.

SIGH!!!

LATAM did provide vouchers for a hotel and meals and taxi.  But the internet wouldn't work on either of our phones and we don't speak Portuguese, which made getting the vouchers almost impossible.  

And the hotel they provided proved to be a half hour away.  There was a long lineup of LATAM people, so it took us half an hour to check in.

Needless to say, we are zonked!!!

The rescheduled flight to Iguassu is at 9:30 am tomorrow.  It seems like a distant dream.

Good night!