A city of beautiful, chic, beach resorts, marinas, museums, fascinating shops and picturesque countryside. Sea Wolves Island with its colony of endangered sea lions and seals and the 18th-century city of Maldonado with its many enchanting buildings, cathedral and lovely museum are just two of the points of interest of this port. The blue Atlantic waters are a huge tourist attraction. During the season, October to March, the city grows to over a million people filling the line of condos along the breach front. The rest of the year it is a sleepy little village filled with empty high rises and closed restaurants.
When we were here on the Mariner in March of 2011, we did a city tour and visited the two famous museums, the Casapueblo and the Ralli Museum. The city was hopping! Today we had planned to do one of the free ship’s tours; the one doing a city tour and a visit to a privately owned classic car museum. But, the tour bus/tour guide thing is wearing very thin with Dick and he doesn’t really want to get on another tour bus. So we cancel the tour. Carolyn talks to the tourist representative on board and gets a map with a detailed walking tour of the old and new parts of Punta de Este. Since it is a beautiful, mild day we decide to get a taxi and follow some of the walking tour, though the tourist lady is not to hopeful about the taxi since it is now off season.
Breakfast as usual then we work on getting caught up on the blog. With several port days in a row we get way behind on our reports. Since the tour groups have priority on the tender, there is really no rush to get off.
About 2PM we head to the tender. They are using local tenders today and it is a long ride into the pier. The pier serves both the yachting group and the small fishing fleet. The fishermen are still cleaning the day’s catch and baiting their long, multi-hook lines. There is a colony of sea lions living on the pier near the area where the fishermen work and taking advantage of the free food.
We walk up to the main road, but have no luck getting a taxi. The only one we see tells us he has an airport pick up soon and can take us to the airport, but that is all. He says the plaza with the crafts market is only about three blocks. But we run into some people from the ship and they tell us most everything in the new part of town is closed. There is no one on the streets. The town looks dead. There are only about 12,000 people in town during the off season!
The sun is out and there is a pleasant breeze. The sidewalks are good so we decide to do the part of the walking tour that goes through the old part of town. We walk on across the peninsula to the Atlantic Ocean. Then walk along the Rambla in front of Englishmen Beach. It is too rocky for swimming but there are several men fishing. The seawall walk goes around the tip of the peninsula and back along the River Plata to the little harbor where the tender docks. After a ways along the Ocean front we turn inland to the light house and parish church in the center of the tip of the peninsula. This is a lovely neighborhood of both old and new beach homes. The light house is on the high point of the tip and was built in 1860 and now works on electricity. The crystal prisms that make up the lighting system were brought from France. There is a very pretty, small church across the street. From here we walk back to the pier and head back to the ship.
It is about 4:30PM and we have a dinner date with our Australian friends. They did the Regent overland safaris in both South Africa and Namibia and we are eager to hear their stories. We meet for cocktails at 6:30PM and head to the Compass Rose at 7:15PM. Dick arranged with our head waiter to have our favorite table set for four. This is a good dinner and the safaris sound wonderful, especially the one in Namibia. We call it a night about 9:15PM, in time for them to make the show, a comedian, and us to get to bed before we fall asleep standing up! It has been a very nice, low key day!
Hello Dick and Carolyn
ReplyDeleteWe have been following your blog since we are going on the Navigator world cruise in 2019. Love your blog but are concerned about the heat issue in your cabin . Can you let me know what cabin you are in??
You can post your answer or email me at momsterc87@gmail.com.
thank you so much !!!
We are in suite 615. I would not stay in this suite again or any suite that is as far forward as our on deck 6 if you like a cool room like we do. We have been round and round with the Hotel Manager and the Head AC guy every time staff has had a change over. The AC system is old and there is not much control in the separate suites on temperature. You can only adjust the temperature in the suites by turning the air flow up for cooler and down for warmer. This works fine if you are at the beginning of the duck run for that group of suites, but the front of Deck 6 is at the end making the air into the room warmer and less of a flow which in turns keeps the room warmer. If you like a room around 70degrees like we do you need a room closer to the middle of the ship on Deck 6.
ReplyDeleteThey are currently keeping the ship public areas around 70 -72 and that seems ok. At least hat is the case since the last change in the engineering department.
I finally blew my top early this morning when I was told even though the ship is cooler than it was earlier in the cruise, 74 was the best they could do in our room. I have dated pictures of our thermometer showing the room at 70 degrees before Walvis Bay. I told her that they have been able to give us around 70 degrees in the suite since LA and I expected them to fix what was changed after new staff came on board and get it back to 70. That was 9AM by noon the room was down to 70 and our hall way was also cool again also. It is 10PM and the room is still cool. Hopefully it will stay that way at least until we can get off.
Most of the people are OK with their room temperature or the adjustments they can make to cool it down or warm it up. Other than this glitch and it is a big one for us, the cruise has been really good.
Thanks for reading. Hope this helps, now back to getting the blog caught up!