Day 18 · January 6, 2028 · Montevideo, Uruguay
Walk into the Mercado del Puerto and the first thing that hits you is the smoke.
The building is a cast-iron market hall. It was made in Liverpool, shipped across the Atlantic in pieces, and opened here on October 10, 1868.
Nobody sells produce in it anymore. The whole hall is grills.
Lunch at the Mercado del Puerto
Uruguayans cook over wood coals on an open parrilla. The market is full of them, side by side, running all day.
Order asado, which is beef ribs cooked slowly over the coals. Or order a chivito, the national sandwich, which is steak with ham, cheese, egg, and whatever else the cook believes in.
Portions are large. Order less than you plan to eat.
Ciudad Vieja, the old city
Montevideo’s Ciudad Vieja is a small peninsula of colonial streets, and you can walk the whole thing.
Teatro Solís opened in 1856 and is the oldest working theatre in Uruguay. The Palacio Salvo went up in 1928 at 330 feet and was, at the time, the tallest building in South America.
Then there is the Rambla, twenty-two kilometres of waterfront walkway along the Río de la Plata. In the late afternoon it fills with people passing a gourd of mate back and forth. That is the national drink and the national habit at once.
The Graf Spee
In December 1939, three British warships fought the German raider Admiral Graf Spee off this coast. The engagement is called the Battle of the River Plate.
Damaged, the German ship put into neutral Montevideo. Her captain, Hans Langsdorff, believed a larger British force was waiting outside. Rather than take his crew into that, he scuttled his own ship in the estuary on December 17. He died two days later.
The anchor sits on the waterfront. The bronze eagle from her stern was raised out of the water in 2006.
You crossed that same brown water on the first day of this voyage.
Next: disembarking in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, and the end of it.
