Montevideo, Uruguay

I took a trip across the placid and muddy River Plate, from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay. My wallet having been dented by a few rather expensive nights out in Argentina’s capital (one late-night rum & coke, sitting outdoors in a San Telmo plaza, cost me the equivalent of £6), I decided I’d take the cheaper and slower 3-hour boat rather than the speedier and pricier 1-hour boat.

The subsequent bus ride was about two and a half hours, which would normally be a drag, but compared to some of my other journeys in the past two months it was over in a flash. What was definitely a drag, however, was getting up for the ferry at 7am after going to bed drunk and sweaty at 6am. This rock’n’roll lifestyle has its drawbacks.

Uruguay is a small and perhaps rather nondescript country, but it’s a successful one, and not just at football (with a population of just 3.5 million or so, they’ve won two World Cups, and more Copa Americas than Brazil). The bus ride passed through many affluent-looking towns, with neatly-trimmed grass verges of a kind I’ve seen nowhere else in South America.

Having had just one hour’s sleep before the trip, I didn’t get much done on the day I arrived, which was Sunday. My one full day in Montevideo was Monday and it rained torrentially almost all day. Such is life. The highlight of my visit was a trip to the Estadio Centenario, which is the home ground of Penarol, Uruguay’s most successful club side, but more significantly it’s the ground on which Uruguay hosted and won the first ever World Cup, in 1930. There’s a Museo del Futbol there, as you might expect. See photos.

By the way, the promise in my last blog - to not talk about football - has been postponed until next time. Apologies!

Passing the Buenos Aires Yacht Club (some serious money there)
on the ferry out into the River Plate

Plaza Independencia, Montevideo

Estadio Centenario, Montevideo

It strikes me that the haircuts in these photos aren't quite as embarrassing
as those in a typical English squad photo of the same vintage.
Apart from the goalkeeper in the bottom photo, who looks like a bouncer at a Black Sabbath gig.

The matchball from the Uruguay-Ghana World Cup quarter final in 2010.
In other words, the ball Asamoah Gyan famously skied over the bar...
With hindsight I wish it had bounced back off the crossbar
and knocked his disloyal, spoilt, money-grabbing little head off.

Apparently footballs looked like this in the 20s and 30s.

Montevideo, from the top of the Palacio Salvo