This was another really fun day. We really enjoyed the Juanico Winery. Montevideo is probably a place I would never return to, though. What we saw of it was old, dirty, the taxi drivers drove like nuts and actually had a hard plastic wall between them and us but with the addition of a little slot where you paid the money through (made me worry a lot about crime, especially as we were told not to wear any jewelry or be obvious about any expensive camera equipment.)
On a more positive note, let's talk about our Juanico Winery visit, as that was a lot of fun (aside from the drive there.)
We met our tour group and our guide, and headed directly out of the city to the winery, which was in the country, maybe about an hour away. On the way there, our tour guide said that the bus driver had taken the wrong (less-scenic) route as we saw our first real view of a poverty-stricken area in South America. It reminded me of some of the things you see in Jamaica on the drive from the Montego Bay airport to the resort areas in Ocho Rios. Tin shacks with tarp on the roofs, garbage littering the ground, and men on horseback pulling carts, picking through garbage for salvageable items. It reminded us of a comment from our tour guide the day before in Punta Del Este, saying that the resort area we were visiting was not the "real Uruguay". I think we saw some of the real Uruguay on the way to the winery, and it wasn't an uplifting sight.
Our bus driver was "encouraged" by our tour guide to get onto the highway and stop taking the side streets (Maybe he was making a political statement? this just occurred to me. He didn't speak any English so we couldn't find out) and the scenery started being more of the countryside and spread out houses and commercial businesses. We arrived at the winery and were very impressed. It has been in business since the 1800s, and has been family-owned and operating, providing many jobs to the people who live in the area.
When the bus entered the long road that led to the winery, we drove past grapes in every direction and people harvesting them.
I thought it was interesting that they planted roses at the end of each row of grapes to serve as a sort of "canary in a coal mine" indicating insect infestation. The roses provided a decoy of sorts for the insects, to my understanding.
When we arrived at one of the buildings on property, a woman who worked at the winery and gave tours boarded our bus and told us some facts about the winery. We then all continued on the bus to drive through the roads within the vineyards, with our tour guide pointing out the different varietals of grapes and wines that would be made from them. We then reached a lookout point where we were able to get off the bus, climb up to see the whole area, and then at the bottom, we could actually pick grapes off the vine and taste them.
They were really sweet and tasty! I thought they might be bitter or full of seeds, but they were some of the best grapes I've ever eaten. I only tried the red grapes, as there were no white ones in this section of the vineyard.
We then headed over to the winery itself and each of us were greeted with a glass of sparkling wine (of course, they reinforced that it can't actually be called "Champagne" unless it's from the particular region of France where that wine is made). It was very good - not too dry, and full flavored. I liked it very much, and sparkling wine is not always my favorite, although I do drink it on occasion. I did drink it a lot on this cruise as we were hanging out in the Champagne Bar most nights, and so I got to try a number of different varieties. It is actually slightly lower calorie than other types of wine and I can't really drink much of it, so it's a self-limiting proposition, which works for me as I never totally go crazy on these cruises and do try to keep things in moderation. I just feel better that way and I never like being sick for things that I want to do the next day. There's nothing worse than an eight hour tour with a hangover.
Anyway, we then headed downstairs with our sparkling wine to the cellar
where the local guide told us more about the wine-making process, and we could look at the barrels of wine that were there.
I didn't catch a lot of details because the guide's English was not the best, unlike the tour guide we had with us on the bus (who actually was a translator for their legislative office in the city, and spoke seven or eight languages. This was her summer fun job that she did half days in the mornings.)
We then headed upstairs and were seated for our wine tasting.
We tried six different types of wine. I was not expecting there to be that much food, especially not fabulous food like we had there. We started out with cheese, pepperoni of some sort, crackers and bread on the table, but then the waitresses kept bringing more and more food out. We had cheese empanadas, cheese and sausage empanadas, and they even brought out some sort of sweet apple crisp type dessert to go with the dessert wine. I love those empanadas. Their version was like a baked, slightly crispy puff pastry (not fried, or maybe lightly fried, as there was no greasiness at all - which I would have expected of these, as I think they are often deep fried in the U.S., like a chimichanga) with really good mozzarella and sausage. They were just so delicious. I'm not really into dessert wine like port or ice wine, so I took a small sip and tried a bite of the apple crisp but didn't have any more than that.
I wanted to buy one of each of the wines, especially the local wine (tannat) which is a really nice full bodied red wine, but they told me that they didn't ship to the U.S., so anything I bought we'd have to fit into our carry-ons. Buzz kill! I ended up buying one bottle of the tannat, and taking the list with me hoping that maybe I could find it in one of the larger wine retail shops. I haven't looked yet, but we did tell the bar manager we know at Blu Coral about it and he looked it up online with us while we were sitting at the bar, and he said he would see if he could get it from one of his distributors, as they do distribute wholesale to the U.S.
We then took some pictures of the winery grounds:
We then headed back to the ship and the tour guide told us about a leather factory/showroom that we could be dropped off at if we wanted, with free shuttle service back to the ship when we were done shopping. We decided not to go this route, as our waiter at dinner told us the night before that if we were going to buy leather goods, we should do it in Buenos Aires, not Montevideo, as the quality and prices were better. It was cool that many of the staff throughout the ship had been to all the ports that we're visiting (if they had gotten a day off on that particular day - some seemed to be luckier than others - the front of the house staff like the gift shop salespeople, art auction staff, salon/spa people, waiters, sommeliers and bartenders tended to know all about the ports, but I think the cabin attendants and butlers rarely got to go anywhere as they were always working, which was kind of sad.)
So, Jim had looked up in his "Harley Owner Group" worldwide location guide that there was a Harley dealer in Montevideo, and wanted to go. He likes to buy T-shirts for himself and his friends whenever we visit a city that has a Harley dealer. I even play along and get the long-sleeve T-shirts for me. I have some really cute ones, some with tie-dye and lots of cool colors. We have shirts from Amsterdam, Hamburg, Dublin, Maui, Kona, St. Thomas, Aruba, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, etc. and probably some other places I forgot to mention. Before he got the Harley (2004?) he used to collect Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and shot glasses. I collect cat figurines from each of the places I go. Some day I'll do a post and show you those.
ANYWAY, after that MAJOR detour on the path of our story, the tour guide walked around our bus and asked if anyone had any questions for her while we were on our way back to the ship. We showed her the Harley dealer guide and the address it gave for the Montevideo Harley dealer, and asked her if she had any idea which part of town it was in. To our surprise, she responded that she knew exactly where it was, that it was near downtown. She then proceeded to say that she lived a few blocks away, and that her husband was coming to pick her up at the port and that she would be happy to give us a ride there!! She seemed harmless enough, so we decided to go for it. So we got to the downtown area and the Harley dealer had a big sign. We're thinking, great. It looked normal:
However, it was not a normal Harley dealer with T-shirts and stuff. It was more like an auto shop - we hardly saw any bikes, even! So after the guy who was working there looked at us like we were crazy when we asked if they had T-shirts, we took a crazy cab back to the ship.
A picture of our ship taken on the way back to it:
So that was Montevideo! That was the last night of the cruise, so it was a casual night and we walked around the ship taking pictures of some of the people we had been hanging out with for the past two weeks. I did get a lot of email addresses, but I haven't sent any emails yet.
This was the regular crowd hanging out at "Cheers" (a/k/a the Champagne Bar); they were from California and Oregon and continually reminded us that they had sons and daughters our ages (yeah, yeah.)
Montevideo from the ship deck:
sailing away from Montevideo, up on the (windy) deck:
one of the guys from Germany that we hung out with:
me in the champagne bar, this time with a fruit-flavored martini:
This was the last day of the cruise, but not the end of the adventure. Tomorrow, we explore Buenos Aires on our own!
