I have read that there really isn’t a great deal of excitement in Montevideo and I now believe it. Unlike more touristy towns, there are no tourist operators to be found, very few tourists and life just seems to go on. I think I managed to find the one saving grace of Montevideo which is a really long ocean front boardwalk. I started at kilometer 0 and made it to about kilometer 7 before I decided to check out the shopping area that was much touted in signs everywhere. The shopping area is just a boring mall, lol. I thought I might take a taxi back to the hotel and just watch some television and plan a few things to do in Argentina, but the line up was too long, so I just walked back (sound familiar). My 14 kilometer walk in Montevideo found a very pretty city with a few statues and monuments around, but definitely not a touristy place. It is one of those places that would be nice to live in, but not so great to visit, unless you know someone there.
I’m thinking of cutting my time in “Uruguay Natural” short since I can’t find anything to do with my time and the Argentinian Patagonia beckons. On the other hand, my bowels have decided to get a little liquidy, so maybe I’ll just spend the time recovering in Montevideo. So many decisions!
Here is a nice picture from my walk.
I spent the rest of the evening watching television and unsuccessfully buying some flights to Patagonia (the system wouldn’t take my credit card in the end; then I couldn’t find the same flights elsewhere). And here is an interesting fact… Expedia seems to be more expensive than booking flights directly by about 27.5%, so be careful using Expedia! I looked into this a bit, and it seems that despite Expedia’s media campaign, they do not have the cheapest prices and often charge 20% or more extra than if you book things directly. I have not found the same with other websites yet.
And something else I learned is that there are three major airline alliances in the world, StarAlliance, SkyTeam and OneWorld (I think I got those right). Air Canada is part of StarAlliance. If you have a points program on one of the alliance partners (say Aeroplan), you can collect points for your program from any of the other partners and use your points on any of the other partners. With that in mind, I signed up for the other two alliances via the LAN and Aerolineas points programs, and submitted my previously flights for points. Even if I don’t go back to South America, let’s say I fly on Air France, then I can get points for that flight on one of the three programs. I think you need to fly a lot to get any sort of benefit (like lounge access), but who knows where my drunkards walk will take me.