December 22, Where We Finally Make It To Montevideo, Go Bird Watching, And Meet A New (To Me) Family Member

The ship docked in Montevideo some time after 10:00 p.m. on December 21. Our cruise director, Manuel, encouraged people to go out and enjoy the Montevideo nightlife! We decided to wait until the next morning for our bird-watching excursion.

Because of the delayed arrival in Montevideo, we were now playing the time honored cruise game of “Itinerary Shuffle”: the entire itinerary had to be adjusted. Port Stanley (Falklands) was now scheduled for December 25. Unfortunately, the scenic sailing of Cape Horn was canceled to give us enough time to make to Ushuaia on time. Ok, well, a little disappointing, but out of our control.

The next morning, for our excursion there were maybe eight of us in our group, including a family of 4, and a couple from England who were obviously avid birders. Our guide handed out paper check lists for us to mark off the birds we saw that day. He said the record was 97 or so different species. We did luck out with the weather, because it was warm (but not hot) and overcast (but not raining).

The photo quality is not the best, because we were using our phones, but here are some of the birds we saw:

My absolute favorite was a Burrowing owl, though we were unable to snap a photo because we were driving around a round-about and had to keep moving. My next favorite is this scary guy – a giant pigeon the size of a raven. As one of our group members said: This is South America where everything is bigger!

I have to boast that I was able to hold a very, very short conversation in Spanish (dredged up from the nether regions of my brain) with our bus driver. Of course, I was asking about where our bathroom might be and how soon – he understood what I said, and even more importantly, I understood him back!

We were back in the city by about 12:30 p.m. and we were off on our afternoon’s adventure.

Many weeks ago I received a ping through Ancestry.com from a DNA match. I knew who they were as soon as I saw the last name: a cousin from a branch of my father’s family that we had lost contact will over 40 years ago.

My father’s mother came to the US from what was “the Ukraine” around 1913. Her brother left the Ukraine in the 1920’s. By then the US has started instituting stricter immigration laws; he did not make it into the US, so he went to Argentina (a common trajectory), eventually making his way to Montevideo, Uruguay. The two branches kept in touch – I have some of the correspondence my parents saved, including an invitation to a bar mitzvah. The last letter I have from the Uruguayan cousins is from 1983.

It was exciting to reconnect with the next generation of cousins! It was a wild shot asking to meet one of them in person on The One Day we would be in Montevideo, but there was nothing to lose. And behold! One of them did. Since this cousin is not on social media, I won’t be revealing their name to protect their privacy, but I was super excited to hear that they would be willing to meet us!

We had set up everything on Sunday, December 21, but, of course, that did not happen because of the change in arrival date. But, they were willing to take their lunch time with us! They gave us a specific time and place to meet in downtown Montevideo.

Our excursions desk had given us expectations that there would be a big cruise terminal with shops and restaurants right outside the ship, with a taxi stand. When we came back from our bird watching trip, we saw no such thing. Our tour guide told us to follow the “green line” out of the port area and into the city. Still no port terminal building.

We walked into what turned out to be an government office building. The front desk people gave us instructions to an ATM (cajera automatica) – in Spanish – which clicked in my mind once we were back outside and looking across the street. It was not an ATM, but a money exchange kiosk. The people inside did not understand what we needed – we wanted to exchange some US dollars for Uruguayan pesos, but not a lot. Just enough for a couple of cab rides.

We finally gave up on that and found a cabbie who would take credit cards. I showed him the spot on google maps, but he seemed to not understand or know what I was talking about (even though my cousin had given me all the commonly used names for the square). Plus I couldn’t figure out what he was asking me, until he put it into Google translate – he was asking if this was the only place we wanted to go.

And then it occurred to me he wanted to give us a “tour” of Montevideo – for an undetermined fee. Yeah, no. The last time I fell for that I was 19 years old, visiting Mexico City for the first time. Finally I was able to put the sentence together: “I’m going to meet my cousin at this <place>”. That ended the conversation.

After all this fuss and bother, it turned out to be a 5 minute drive. And there they were, wearing the red shirt as they had told me earlier in the day. I took one look at their face and I saw my father’s features. The Adler genes run strong on that side of the family!

We had lunch and chatted for about 45 minutes, reviewing what we knew about our grandparents – unfortunately, not much. In particular, neither of us knew for sure why our grandparents left Europe. Our assumption: pogroms were increasing in frequency, and it just wasn’t safe anymore.

Apparently, their children are trying to obtain EU citizenship based on previous generations’ citizenship. They were targeting Poland, because 100 years ago “the Ukraine” was a part of Poland. Poland used to accept evidence of grandparents’ citizenship, but now was requiring proof of great-grandparents’ citizenship, which was why my cousin was asking me what I knew about her grandfather. Unfortunately, I knew nothing that could help them.

Eventually my cousin needed to get back to work. We were so ecstatic to reconnect! Hopefully we will be able to maintain the connection going forward.

Andy and I wandered around for a bit afterwards. There were vendors in the square and on the street, but we didn’t have any cash to buy anything.

We walked back to the spot where we had met my cousin to hail a cab back to the port – and we lucked out! A cab pulled up to let out passengers, and we grabbed it. I told the driver: “Puerto Crucero de Montevideo” and he knew exactly where that was. Five minutes later, we were back at the ship.

A highly successful day!

Right before dinner, the captain came on the loudspeaker to announce the next round of Itinerary Shuffle. Apparently, Port Stanley didn’t have any room for our ship on December 25 (or maybe short staffed because of the holiday?), so we had a new shuffle: we lost Port Stanley as a port and we were now heading straight to Ushuaia.

But wait! There was yet another round of Itinerary shuffle: Port Stanley is back (yay!) somewhere near the end of the cruise, but we’ve lost Puntas Arenas (boo!). Andy had a penguin expedition booked for Puntas Arenas, but not anymore! And we regained Cape Horn, but sailing the Magellan Straits is now gone. This is dizzying.

AND – we now have 3 contiguous days at sea, instead of two.

The itinerary is now completely unrecognizable. We were provided a written update, which helps. We will be refunded the cost of the Puntas Arenas excursions – first as onboard credit, and then a refund of whatever we don’t spend onboard.

Tomorrow: Day 1 of 3 days at sea.