Final days of the Cruise Update #5

Montevideo Uruguay was out last official port, and a very sad realization that this cruise was coming to an end. We reached Uruguay early in the morning and it was so beautiful and sunny, we didn't know much about Montevideo and so we decided to do the Hop-on Hop-off bus which would give us a tour of all the important sites. However, we had about half an hour before the tour was supposed to start so we decided to walk around the old town and over to a beach. We walked all the way to the other side and as we sat facing the water, rain started to sprinkle, this was a good clue that we should head back to the port for our bus, however before we had even walked two blocks it became a full blown torrential downpour and the streets started flooding with the rain. we didn't want to miss our tour and so we would run between buildings with awnings but after a few blocks we were all so wet that it didn't even matter and we just walked down the main street as everyone stared at us. when we got to the bus we had to ring out our clothing to try and dry it. the bus also had surprisingly really good wifi and this was the first wifi we had seen since Ushuaia 10 days earlier.

After taking the bus for almost the entire loop we got off at a beach as it had dried up and was back to being hot and sunny, and got some McNuggets and then sat on the beach. Roeland and Emma helped me find a Suarez jersey for my friend Charlie from UBC and afterwards I went and explored the city a bit on my own. Because Carnival was the next week, every street I turned down there were practice parades and drums and live music. It was beautiful. Miguel and Gilad made it back to the ship at the very very last minute almost 20 minutes after the deadline and they had to run almost 5 km to get back, but we all made it! That night we watched the sail away and hung out on deck as long as possible before having dinner the five of us (Roeland, Gilad, Emma and Miguel). Saying goodbye to all of our friends on board and packing up our bags was ridiculously hard.

Summary of days at sea:

So much of this cruise was spent at sea, and there were so many activities that we had the opportunity to take part in. Most afternoons were spent in the cafe listening to live music and cuddled up under blankets, with Roeland and Emma journaling and me writing for this blog.

My favorite memories: all four of us signed up to be part of a "Family Feud" game show where Emma, Gilad, and I were all picked. Emma and I were on seperate teams both as the "brothers" of the family meaning we went head to head against each other. Our questionwas "what is most commonly in a mans wallet, I hit the buzzar first however I decided my first answer condom did not seem apporpriate for the audiance of the crusie and so I went with credit cards, well cards turned out to be the second most popular answer giving Emma the chance to steal and of course, the most popular answer was condoms.....

Miguel and I post dancing with the officers

On one of the last nights on board they held a "Dancing with the Officers" based off dancing with the stars were 8 passengers were paired up with 8 officeres and then preformed in the theater in front of hundreds of guests. It was really funny, I eneded up paired with a guy named Jak who was awesome but while we were dancing to the very first song he spun me around very intensly and right as the music turned off I lost my balance and face planted on stage as everyone else froze. Just a bit embarassing.



We also went to the wildlife lectures, painting classes, watching movies on the stern of the boat, random auctions and free champagne events. We spent most nights in the Constelation Bar, or at Silent disco in the Martini Bars, and became friends with many of the preformers, hanging out with David a Singer on board from England for a lot of the trip and inviting him to diner with us a few times.