A Year in Uruguay

The Río de la Plata, or River Plate, doesn't look like a river to me. It has sea lions (see this post), tides (see this tide table for Montevideo) and it must be 100 miles across at this point. It's really an estuary where the Atlantic Ocean meets the waters of the Uruguay and Parana Rivers. The estuary is a mix of salt and fresh waters. NASA shows an interesting satellite photo of this.

The estuary runs northeast from the ocean (see this map) so Montevideo on the north shore is south of Buenos Aires on the south shore. This gives Uruguay the southernmost capitol in South America. (Of course the southernmost parts of Chile and Argentina are well over 1000 miles south of here.)

This photo of clouds throwing shadows on the Rio is from our flight here. I posted another photo of the Rio from our balcony earlier.

Labels: Montevideo places, Uruguay, waterfront