Uruguay's Deputy Tourism Minister Remo Monzeglio said this week that the South American country was going through the most active cruise season in the past 8 years, with 160 ships arrived so far (116 in Montevideo, 44 in Punta del Este and 44 others yet to reach its shores.
Argentina's Customs General Directorate created a department within its structure to monitor drug trafficking through the Uruguay River, it was announced Friday. The new task force will increase controls on regional transshipments where various containers featuring cocaine have been detected recently.
Private contractors believe they will complete the removal of sunken ships from the port of Montevideo in the first half of 2023 after having taken away so far two entire units and several parts of three others to facilitate navigation in the area, it was reported.
Red Ensign flagged trawler Argos Pereira which was heading for the Falkland Islands squid season, has been retained in the port of Montevideo after 28 of its 54 crew members tested positive to Covid-19, despite having complied with the expected protocols in the high seas before docking for bunkering in the Uruguayan capital.
One of the US Coast Guard newest vessels docked in Montevideo early Monday looking for supplies and fuel, but given the strict sanitary isolation measures no member of the crew will be disembarking or anybody visiting the vessel.
At least four Spanish fishing vessels, which normally operate in the South Atlantic, most of them with Falklands' licenses, left for Vigo and Marin in Galicia, avoiding transshipment operations in the port of Montevideo, Uruguay, according to the country's leading Maritime and ports information report.
Finally a month after passengers were rescued and medically evacuated to Australia from Uruguay, the 89 crew which remained trapped in the coronavirus infested “Greg Mortimer” cruise have started their long return home.
The last cruise of “Greg Mortimer” when it left Ushuaia on March 15th was an invitation to disaster, and now “we are asking for a humanitarian corridor to take us, as they did with passengers, to our home countries”, said Mauricio Usme, chief medical officer on board the Aurora Expeditions vessel.
The Uruguayan government announced on Tuesday that it will evacuate the remaining passengers on the Antarctic cruise ship Greg Mortimer through a second humanitarian corridor. There will be about 15 passengers who have remained in the ship anchored in front of the port of Montevideo, where there are people with the COVID-19 disease.
The last passengers residing on an Australian ocean liner, anchored off Montevideo for more than two weeks with cases of COVID-19 on board, will be evacuated to the United States by a medical chartered flight, announced on Tuesday the American embassy in Uruguay.