uruguay

Although its only been a coule days since we blogged it feels like forever as so much has happened. We started out with a nice jaunt across the waters of the atlantic to the town of Carmelo, Uruguay. We got in just after dark and in the rain, but it felt like it was the middle of the night as the town was completely desserted. We made our way to the bus station and managed to get on a bus leaving for next town over (Colonia)in 15 minutes.

Now I should add just a few details about Uruguay to help follow along. Uruguay is a country of just a little better than 3 million people(and yet they still qualified for the world cup), just under a third of which live in the capital city of montevideo. Other than that there are really just a handful of towns, with the interior of the country being mainly farmland occupied by real Yerba drinking, horse riding cowboys. Needless to say getting into quiet costal towns was a drastic opposite to the chaos of Buenos Aires.

So back on track we hopped the bus for 1 hour and headed to Colonia where we spent the night. In the morning we took advantage of the quiet streets to snap a few pictures of some crumbling, brightly colored colonia buildings with cobblestone streets. After we caught a bus to the capital city of montevideo but we decided against staying in Montevideo and caught a bus rightaway another 2.5 hours to the city of Puente del Este, a small beach resort type city. By the time we rolled in it was dark and pouring rain. On a whim we hopped into a hotel and found it to be quite affordable, and not wanting to venture out into the rain to search for a hostel we took it and relaxed for the night. Our next day turned out to be a grey gloomy day with rain on and off so we opted out of the beach and wandered the waterfront. We saw some sea lions but try as I could I couldnt see any whales. Punta del este seems as thought it would be a great summertime vacation spot with nice beaches, a safe location, and friendly people. We stayed the night and headed out to Montevideo the next morning. Montevideo was really nothing to write about. The stores were all closed due to a holiday so we just wandered in yet more mist and light rain. Although we did see a demonstration with abunch of cowboys riding horses down the streets with Uruguayan flags regarding some historic building. The next day we headed back to Colonia where we caught our ferry back to BA.

In BA we grabbed a quick bite to eat before grabbing our luggage and heading out on the subway to the bus station for a big 17 hour bus ride to Iguazu. Our bus ride started out interesting as there was no bus leaving when it was scheduled to leave. We found a few others who were wondering what was happening when we heard that the bus was all banged up and they were sending another bus in about 30 minutes. Close to 11 our us arrived and we were off for the night. All things went smoothly until we were about 1 hour out from our destination when we came across another road block. We had to wait about an hour until the road block cleared and then let all the back logged traffic through. The road had remains of fire they had used to keep the road blocked and this was in regards to locals wanting more money. As we waited we noticed this part of argentina was alot poorer then other parts we had seen. The counry side changed to become much more tropical and we could feel the humidity as we were wawiting for the blockade. We were excited to wear a tshirt!! We arrived safely and headed out to our hostel we had previously booked to only find out that they did not have room. We were pretty exhausted and a bit bummed as we were excited about this little relaxing hostel away from the city and with a pool. They sent us to another hostel and we were not too happy as we had paid a reservation fee. We did not want to make a fuss, but the owner ran both hostels and we ended up paying half a nights fee even though we were right in the city.