A beach, a volcano, and a day as an Irishman!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllll.

Following on from the thrilling chapter above... I probably don´t have much else to say! After Brazil I headed over to a beach in Uruguay, aptly titled Punta Del Diablo - Devils End! With a little stop over in Montevideo for a spot of the casino life!!! This was quite amusing, it was impossible to get on the black jack tables due to the whole of korea seemingly being there... still it whiled away a few hours and i didn´t lose much money so all good. As for Montevideo, it is like a mini-Buenos Aires, so not much point to it really.

As for Punta, it was a very relaxing week of doing very, very little. The bonus being that there was hardly anyone there, and the one hostel in town was lovely. I whiled away the days on the beach, and now have a full body (exluding shorts zone) tan for the first time in ages! So much so that coming through the border back to Uruguay, they stopped me because they thought I was Brazillian! Until they realised I didn´t understand a word of Portuguese they tried to trick me with.

Another funny thing that happened in Punta was that I made a best friend... that best friend being a dog! It followed me EVERYWHERE for the whole week, after I met it the first day on the beach and I had to stop it from trying to bite my shorts. Everyday when I left the hostel it would be somewhere near-by, and it would walk back to the hostel with me every night. It was a tad crazy though, as the picture showed... didn´t seem to mind being completely buried in sand. The dog even became the first being to stand outside a bus and cry when I left town!

Now, for some strange reason I made a rash decision to leave Punta, when the weather turned to the worse. Not only did I decide to leave, but I decided to embark on a 50+ hour journey all the way to pucon, chile. This involved FIVE different buses, 8 meals on buses (4 of which were exactly the same), 10 hours sitting in bus stations and two border crossings. The border crossings went a bit tits up, as the crossing from uruguay into argentina did not require me to get off the bus, i simply handed in my passport and let the bus conductor sort it out. Which he did... sort of. Mistaking ´United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland´he wrote down on the visa I was Irish. I didn´t think this was going to be too much of a problem, until the same thing happened on the bus crossing the Argentina - Chile border. And then I got questioned for about 10 minutes... why does it say i´m Irish? Don´t I know what country I´m from? My ropey Spanish just about got me through though. Never again!

And as for now... I am safely in Pucon, and it looks like I am in for an awesome week; more to come.

Love and hugs

Nick

xxx

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