Montevideo 15th - 25th May

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Uruguay is such a tiny country that it takes a mere two hours on a bus to go from Colonia to the capital, which after the buses we´d been on during the rest of SA was nothing.

The weather was more like back home - pretty grey. But palm trees everywhere made us feel like we were away somewhere really exotic! Montevideo is a great city to walk around and enjoy the arcitechture, althoguh sadly alot of the buildings have fallen into disrepair and ruin. However, this gives a bit more of a dilapidated feel (for lack of better words) to Montevideo, and it sets itself apart from BA.

Palm trees always make a city feel exotic - maybe Bristol should have them?
The Uruguauyans love parillada here even more than the Argentinians! The entire interior of their country is essentially filled with cows (the cities are only on the coast), which means that almost every meal involves beef of some kind. Slap bang in the doxks distrcit, where you´d expect to find a good sea-food resteraunt, is what can only described as a giant BBQ in a warehouse! Mercado del Puerto is the ultimate steak house, with huge roaring fires cooking stacks of meat. Yum.

Mercado del Puerto - yum!
The other thing that strikes us about Uruguay is the addiction that people have to "mate"; a hot drink made of bitter herbs and water. Most people walk around with a special mate mug in one hand and a thermos of hot water in the other. supposedly it´s ten times stronger than coffee, so we think that they are addicted to the stuff. Odd, since they go to bed earlier than the Porteños...

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