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Published: January 10th 2007
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Herman
Herman and his shiffty eyes... this was our typical breakfast at the campsite Ok this week has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions and it isn’t quite sorted yet but things are looking better.
Since my last entry in Punta Del Este I met up with Rafael and we headed off to the beautiful La Paloma I cant believe there is no entry for it’s location in the travelblog as it is by far the best location I visited in Uruguay. We got a bus from Punta to Rocha and then from Rocha to La Paloma where we were looking forward to setting out tent and checking out the town. So we walked into the camp site and I had never seen anything like it... I would say every patch of grass was occupied by thousands of tents...unbelievable! We were told by the camping staff to turn around and go back where we came from as there was no more room to hitch a tent let alone access the available electricity or water outlets. But my persistent Brazilian friend did some incredible negotiating and got us in sure we didn’t have electricity or water access...but honestly who cares!! In Australia it isn’t camping unless you are in a leaking tent in the rain
The boys
Nacho, tata, herman, martain n raf with no access to electricity or water... this was the Hilton of camping resorts as far as I am concerned... all for the bargain basement price of 3 dollars US a day.
So we hitched our ´carpa´ (tent in Spanish) and got to know our neighbours who where as I found out almost all Uruguayan...these guys where awesome they didn’t speak English that well but offered us lights to setup our stuff in the dark. Beer, food etc anything we wanted they loved English music especially the gunners so I felt right at home. Basically that was it we settled in and hit the beach during the day (finally some really nice beaches) and the night clubs (bolitches in Spanish). The clubs also rivalled those of Punta Del Este and the people seemed a lot friendlier.
Anyways the next day there was news of a few things being stolen from tents so I stored my credit cards and passport in the camping site safe and opted to carry loose cash around.
anyways later that day we bought tickets to a concert Voxpop (which is a rave in Uruguay which cost 200 pesos roughly 10 bucks Australian.) this
girls
the beautiful uruguaian girls was one of the reasons for coming to la paloma, the other was so Rafael could rekindle his relations with a cute girl who worked behind the bar next to our camp site. The rest of the day was at the beach playing football with our neighbours.
side note Uruguayans are extremely good at soccer...no surprise I guess but normally you have the crap person on a team that can’t kick a ball to save his life...not here I was by far the crappiest player although not embarrassingly bad just out skilled... and the soccer games are serious stuff if the ball goes in the water the game doesn’t stop to retrieve the ball to dry sand no...It is a furious kicking frenzy in the water where everyone is left soaking and in most cases is immediately tackled when they return to shore.
That night we were gifted with some new neighbours a group of ridiculously hot Uruguayan girls which we rapidly introduced into our growing camping family...then it was off to Voxpop...your typical rave I guess but it was a relief to finally here some good dance music (the popular dance music of Buenos Aires and Uruguay
nacho
classic nacho seems to be slightly slower than I am used to back home which encourages co-ordinated dance moves which I am not used to). Anyways I tried a bit of everything that night including a 1 litre yard glass of vodka and orange...def a night to remember.
The last day (illegally obtained by cleverly changing our exit date from the 6th to the 16th...yes no one believed us but no one really cared either.) was filled with smoking, drinking, beach soccer, games of chancho with the girls (a card game translated to pig in English) and more partying that night.
so we came back from our party at 8ish and packed our stuff picked up our stuff from the safe and got to the bus station with minutes to spare...only to find that all my credit cards were missing...in a snap decision we decided to get on the bus rather than head back to the camp site and look for my card. In the end I think it was the right decision as transport is a day process to organise and the people in the camp site turned out to be useless incompetent fools which I realised after around
fifi
hey fifi cool pics it was good because i didn´t get any photos of the girls. 10 calls to the campsite. Get this only one guy has the key to open the safe and he in only in the office when he feels like it and is uncontactable out of the office...and forget asking the camp site to ring you when he gets in that would be ridicules.
Anyways cancelled my card and started the enjoyable experience of living in Buenos Aires with zero funds. I think I crossed the border with like 60 argentine pesos which certainly makes things interesting. But Rafael has helped out got money from home today and to be honest the visa support service is quite good...anyways what can you do huh.
So yeah what do I think of Uruguay? I loved it the people were awesome great parties and great times I think a must place to visit over the Christmas break if you are in Argentina.
Catch ya´s later hopefully in Iguaçu!
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Dave Condon
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Congrats Mate.
Hi Matt, Congrats on lasting 2 months without getting something stolen/lost. Man I didnt think you would get to december without losing all your money to some hot brazilian chick..... All is good here, tim had his birthday on Sat/Sun... Tiph says hi... Enjoy the rest of your trip. Looks like you have covered alot of ground.