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Published: April 12th 2008
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Stained Glass
As if you couldn't tell! Montevideo is a pretty cool city as the capitals we have seen so far go. Not too big, not too small...just right. (especially for you Goldilocks and the 3 Bears lovers).
We head to our hostel which as it turns out is pretty cool, a large pool table and even larger bottles of beer, which is just as well really as the hostel, much like the rest of the city is pretty quiet! We spend the first night getting a few beers in and playing some pool. Its all going pretty well until Brad slopes off as he's knackered! Still I turn it into a good night as I meet a local called Trish. We get on really well, she's a but quiet but then I s'pose that could be because I have one too many and start to get a bit drunk. She was lovely though, tall, dark with a good body...the perfect partner to spend the evening with.
Unfortunately in my drunken state, I may have thrashed around our room in the hostel playing air guitar along to slipknot on my ipod. All whilst being filmed by the supposedly asleep bradley! (the sneaky bastard!) Footage which hopefully
One man and his Bombilla!
Its the name of the cup that everyone carries and drinks out of in Uruguay! he has deleted, because when I watched it the following morning I can really only say it is cringe worthy!
The next day we have a good wander around the city. From the artesanian old part of the city right up to the modern, with its many, in fact scarily number of trainer shops!! Some of the architecture is really cool, especially the older buildings. We check out a couple of museums and also the arts and crafts section of the city. Once again, there really don't seem to be many people about. In Uruguay much of the population is emigrating to the neighbouring countries of Brazil and Argentina. It also has a very low birth rate, hence why the population is small.
After a few days in the city, we decided to try our hands as farmers or Gauchos as they call them over here. So we headed to the country to stay at Estancia de Silencia (a farm). We kind of had this idea that we could ride horses and help out round the farm. On arrival we were shown to our cabin by the cook that didnt actually speak any english at all. To say
an assortment of Bombillas
So you can see there's reall no excuse for not having one! Even if these aren't full of Yerba mate! communicating was difficult would be an understatement. We didnt really know what to do with our first evening. There were no other guests and a massive dining area that Brad and I looked pretty minescule in. On the plus side they did have a ping pong table, which I used to gloating effect over the totally rubbish Brad.
We thought an early night was in order, as things always kick off early on a farm right? Wrong, we were up at the crack of dawn (that wasnt the cooks name by the way) and had a hearty breakfast superbly prepared by Hector the chef, host and alround nice guy. Then we waited and waited and waited somemore. About mid morning we got a shout that the horses were saddled up and ready to ride! yeehaa....finally time to live out my Heath Ledger brokeback fantasy's!....oh bugger no sorry wrong name, I meant the Lone Ranger obviously.....phew nice save, almost gave the game up there! So anyhoo moving swiftly on, we were led to the field where the gaucho herded up the sheep before giving us a lesson in horse riding. It went something like this....."pare" - stop, "izquierda" - left,
Cool architecture!
Hate to say I told you so! "derecha" - right, basically pull the reigns in this direction and thats all there is to it. Then they rode off and left us to our own devices. Piece of piss eh, turns out horses are capable of thinking, who would have figured?! My horse just kept walking round in a small circle always finishing by the stable gates, it had no interest in where I wanted to go at all, if I tell him to stop, he keeps going, if I try to get him to turn right a little bit, he turns 180 degrees and heads back to the gate. Thats when the gaucho gave us the whip.....yeah horse, now we'll see whose boss round here! One wack and you should have seen him, he still circled but to the damn gate only this time slightly faster! Aaaarghh!! It was at this point after shouting at the horse "you may have won the war horse, but you are glue pal, you hear me glue!!!"
So once the hissy fit was ove, we tried our hand at sheep shearing, except they don't use clippers they use large, sharp scissors, and bearing in mind for some reason they were
Just the two uf us!
Trish and I, a match made in heaven! only shearing their faces it was pretty nervy having a go, on the plus side for once I didnt have the worse haircut around.
As the sun set on the farm, I came to the conclusion that im probably best off in other surroundings, the farm life isn't for me.
We have a hearty brekkie and drink some mate (the beverage that all Urugauyans carry around with them all day) its pretty bitter, a bit of an aquired taste I think! We say our goodbyes to Hector and ride off into the sunset inside our steel horse (aka bus) towards Colonia Del Sacramento!!
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Bradley
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Air guitar
The vidio will be comming soon!!