Uruguay in 7 days

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After trying to sleep off our Paddy's day hangovers, being dropped off at Concordia, which was the border of Argentina & Uruguay but felt like the middle of nowhere and then being driven to the border in the most beaten up old fiat of a taxi (which had no front bumper and more dents than del boys 3 wheeler),we finally made it to Salto, in Uruguay. It was to be our farewell to Mark and Nicky, who had been with us for just over 2 weeks and wanted to find a ranch to work on for a week or so. We’d made 2 really great friends, who had helped us with our Spanish and had a great laugh with so it was always going to be a downer to say goodbye. So we decided to persuade them that the ranch experience would be better and cheaper to do in Argentina and that they should stay with us. Which worked perfectly over a beer and the West ham v Spurs game!

Now the only thought either of us had so far of Uruguay is when Homer Simpson quoted when looking at a globe “ha ha… look at this country…. U R GAY!” So we really needed to have a better opinion of the place. So first stop for the newly reformed quartet was Montevideo. We’d decided on a place which came recommended by the lonely planet (Hospdaje del este) and was pretty close to the town centre. They only had a 3 bed available but we managed to persuade them that it would be in their best interests to let the 4 of us take it seeing as the place seemed pretty deserted for a Saturday night, result! Well not really when we had to squeeze into a single bed!

Our first impressions of Montevideo being pretty quiet for a Saturday night didn’t end there. We took a stroll down to the city centre, and apart from a small strip of restaurants and a few bars (2 of them Irish playing live music), there didn’t seem much to do. Being pretty tired anyway, we decided to have a kebab and take a quick peek at the main square then head back to the hostel with a couple of beers and a few ghost stories about the hostel for Mark.

Next day we took a walk around the town for the afternoon. Montevideo has a population of 1.3 million and judging by its beautiful architecture must have had a great past. All of the surrounding streets around the city centre are full of buildings that if they were in London would be worth millions. But years of economic down turn seem to have really taken its toll on the city, which is a real shame. On a good note, we saw the theatre which was a beautiful modern building and apparently held top class shows which draws in the crowd. Being on a budget of £20 a day, a posh night at the theatre wasn’t an option so we took a couple of beers back to the hostel and had a sofa Sunday instead and watched Titanic for the 400th time.

Next stop was La Paloma and the bed in the shed!

La Paloma is a lovely little beach town with a population of 3500 laid back people, 4hrs east of Montevideo. Our hostel was run by 2 of the most laid back 3500 people and 1 laid back Neapolitan puppy mastiff named once (meaning 11). The laid back aura of the place must have rubbed off on us because when the 4 of us we shown our rooms, which not weren’t basically but definitely 2 beds put into 2 sheds at the end of the garden . Ours needed a towel over the window so nobody could see in! We all looked at each other and said ‘yep cool’ and got ready for the beach.

The whole town was pretty deserted being closed season, which was actually pretty nice as we had the beach to ourselves and all the souvenir and food shops were still open for business so it was defiantly going to be a relaxing couple of days for us. Just off of the coast there’s a little island which looked quite challenging to get to, so everyone apart from Perdy (who was still in plaster due to her drunken russian dancer attempt whilst in 4inch heels) went in to try to reach the mysterious, uncharted land and maybe find an up till now an undiscovered species of reptile or something. After battling the monstrous waves of the murky deep, avoiding any deadly beast that may lay in wait and swimming the 15 or so meters to the island, all we discovered was that there wasn’t much to see and swam back to land and did a bit of sunbathing for the rest of the day and then went up the lighthouse.

After a pretty good sleep on the bed in the shed and playing around with Once, the day was another laid back one. Perdy felt like she was ready to go for a swim with her cast off so we headed back to the beach for a few hours. We were then chased off the beach by a swarm of flys that had some sort of problem with us being there. They wouldn’t leave us alone until we took refuge in the supermarket. So we took the opportunity to grab a couple of beers. At least we could fend off the flies with the beers if they wanted round 2! We think they knew we meant business and left us alone!

We had a few beers back at the hostel with the 2 who run the place and the owner, who we found out actually moved to Uruaguay from the US because she thinks the world is going to end in 2012 and it is the safest place to be if such a catastrophe was to occur because of the huge underground reservoirs it has. So obviously that provided some of our entertainment and laughter for the night.

The next day we arrived in Piripolis, we knew that, being another holiday resort out of season it was going to be pretty quiet again. So all we needed to worry about was that we had enough factor 30. Our hostel, with its long dark corridors and rooms and rooms, looked like an old mental hospital. We tried to convince Mark that the spirits of the dammed still roamed the hallways but he was having none of it. We were praying that the shinning was on the tv that night!

Next morning we took a stroll around the town, which pretty much consisted of a parade of shops along the sea front, a harbor and a cable car which took you up a hillside and gave some lovely views of the town. That was pretty much it for Piripolis as we couldn’t get into the sea because of a jelly fish invasion. So we booked our tickets for Colonia De Sacremento, made dinner and had an early night.

We arrived at Colonia about 1pm and our biggest topic of the bus journey was whether or not to book accommodation for the night because our ferry to Buenos Aires, being the cheapest was at 4am. By the time we arrived, we’d decided on having a nice walk around the town, go for a nice meal and then try to rough it until we could get on the ferry. Colonia is a beautiful town which consists of some lovely restaurants, colonial buildings and a nice quiet harbor. Being just an hour away on a fast boat from Buenos Aires and normal people, unsurprisingly it’s full of holiday makers on weekend breaks or staying on their boats, so as the prices of the restaurants’ were a bit too steep for us, biscuits and cream cheese for lunch it was.

Uruguay is pretty well known for its excellent steak .So Nicky, being a great lover of eating anything that used to move and fried, had been looking forward to using Colonia to try the local cuisine. We found a restaurant just outside of the town center. It’s amazing (just like anywhere I suppose) how much cheaper you can get a meal when you venture out of the main tourist area. What is just as amazing is how you can go to a shop down the road, buy a couple of cartons of cheap wine and get away with drinking it with your meal! Dinner was great. Apart from poor old Nikki who didn’t get to have her dream steak as they had sold out, so she was pretty disappointed. Being homeless and having nowhere else to go, we entertained ourselves in the restaurant for another few hours by having paper aerorplane competitions. (Mark wins 4-3) until the owner politely told us he was ready for bed. And was probably wondering why a glass of wine that we’d brought from the restaurant had lasted us 3 hours and managed to turn from a white into rose. We were feeling pretty merry and brave after a litre of wine each, so we went back down the shop and got some more supplies for the 4 hour wait before we had to go to the ferry terminal.

It’s funny what being on such a strict budget in an expensive country can do to a person (or 4 people). We set up camp on a stoop just around the corner, set up the Ipod and had a bit of a sing song under the street lights. It’s a shame we never had any blues music, it would have really set the tone of being homeless!

At about 2am, after some drunken politics talk we thought we’d better head off to the terminal, which wasn’t uneventful with Perdy wanting to play bumpercars down the hill while wearing all our backpacks. She’s so cute, if not slightly ridiculous!

Getting to the terminal about 2 hours early, everyone decided it was time for a sleep outside on the grass. Being the oldest and wisest and least pissed at the time, Tony took it upon himself to stay awake and make sure we didn’t miss our ferry or get robbed.

Tony’s version of events - After I tucked everyone in and read them a bedtime story, I had my last cup of cold coffee from my flask, put some music on and wondered what the hell I was doing on the other side of the world, drunk and homeless watching my friends sleeping rough. I was free as a bird! It was definitely one of those soul searching moments that everybody has at some point in their lives, never thought I’d get this homeless outside a ferry terminal in a foreign country. After finding my soul I thought I’d find some carrier bags and try a little experiment to see how man copes with simple tests while drunk. So i tied Marks feet together and then tied him to his bag, pretty safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t wake up. Being a loving boyfriend, I tucked Perdy up all nice and warm and out of the wind, which I got a big cuddle for the next day. The results were pretty much what you’d expect. I felt a bit guilty so I untied his feet. But it was pretty funny trying to watch him staring at his bag , trying to work out why he was stuck to it. There were a few rolls around the floor with it for a few minutes, until I decided to put him out of his misery before he got a headache! Damn, why didn’t I video that struggle.

We all managed to pretend that we were sober as judges when we checked on to the ferry. Even with Mark looking like a zombie, swaying from side to side and still had plastic bags tied to him! To this day we’re sure that if we were getting on a plane, we’d have been shown the door. But everything worked out ok and we all crashed out on the ferry, although no one but me has any memory of the sequence of events. Buenos Aires here we come!!

Just on a more sensible note (yes we do have those moments from time to time). Anyone considering going to Uruguay should be aware that is isn’t achievable on a backpackers budget. We have left the country seriously out of pocket yet all we seemed to do was relax, go to the beach and cook for ourselves most nights. Slightly disappointed we couldn’t have done more. The most shocking was that we went out of season so the prices were reduced! Consider it carefully before committing to go there.

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