Blogs from District of Montevideo, Uruguay, South America - page 8

Abby and I got up bright and early to start off our day. Since the little bit of cash we had exchanged yesterday was now gone, we decided we'd find an ATM to get more. This took well over an hour as there was a severe language barrier and we couldn't find an ATM that would take American bank cards. Interesting fact about Uruguay. Abby doubled the Asian population the second she got off the boat. No one here knows what to do with her, and various people have started yelling random Asian words at her as she's walking down the street. I'd feel bad, but it's pretty funny. Second fun fact, most of the people here are white so if I keep my mouth shut I acutally could pass as a local. Well, I take ... read more

It was last Saturday...and we've done so many thing since that week-end...I thing this kind of comment can summarize properly our new lifestyle in Argentina... So we made it easy on the 2 hours and half to Montevideo on the Saturday afternoon. The bus ride is smooth, and the scenery is looking pretty much like any country side scenery in Luxembourg where I grew up...just with a pretty low density of population. For two days in Uruguay, we took boats...we took the bus ride between Colonia and Montevideo...and we walked...a lot... I never actually went to Montevideo! I went 6 years ago for Christmas to Punta del Este...landed in Montevideo airport, rented a car and drove to Punta del Este....bear in mind, I wasn't very impressed by the place...it has the reputation to be a hip ... read more

Uruguay was my last stop in the 6 weeks tour of South America. I wasn’t expecting too much here but was inspired by the lovely people of Uruguay. I took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonial, Uruguay. It was an hour ride; I used Colonial Express ferry service instead of the Busquebus ferry service. Colonial express was half the price of Busquebus. I spent about four hours exploring Colonial – it would be such a nice city in the summer. Then I took the 2.5hours bus to Montevideo. Immediately, I fell in love with Montevideo. The city is not fancy or big like Buenos Aires but it is pretty in its own way. The people are much nicer as well. I stayed in a really great hostel – Impeccable Hostel- very close (2 blocks) to ... read more

Alex had some training in Montevideo, Uruguay, so we decided to take a few days of leave and take a mini vacation. Brazil had spoiled us with beautifully consistent sunny weather, so we were a bit shocked when Uruguay was in the 50s. In fact, Jenn had to buy a winter coat, and we then understood why it was so easy to make reservations at our beach resort. At the end of the week, several of Alex’s classmates joined us at the train station marketplace that has no trains. Around 100 years ago, a ship arrived in Montevideo with all the construction materials, but no indication of what the finished structure would be or it’s final destination. The Uruguayans decided to build what turned out to be a train station meant for Santiago, Chile, but they ... read more

After another hefty bus journey we reached Torres, another beach resort with big waves, but decided we´d skip its attractions and use it as a pit stop on our way inland to the mountains. After a night in the fairly-unhomely Resio Medusa, we got a bus to Praia Grande, which, despite meaning "big beach" can be found about 20km inland. Not only were we most definitely the only gringoes in town, but we were also the only ones who spoke English. After eventually working out that the bus didn´t leave until the following day and presuming that there would be nowhere to stay we headed to the tourist/taxi office to see how we could make it to the big draw of the area, Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra. After a lot of writing down numbers, ... read more