Lucky Breaks and Beautiful Sunrises

South America » Uruguay » East » Punta del Diablo
February 3rd 2007

Published: February 5th 2007

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Callie Anne

Sunset over Punta del Diablo

Once again, apologies for the lackage of entries on the blog! As much as we absolutely LOVED Uruguay, I can´t say that the internet was fast, reliable, or even available... and if it were any of the above, we were having way too much fun to want to sit down in a dark cafe and type away!

The week that we spent wandering around the tiny tucked away country on the east coast of South America was nothing short of magnificent! The people were incredibly friendly; always stopping for a chat about anything and nothing, willing to give extensive directions and smiling from ear to ear when they learned that I spoke ¨Castellano¨ (aka, Spanish). I guess they´re used to doing the sign language and over-energetic gesturing to try and get their point across... sometimes easier said than done!

We crossed the Northern border between Argentina and Uruguay early Saturday morning last week - at the small town of Salto... just in time. (you´ll learn why in juuuust a few minutes!) We decided to push on that day and try and make it to the east coast by the ´alternate route´ of going through the northern and interior roads,

Lauren enjoying a Bevie

Our $2 bottle litres of beer

as opposed to heading straight for the central transportation hub of Montevideo in the South. We were told it couldn´t be done, but I´m a stubborn and pigheaded individual and sure as heck wanted to prove everyone wrong. After finding out that a main road had been shut due to a bridge washing out, we ended up in the most northern town of the country, Artigas... where unfortunately we had just missed the bus by about an hour and the next one didn´t leave until 10:30pm!! Ooops - after getting laughed at by the ticket sales vendor who had NO idea why we didn´t just take the 5 hour ride to the Capital and save ourselves a whooole lot of trouble - we decided to make the best of the situation and explore the town. A cute little city influenced by the Brazilian border just a few klicks away, we actually enjoyed ourselves while wandering around, getting gawked at (please, how many tourists ACTUALLY go up there - haha, just the ones who like to make things difficult for themselves!) and doing a little window shopping (oh, did I mention that it was Saturday afternoon and it being a weekend

Our Cabaña at Sunrise

The house on the left of the ´duplex´ was our beautiful (yet not-so-new) home. We slept in the loft and were SURE that the floor was going to fall through into the kitchen!

everything was closed... and everything that was open that day had closed for the mid-day siesta... what luck!).

Our next decision was to actually see some of the interior of the country, as most foreigners stick to the coast, where they have amazing beaches and great colonial towns with loads of history... we were told that the interior has nothing but farms and trees. LIARS! It was quite a precious and pristine area that we thoroughly enjoyed. Tacuarembó was our next stop - having a shower and sleeping on a fan-cooled bed has NEVER felt better. I think I also forgot to mention that it was INSANELY hot there. Im not talking like it was a little bit warm and we wanted to stay indoors-- nope, it was so incredibly humid and smokin´hot that we would step out of the shower and start to drip with sweat and would stop again until we either jumped in the lake or got back in the shower. Even at night when it ´cooled down´ we were dying!
That day we lazed around a lake just a few minutes out of town - apparently it´s the place to be on a Sunday because

The Five Backpackers

Lauren, Adrien, Carl, Ottho and meeee! Getting ready to celebrate Lauren´s B-day

I think that everyone from Tacuarembó was there in full soccer playing, bar-b-q making, chair-lounging force. Ahhh, the life of a local!

So, I have to admit that my plan failed miserably. Horribly actually. If we hadn´t had such a good time wandering around in random towns that weren´t even MENTIONED in the Lonely Planet (gasp!!! Is that possible?!?! Eeeek), I would have felt bad about ´wasting time´... but it was far from a waste and we´re happy to have seen a little bit of the country that is virtually untouched by mass tourism. What I´m trying to say is that, yes, we did end up going to Montevideo, much to our chagrin, but it had to be done... I don´t like to say that we ´failed´... but more that we took a road less traveled!

From Montevideo we headed up to the little surf-town of Punta del Diablo. WOW! What a place, what an amazing 4 days, and what a fabulously wonderful time we had! Right from the moment of stepping off the bus to getting back on, we had nothing but entertainment, laughter and even a little bit of beer. But not much, of course!
We

Empty!!!!

The beach that we wandered to - virtually empty of people (and shade!)... the waves were a little less crazy than the other beaches, so we were able to swim for hours

met a girl, Adrian from Ohio, on the bus and then another 2 swiss boys, Carl and Ottho (Car and Auto to me), and the 5 of us decided to look for a cabaña together to save some money - as we walked down towards the water we knocked on doors and asked random people walking on the ´street´ (in quotations because, well, it was basically a sandy path that had been trodden so many times that it kiiinda resembled a street) if they knew of any places. Luck was on our side and we found a man with a few cabañas, and managed to get the one RIGHT on the water. Our breakfast table had an unobstructed view of the ocean, the waves crashing on the rocks, and the incredible sunrises (that believe it or not, we actually woke up to see... or stayed awake to see!).

Mike and I spent our 1 year anniversary apart on Jan.29th. So romantic. To celebrate us Lauren and Adrian and I went out for a grand dinner, sat outside and watched the sun go down and then woke up at 5:30am to watch the sunrise. It was absolutely magnificent and I

Behind the Scenes

Doin´our thing behind the bar

was so happy I dragged my butt outta bed. Mikey, I wish you were there, but I´ll see you in less than a month and hopefully we´ll be able to watch a few sunrises over the Galápagos and one over Machu Picchu together!

We stayed for 3 nights, eating fresh seafood on the boardwalk, shopping the original artesania stalls, wandering around on the endless beaches, tanning and hanging out with our new friends and some locals we met. What a great vacation - traveling is so hard sometimes you need a break (hehehe, don´t kick me, I was kidding).

We found ourselves a little outdoors bar that we frequented - Lauren´s 22nd birthday was spent there - bartending (yep, we were makin´the drinks and working behind the bar...), dancing up a storm (turns out the samba isn´t too hard if you just flail around and pretend you know what you´re doing), and hanging out until allllll hours of the morning. One night we made it home at 5:30, just before the sun came up, and another night we didn´t get home until 8:30, wellllll after the sun had risen!
Long story short, Lauren and I ended up hopping

THIS IS NOT A GOOD DRINK

possibly the worst picture of me ever... but just wanted to show how terrible of a bartender Lauren is. The drink was absolutely HORRIBLE

on a quad (4X4 or ATV, dunno which one it really was) with 2 of the bartenders that we had met and ripping around the dunes for a few hours. On the way back we busted BOTH of the back tires ... apparently the quad was only made for 1 or 2 people, NOT 4 and the rubber ended up coming right off of the rims. Ooops.
What sucked more was that we were about an hour away from our house and had to walk the whole way back... serves us right!

That day we went to the capital to wander around and see the Old Town. Saw a beautiful sunset, had an all you can eat Parrilla dinner (grill with meat and seafood and such) for $6, and just walked the streets all day.

We carried on to Colonía del Sacramento - the fort town on the coast of Uruguay that was used to protect the mouth of the large river that separates Uruguay and Argentina (the name escapes me right now, but Im sure someone will remind me sooner or later). We got to see one of the walls that´s still standing... crumbling, but standing... as

Lolo!

Everywhere we go we somehow manage to adopt a dog. This was mine, Lolo, a little black lab puppy who followed us to the bar and spent the night on my lap sleeping and protecting me from creepy guys!

well as the drawbridge and some old cannons. We also climbed the lighthouse for a bird´s eye view of the old city, as well as a great view of Buenos Aires in the distance and ate some pretty fabulous food.

Saturday we went to book our tickets for the Buquebus, the ferry from Colonia to Buenos Aires and we barely made it on! It was sooooo incredibly busy it was insanity. I asked one of the guys what was going on and he kinda looked at me strangely. ¨Didn´t you hear the borders are closed?¨ I obviously had noooo idea what he was talking about, so I sat him down and made him give me the whole story. It went a little something like this. (Oh, and one more thing, I know this is only one version of a multi-sided story. I know that there will be many many more opinions and other people possibly will think differently - this is just a recount of what I was told by a Uruguayan border official and is NOT an academically researched and flawless article. Please do not send me angry emails if I have some facts wrong - feel free

Dinner for 2

An amazing dish of a white fish smoothered in a creamy mariscos sauce (shell fish, prawns, shrimp and mushrooms)... we also ate a massive steak. The food here is to die for!

to post your opinions, but don´t get mad or vindictive. Thank you.) - I had to put that ´cause I´ve actually gotten some pretty scathing emails from people in regards to my posts about Venezuelan politics... so Im just protecting my butt!

Ok, about 10 years ago, or so, a paper processing plant from Finland decided to establish a factory in South America. Initially they chose Argentina and started the plans to build it there... somewhere along the line someone took a better look at the logistics, the costs, the availability of labour and supplies (Uruguayan had started to plant trees a few years back to ready themselves for this, so they had a supply of trees in the making), and realized that Uruguay was more towards what they were looking for. So they changed their minds. Needless to say, this pissed off a whoooole lot of Argentinians who were counting on this factory for jobs and a serious increase in their local economy.
Ever since there has been a tension between the borders, as the Argentinians are upset about losing the factory to the Uruguayan side.
When we told the official that we had crossed from the North

Cabañas line the road to the beach

The road we headed down on our search for the perfect Cabaña... suckers who chose these ones didn´t get our million dollar view!

he looked at us in disbelief. ¨How?¨ he asked, ¨the border is closed¨. Apparently we had just made it across by 4 days before the Argentinan people blockaded the 3 bridges (only crossing points save for the ferries that run from Buenos Aires) and they´ve been closed for the last week. Their reasoning is that the factory is polluting the river that divides the 2 countries and they want it to be shut down or improved. I have no idea what the actual state of the pollution is, but the fact that the government isn´t getting involved and it´s the workers from the north who were denied the jobs to the Uruguayans, this might be a little more than an issue of pollution. But I´ve been wrong before!

Anyway, moral of the story is that we made it in, and out of Uruguay without a problem... absolutely LOVED the country and the people, and will for sure be returning, as it´s probably the best country I´ve been to so far on this trip - and that´s saying a whole lot, as I have enjoyed every single country so far!

I´m going to try again to put up pictures