Punto del Diablo

---

...and then I was off again to Uruguay - hadn´t intended to go but I´d heard there was a cool hostel in a fairly rustic town called Punto del Daiblo. With Gigi´s suggestion of sleeping tablets to make the journey go quicker I was off on an 11 hour trip. Now there was a little confusion owing to a lack of brain and preparation so I bought a ticket to Montevideo thinking one has to go there to get to Punto DD. As it turns out I´d missed a mail from the hostel giving a totally different route. So when I was good and tired I popped my first pill (Gigi suggested using only one) and I was off - until I got to the border crossing where I woke up at 3 and thought in for a penny and took the other one - at about 6 I woke again just late enough to find we were just leaving Punto del Este - Just around the corner by 2 hours from where I wanted to go. So I ended up in Montevideo 3 hours later needing to get a bus back from where I came. That turned out to be a snailbus leaving at 2 so I eventually turned up at the hosel at 7 or 8 pm. Millionth note to self (fail to prepare..😊 Anyhow the hostel was pretty cool - not as nice as Sunset but they may have raised the bar a bit too high. PDD is totally undeveloped with three beaches that go on for miles - on the first day I went for a walk and was nearly too knackered when I reached my destination (a whale watching tower) to contemplate walking back but there was no other option (or whales for that matter) Tried surfing again but the conditions weren´t suitable (Wind blowing in from the sea) and pretty much got worse as the week went on. But it was still plenty sunny and hot in the shade of the dunes and that turned out to be almost all you could do - there was no atm so I was kind of stuck for the first few days eating at the hostels restaraunt and bar on a tab until I realised in the last few days that they offered an exchange service so I had planty of lids to get out of there. Phew - i think i´d go nuts in a place where the wind never stopped. A couple of people that I´d met trudled up during the week so that was pretty cool, Dylan (team Kiwi) got in from BA where in two days managed to nearly get rolled twice so I was reall looking forward to spending a month there! Team Manchester also turned up (can´t remember her name) but by the end of the week everyone was bailing due to the boredom so I headed off to BA via Montevideo with Manchester and Leonie from Belgium and caught the ferry from Colonida with Leonie ....
...the awful photos are of a night in the bar where we were only an annoyance to people who wanted a serious game of poker. The hangover from the house wine lasted 24 hours and the photos of the staff are ones they took themselves as I left the camera behind me...

---