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Published: February 8th 2008
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Colonia del Sacramento
Hangin in the old town Living in hostels after a while I think starts to make one consider humanity and the strangeness of sharing such a tight space with complete strangers. The humanity of the hostel dweller can be divided into different categories and each member may belong to one or more of these groups at any one time. I have come to note that there always exists one or more of the following types of people in any one dwelling at any one time.
1. The plastic bag rustler. The quiter you try to do it, the more it annoys and disturbs
2. The early riser. Usually a German in tight undies who blows his nose at the crack of dawn.
3. The people smugglers. Maybe not as well known as the above, but the ones who choose to take the risk with the catch from the nightclub. Comes with the added impact of the next point
4. The nighttime smoochers. Couples in the same room who have to be apart for the night in bunk beds and who spend kissy time saying goodnight, audible to everyone
5. Farters
6. Snorers
7. Messy space keepers.
If one can overcome the disturbance caused by
Cama!
Travelin in style, great buses so far in Chile and Argentina, and this one from Montevideo to cowboy country also didn´t disappoint. any one of these people at one time, the ultimate for any traveller will be achieved, being a perfect nights sleep.
This is yet to happen for the Supples.
I digress.
We spent a nice day yesterday enjoying the sites of Colonia del Sacramento ("all the sites" counted on one hand) Sick of cooking and put off by a grungy looking kitchen we decided to treat ourselves to a BBQ given by the hostel. Hours later and starving, we finally sat down to dinner, of which we later concluded was a rip off for what we paid, but was good for the atmosphere. 11 of us sat at a big table and it took and English couple to break the silence by trying to translate English jokes into Spanish (knock knock jokes and why did the chicken cross the road.....neither of which translated well, but I admired their persistence.) We got talking anyway. They were one month into a mad trip of the continent, planning to get all the way up to Mexico overland.
We said our goodnights and headed off to the dorm room. Categories of 1,4,6 and 7 were the disturbance at the start of the night, so much so that John had to tell a couple to stop 1 íng and 4 ìng and go to sleep! During the night it was a case of course of the regular 5 and 6 and I nearly broke my leg descending the ladder from the bunk bed on account of a 7 leaving a backpack and shoes at the bottom. At 5:45 it was a number 2 who greeted us all, tho I´m sure we were guilty ourselves of disturbance when we also got up an hour later.
We were heading to an 8:30 a.m. bus to Montevideo with a connection to Tacuarembo - cowboy country. We decided to come here because it´s a bit more off the beaten tourist track and it´s that bit closer to the border of Brazil. All the land border crossings between Uruguay and Argentina are closed at the moment due to a disagreement over a papermill that Uruguay is cranking up and Argentina says will affect its lake and hence its tourism. Because of that we´ll head further north from here into Brazil briefly and then back into Argentina via a national park full of "dirty big anacondas" (quote John), birds and the like. We´ll then head over to the Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls and then into the Brazilian side of Iguazu. Phew.
Anyway when we got the first bus to Montevideo, the guy putting our bags on the bus seemed to give us the polite Spanish form of "Why the fuck are you going to Tacuarembo??" which made us all the more curious to go (this is a town of 51,000 people, its major draw being its big cowboy festival in March)
We had a 2 hour trip to the capital and then a wait of 90 minutes for our connection. Montevideo seemed like a nice enough city from what we saw, but didn´t have the appeal of an arse end of nowhere cowboy town that we were supposedly heading to.
After 5 hours on another luxury bus (they really are good at the whole bus thing here) we arrived and booked into the only hotel mentioned in our guidebook. That´s right, hotel. Room to ourselves with private bathroom, Tacuarembo I love you, despite the mosquitos and the rain. We´re staying for 2 nights, just to chill out, tho god knows how we´ll fill the time, think we saw most of the city tonight just by walking to the supermarket. We ended up going back to the same place for an after dinner drink as where we actually ate dinner as there was no where else in between and the hotel bar looked laughable (when John asked for a beer the woman said they didn´t have any, despite having a bottle of gin and vodka behind the bar) I did get to try the Uruguayian (?) drink of choice, grappa miel which is grappa with honey. Very nice Mr Supple proclaimed when he tasted mine, so tomorrow looks like a day of buying a bottle of the stuff. Oh, and buying a rain jacket and hopefully seeing some cowboys too.
Anniversary! Happy milkfed 10th! - a t-shirt we saw in a window tonight, one of the best English language t-shirts I´ve seen so far. I want this to be the catch cry of our trip so far, whatever it means, but it can only be good.
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