Uruguay

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We had caught a ferry across to Uruguay for a few days but needed to be back in Buenos Aires for a football match. We left the capital, Montevideo by bus in the morning to go back to the port of Colonia & arrived early in the afternoon. Our hostel where we had stayed before was expecting us so we were perplexed by their puzzled looks when we turned up. It was as if we had just knocked on some random persons door & asked to stay. They asked our names & repeated Sam & Luke several times until saying 'Oh Sam & Luke'. All very odd but they had a room for us.
Having seen nearly all of Colonia a few days previously we were at a loss for something to do, so we did an old favourite & caught up on sleep until dinnertime. A perfectly acceptable practice in a culture of staying up till eight in the morning clubbing, one club in Buenos Aires doesn't open until nine on Sunday morning it is such a late night culture. It had gone eight & there may be a chance that the restaurants might have opened. We found one, Pulperia D'los Faroles, which although empty when we walked in had lots of reserved signs on the tables. We were seated & had soon ordered hake in shrimp sauce & mashed squash stuff with excellent not to mention cheap house wine. Most of the tables had been reserved for nine thirty when the live entertainment would start a band called Luis & Conce. They were performing a sound check when we walked in & we decided we would try & stretch out dinner to see them. Our food was served all to quickly & we needed dessert to fill the time. Before the band started the restaurant was filled with smartly dressed people ready for a saturday evening's entertainment. A camera crew had turned up & we thought it would be filming the band. We were the biggest scruffbags in the place & were relieved that they wouldn't pick on us to film. However, five minutes later there was a bright light in our faces & they were asking if we spoke english. Having said yes they told us they were from the Discovery Channel & would we mind answering a few questions. We reluctantly agreed with the whole restaurant watching us & they started filming. They were doing a program on Colonia & asked us our views on the town, it felt like they were feeding us with what to say, I ended up saying it was a really pretty town but I really wanted to say there wasn't enough street lamps & kept tripping up in the dark. They then asked if we had been to the Pulperia in the restaurant, we didn't even know what a Pulperia was so they took us to the back with the manager of the restaurant. It was a sort of bar & the manager explained in spanish that gauchos in the fields would do something or other & drink alcohol or something, he spoke fast & we didn't want to interrupt while they were filming us. It ended up with us being poured a strong drink, drinking it & saying that because we were English we were used to hard liquor, they fed us those words too. We signed release forms to say they could use the footage however they please so we will probably end up on a Discovery Channel documentary on alcoholism & the British rather than a travel program.
Back at our table we finally got to listen to Luis & Conce. while we were serupticiously filmed through the window as we finished our drinks. We escaped during a break in the music half expecting to be filmed all the way home.

Drink of the Day: Grappa con Miel

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