Beach Time

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The plan was to take the ferry across the Rio del la Plata to the little colonial town of...Colonia, of course, and spend a few days taking it slow. Somehow along the way I (suzy) got the urge to go to the beach and convinced Todd we should skip Colonia at first and hop a bus to one of the beach towns in Uruguay. Maybe it was thinking of heading home to cold cold NorteAmerica...who knows!

He agreed, of course, and when the ferry reached Uruguay we hopped off, bought ourselves tickets to the popular beach resort, Punta del Este, and we were off. What was going to be a 3 day historic tour sort of thing turned into a week of sunbathing, swimming and your basic holiday laziness.

We tried to stay at a hostel at first, and having been befriended by Dougie, from Vancouver on the bus, we all headed for the cheapest hostel in town...El Hostel...appropriately named, which is a short walk from the bus terminal. Alas, they had no private rooms, and we weren't feeling the dorms this time around, so we headed off to look for a cheap hotel. Easy enough, since it wasn't officially the ¨high¨ season yet, we got a place for $20 a night...Hotel Puerto treated us right all week.

Punta del Este is a pretty snazzy place, but since it wasn't the peak of vacation season, it was nice and quiet for us. The center of town is on a little point of land that sticks out, hence the punta part of the name, but basically that means, there are beaches in 3 of the 4 directions you walk! Nice. And there's a fancy little marina, with some fancy little restaurants.

We headed back to Buenos Aires on Saturday morning, and actually had a few hours to take a look around Colonia...which really is a beautiful little place. Originally set up by the Portugese to steal from Spanish ships and such...Very picturesque place.

All in all, it was a great little holiday. We'll be going home for christmas kinda tan, which is always good! One more week in Buenos Aires...we head back to the states Thursday night.

So, this may be the second to last or so of our South America entries...but we plan on continuing to write, as our travels won't be over ´till we've found a place to settle in, at least for a while, out west...maybe New Mexico. Who knows. We'll keep you posted.

Happy Holidays! And for folks in Maryland and Jersey, we may be seeing you soon!

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