I wake bright and early 5 AM Monday morning so I can get ready and catch the 6AM subte to Retiro, where I was to board a boat for Uruguay. It's windy and grey outside. As it always seems to be when I have to go to Retiro. Let me tell you, if I haven't already, Retiro is probably one of my least favorite places. Moving on... I find the Buquebus station, the company I'm traveling with, check-in, go through customs, and wait to board. We get on and take off promptly at 9AM for our 3 hour ride across the Rio de la Plata for Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The boat ride is fairly uneventful, I spent most of the time with my head in my book. However since things got a bit bumpy the last hour, the kid next to me barfed and the girl in front of me had to lay down in the aisle with a bag of ice on her head so she wouldn't barf as well.
Straight off the boat I get onto a bus that will take me to Punta del Este in two hours. My seat is next to an old Argentine woman who wants to complain about the boat ride. It hadn't really phase me all that much so I think I disappointed her when I didn't join in on the complaining. She leans her seat back to sleep but I am trying to soak up everything of this new and foreign country :) Sleepiness overtakes me after twenty minutes or so unfortunately, but when I open my eyes every so often I'm enchanted by the pretty and peaceful country side I see after we get out of the city of Montevideo.
I arrive with the address and instructions that it is two blocks from the bus terminal. It was a beautiful, warm day and Punta del Este is a very clean city (which I have very much learned to appreciate in South America). They (Raquel, Hannah, Lizzie, and Tim) told me that the apartment was right on the beach. I headed for the beach and firgured I'd ask if I didn't run into the other street I was looking for after two blocks. Which I didn't, so I asked some guys who were working on the sidewalks, they didn't seem too certain but said I could walk towards the center and ask there. I start walking in that direction when one of them came after me and said they'd asked another guy who said it was 7 blocks away. 7 blocks? That can't be right but I thanked him anyway. Which of course he replies "no, por favooor" haha one of my favorite things people say here because of how they say and almost everyone does it. Anyway, so I walk down a few blocks till I get to a bike shop and ask the guy in there. He pulls out a map but we're having difficulties finding it, he asks another guy to help us find it and eventually we do. So they direct me on how to get there and off I go, with my first interactions with Uruguayans. Needless to say it was very possitive :)
Unfortunately as I'm nearing the place, I realize I don't remember the name of the apartment and I didn't write it down. Oh well, guess I'll just be buzzing a few different places then because there were buildings on both side of the street. And I'm sure at this point you're wondering why the heck I don't just call them. The phones weren't working for any of them except Tim who could make calls but I couldn't make calls when I got there either. So I'm poking around different buildings, buzzing here, talking with doormen there, and they can't be found. I begin to just slightly panic but force myself to take a seat on the beach and read to calm down. I figure that somehow, someone that I spoke to in the apartments didn't know what they were talking about and that my friends would go out and see me on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and I could see buildings all along the coast. However, it started to get clowdy and cool down, which made me want to head indoors. Then I thought, what if I can still text? I give it a try and turns out I can, Tim calls me after seeing my text and directs me where to go because it turns out there are two ends to the street. Because the main street they're on loops around the whole coast of Punta del Este and the cross street goes across. Hopefully that made sense...
Tim comes out to meet me and takes me up to the apartment. It's gorgeous and from every window you can see the ocean. Turns out the day before they'd had really kick-ass weather and poor Lizzie got sunburnt so bad she was left pretty much immobile the entire trip. But the weather for the rest of the time wasn't super beach friendly anyway so we speant a lot of the time in the apartment. Most of the trip consisted of sitting on the couch with a blanket, reading, and marveling at the crashing of the waves outside.
First night I was there though we went and got ice cream :)We went out to a chinese restaurant one night too and were the only ones in there the whole time. We came the week before "high season" so there was practically no one out and about. Nice break from the insanity of Cabildo and such. I think there're more people on the streets at 4AM in Bs As than there were at 4PM there.
I did get up early one morning to wander around on my own. I walked all along the coast and stopped to sit and gaze out at the ocean whenever I pleased for a few hours.
The last day I was there before I left with Lizzie, the weather was pleasantly sunny. So Tim, Hannah, Raquel, and I went for a walk on the beach.
Oh gosh but the exchange rate there was 20 USD to 1 Uruguayan Peso. Imagine buying an ice cream cone with two scoops for 95 Pesos or getting a 1000 Peso bill out of the ATM. I felt RICH and absurd all at the same time.
The bus ride we took from Punta del Este took us this time to Colonia and was 4 hours. This time I stayed awake for nearly all of it and the landscape of Uruguay is gorgeous. We passed the occasional farm where the farmers were using animals to move their tools. Pretty cool to see. The towns that we passed were super quaint, clean, and beautiful. I did some research after getting back and turns out Uruguay (all info about to be presented was brought to me, and now you, through Wikipedia) was the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage and did so in 2007. They also have the lowest income inequality rate in LA, they're second only to Canada in all of the Americas. Anddd the majority of their military is deployed as UN peacekeepers. Isn't that neat? Uruguay is a "multiparty presidential representative democratic republic" and their presidnet is Jose Mujica who is said to speak the language of the people and therefore is popular with the rural and poor. And now you know ;)
It was an absolute WONDERFUL trip and I am delighted that I got the privilege to visit the country of Uruguay which means: the river where the painted birds live.
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