6.4. - 9.4. Uruguay: Punta del Diablo - Montevideo - Buenos Aires

At 6 am we had to change the bus for the last hour of our trip to Chuy and finally arrived there at 7:30. We followed some people through the deserted small town, where not much was happening except dogs chasing cars, to the bus office. There We found out that the next bus was already going at 8 and bought tickets with the money a friendly girl, Veronica, from Equador who lives in Porto Alegre, borrowed us, as we didn't have any cash. We ran to the ATM and fortunately it worked for us, ran back and jumped on the bus. The bus stoped for us for the border formalities and at 9:30 we were in Punta del Diablo. We started to look for a hostel together with Veronica and finally checked in at the Indio Hostel, which was nicely located a bit on the hill above the beach. A really nice place! We asked where we could have breakfast and ended up in a place which served Illy coffee but unfortunately also had kind of Illy-prices. It was good but everything very sweet. We realized we were going south - we remembered that in Argentina we never got anything salty for breakfast. We went back to the hostel and relaxed a bit from the journey and enjoed the view. Radka went to sleep and I went for a walk along the beach with Veronica. It was quite a challenge as she did not speak much english and we tried to communicate in spanish all the time. Back at the hostel we went together with Radka to the bus ticket office which the moved, nobody knows why, 3 km out of town. Luckily we got some of the last tickets to Montevideo for the next day, as everybody is travelling back home on Easter Sunday. On the way back we finally succeeded and hitchhiked on the back of a pick up truck into town. Later we went to eat fish in Al Pairo which is supposed to be one of the oldest placed in the village. It was expensive again, but good. Back in the hostel we had a beer and went to bed early. From my bed I had a nice view of the sky with a full moon.

As I went to bed early I woke up early and got up to watch the sunrise. I did some Taiji and Qi Gong and it was really nice and peacful there. The bread for the breakfast came at 9 so I had to wait for quite a while and was really hungry. We talked with some people in the hostel and considered joining them on a trip to a small national park close by, but then descided to stay at the beach as we only had that day there. It was a good descision as it was very relaxing and down at the beach I rented a surfboard. I got a longboard 8'4 I think it was and had a lot of fun in the small waves. It worked out pretty well and I'm motivated to do that again! :) Later in the hostel I talked to Andy who runs the hostel as part of a family business and soon goes back to Miami where he lives during the low season. A nice guy who reminded me of Merouane from France. Later we joined Felix and Hannah (two Germans) and Frederik (a Finish guy), to cook chorizos with potatoes. It turned out quite stressful for the German couple as it took longer than expected and they had to run to their evening bus kind of while chewing the last mouth full of chorizos. For us the dinner was more relaxed and delicious. Later we played cards and Demetrio and Renata from Porto Alegre joined us. We played "President & Slave", it was fan. We had a magnum bottle of wine and even later joined other people sitting outside. Among them Santiago from Montevideo. We discussed the chances of a fight between Brazilias and Uruguayans, with the former always unsing two hands to hold the thermos and the mate and Uruguayans having the thermos under their arm leaving one hand free to fight. It was fun and we had some Fernet-Coke with them but in the end did not join them when they went to a fiesta in the village at 3.

It was a bit hard to get up at 8 and then a bit stressful to catch the bus at 9:20 as the breakfast came a bit late again. At 14h we arrived in Montavideo. We took a bus to the Dolce Vita hostel where we had already reserverd a room. We were welcomed by a professional host who could have worked for the tourist info. We got a map with historic buildings and walked towards the historic center along a suggested path. On the way we had a pretty bad burger but well at least we did not get sick. The streets were empty and the city seemed completely deserted as it was Easter Sunday. It is a really nice city with one of the oldest skyscapers of south america and quite some other intersting buildings. The mercado at the harbour also looked really nice! Back in the hostel we asked for dinner suggestions and ended up in a really nice place, El Fagon, where we had our "Osterjause". We had really nice steaks baby-beef and Lomo. Later we went to the also suggested Fun-Fun-Bar for the Sunday-concert, but it was closed. So we looked for another place and ended up in an Irish pub, the Shannon, where we had a "Zillertal" beer. It is quite a big brand in Uruguay, strange! A bit later a live concert started. It was really cool and so we had instead of the planned one beer, four. The band was calles "Tres Musceteros" and consisted of e-guitar, e-bass and drums. They covered but jamed freely very funky with a good groove. We enjoyed it a lot. I tried to pursuade Dartanjan to play in Austria but am not sure if I succeded. We didn't catch a bus and thus walked home.

Getting up was hard and I had quite a hangover. We had breakfast, unfortunately only sweet stuff again - not so good for hangover. We started looking for Mate equipment on our way to the Gaucho museum. The museum was nice and we walked again into the old town and this time had a better burger. Now the city was filled with life again. By the time we arrived back at the hostel we had all the necessary Mate equipment. A really nice Mate a cheap Bombilla and a small green thermos. We boiled some water and went to the bus terminal. The bus took a bit more than 2h to Colonia del Sacramento. On the bus we met Guillermo, a crazy guy from Buenos Aires, who had just moved back there 2 month ago after living for 20 Years in the US. He worked there for the film industry. In Colonia we had a beer with him before we went through the migration posts of Uruguay and Argentina. We boarded the express ferry and had another beer there. On the ferry Guillermo offered us to stay in his flat but we descided to go for the hostel as he didn't have any matress, sofa or comparable. In BA we took a taxi to the hostel. It was nice to be back in BA passing the big obelisk and some other places we recognized. We checked ito the Garden House hostel in San Telmo, which looks nice. Radka wanted to have a soup, so we started a search. We ended up buying a instant soup in the supermarket and preparing it in the hostel. Soups don't seem to be an option in BA. Eating soup we talked to two Danish girls for a while and also had some Mate. We had bought a really good Mate in Uruguay! :) Still we went to bed soon after.

full moon in Punta del Diablo

with Veronica

our hostel

on the way to Montevideo

Montevideo, this building is said to be the oldest scysraper in South America

mercado in Montevideo