This is only my third time trying to write this entry and it may end up being a whole novel because I have to keep adding things to it! Anyway, I am now in Montevideo, Uruguay. I haven´t checked out the city just yet, but the views from my bus look pretty good.
Since my last time writing, I had a stay in a little town outside Cordoba, Argentina called Villa General Belgrano. It was quite an interesting town... it looked like a whitewashed gingerbread village. The town was peaceful and quiet, which was something that I was really craving at that time. My hostel was absolutely awesome and probably my favorite part of the stay there. It was set pretty far back in the woods a little distance from the town. The people who own the hostel have a biodiversity farm at the hostel where they grow all of their own fruits and vegetables. They also raise chickens, cows and horses! So,needless to say breakfast in the morning was awesome. It was only about $2.50 and consisted of homemade fresh bread, with homemade jam and marmelade (made with fruit from their farm), homemade dulce de leche (which is waaaay too sweet for breakfast), homemade yogurt (made from the milk from their cow), cereal, coffee, milk (from the cow also) and tea. Awesome. I also had the best night sleep there that I´ve had since I´ve been in South America because it was so quiet! Loved it.
Because I loved it so much, I decided to stay one extra day. The second day, I went to an even smaller town called La Cumbrecita with my two roommates, Anna and Marcela. This place was similar to VGB because it had the same whitewashed gingerbread style houses, but this place was out in the mountains and had gorgeous waterfalls and awesome views. We spent the whole day climbing up mountains and through rocks to see these little waterfalls. It was awesome. I had another wonderful nights sleep and then left for Cordoba again the next morning.
When I got back to Cordoba, I ran into the old Canadian guy that told me to go to this village in the first place. He has a house there and lives there during the cold Canadian winters. Anyway, I told him about my observations of the town and he told me the history of the town, which now makes so much more sense. The story goes as follows: During WWII, a german ship was hit by the British navy and started to off the coast of Uruguay. The Captain brought the ship into port in Uruguay to fix it. When he realized that he couldn´t really fix it and that it really wouldn´t matter anyway (the British boats were waiting just outside Uruguayan waters), he sunk his boat! The Uruguayans were not too happy about this because they didn´t want to host a whole bunch of Nazi navymen, so they made a deal with Argentina to hand over the germans as prisoners of war. The prisoner camp was in VGB. After the war ended, the germans decided to stay in Argentina rather than go back to their own war torn country. This is why the style is so different. Good story, right?
I had to catch the bus later that night to go to Paraná and needed to kill some time. On my wanderings, I decided I had to try a fernet with coke (a drink that everyone in Cordoba drinks all the time). You know, a when in Rome kinda thing. Well, it was so disgusting, I thought I was going to be sick! Luckily, I found an awesome ice cream place to wash down the horrible taste. Speaking of ice cream, did I mention that Argentina has the best ice cream I have ever tasted? Well, this place was the best ice cream in Argentina that I´ve had so far and thus the best ice cream I have EVER had.
All this talk about ice cream is making me realize how hungry I actually am right now... I think I´ll continue this later. :)
