Costs pp: Bus Treinta y Tres to Melo 108p, bus to Tacuarembo 215p.
We got up early and walked in the morning mist to the bus office, our bus was to leave at 7.50am but only arrived at around 8.20. At Melo we explored the options of onward travel and decided to head to Tacuarembo where we could head north to the border of Brazil and cross and go into Argentina again to travel up to the Iguazu Falls. On the trip we witnessed lots of flooding and power lines down either with poles broken from wind or just fallen with the soft water soaked earth. In one place there were lots of trees down too. One of the reasons we are heading this way north is to avoid the flooding which now is causing a problem in the west of Uruguay. We are also trying to avoid Brazil and its very expensive buses until we have to use them.
On arrival in Tacuarembo we found an email (fortuitous) from another 'couch' to welcome us to his home, he, Santiago, was in Montevideo but returning today. So we walked to the main plaza which is a very nice spot and Carol watched everyone going to and fro and sitting and talking carrying their mate cups and thermoses of hot water. The evening was fine and soft, the light lasted until around 9pm when we walked up to Santiagos home and found he had arrived. We had a great evening with him and talked into the night, he is into computers so he and Kent had lots to talk about.
In the night a storm arrived. The thunder and lightning was amazing and then it started to rain, actually we didn't know it started as we were asleep. Another thing we didn't realise was that our window was open and in came the rain, lots of it. Carol was woken in the morning by a wet blanket, it was hanging off the bed and touched the floor and had absorbed the water that was there. Up we got in a hurry and mopped up! Santiago had gone to work but luckily it was just our room and not too much got wet, the floor is tiles so no problem there.
We spent a lot of time on the net at Santiagos as he had full on wireless and things were easy but it didn't make us very good guests really. He was wonderful enough to do asado for us which is the way they barbeque over here using a whole piece of meat, then at 1am he ran us down to the bus terminal to catch our bus to Artigas which is on the border with Brasil. After dropping us there he had to come back again when Carol discovered she had left her sunglasses behind!
Next stop Brasil.
