Thursday, December 18, 2008 - January 11, 2009
After arriving on a three hour boat from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay I took a taxi with Adam and his uncle and their couchsurfer Martin because he lived nearby the couchsurfer Federico, that I was going to stay with for the night. When we got to Martin's house I gave my couchsurfer a call to let him know I was in the area, and then we went to meet up with him about 3 blocks away from Martin‘s place. He was an awesome musician and actually had to give a class, so he just gave me the keys right away for his first couchsurfing experience and told me "my house is your house...make yourself at home, but I have to give a class right now." It was a tiny place, so I moved to another couchsurfer's place, Sebastian on the 20th. I stayed at his place for a few days, but I did not have keys to the place, so it made it a little difficult, so on Wednesday, December 24th, I went to stay at Martin's place to be with Adam and his uncle for Xmas Eve and Xmas. We had a great night on Christmas eve because the family did up a BBQ with lamb and pork with about 15 of Martin's family members that were all very friendly and made us three feel like a part of their family. At midnight there was an amazing firework show that we watched from the upper balcony outside of their house where the BBQ was as well.
We spent Dec 30th and New Years Eve night in Punta Del Este, Uruguay (7,200), which is a very expensive city and an international beach resort. It is packed during New Years and the first few weeks of January because everyone in South America takes their holidays during this time period, and the weather is awesome during that time. We couch surfed with a family that lived right next to the beach and was a nice little setup for the two nights that we were there, and they even had a little tree fort with a bed as well.
On New Year’s Eve night we went to a house party that this guy from New York has every year. I have never seen a party similar to this one. He had this huge house with a gigantic yard and had about 10 security guards watching the fences to make sure no one sneaks in without paying, and had about 4 people in charge of collecting the entry money and putting on the wrist bands. He also had a big pool, the best DJ in Uruguay, and about 10 bartenders working for him as well. It was a good time and met some great people and actually even met a guy that was from Uruguay that worked about 3 blocks from where I used to work in San Diego according to his business card.
On Tuesday, January 1, we made our way up north a couple hours to La Paloma (3,200). We arrived there at 8 pm and then had to wait in line at this campsite to check in. There was such a long line that we finally got into the campsite at midnight. I have never seen such an unorganized operation, but it was pretty sweet once we got into the site. There was over 4,000 tents in this campsite along with little cottages that they rent out as well. It was a lot of fun, and the sun was blazing every day. I have never seen so many people on the beach. This is the time when all the people take their holiday vacation and go to these beach areas. It reminded me of 4th of July in San Diego on the beach every day that I was there.
I planned to stay 9 days camping, but I decided to leave a little early and head back to Montevideo on a bus on January 6 (220 pesos/24.2 = $9.90 4 hours) to relax and rest up before I make my way into Florianopolis, Brazil on January 11 at 4:30 pm (2437 pesos/24.2 =$100.70 20 hours). Martin was actually in La Paloma camping for the weekend as well, so we met up while he was there. He told me I could return to his house whenever I wanted before I take my bus to Brazil.
Montevideo (1,270,000) is my favorite capital city in South America. It is small enough to walk around, but big enough to have some fun as well, and it also had some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I have seen on this trip. The people there are very friendly and the city also runs right along the ocean as well which was great because I was able to run along the beach area most of the days I was there. I definitely felt that the people in Montevideo were much more friendly then the people in Buenos Aires. It seems that the two areas don’t tend to get along with each other for this reason, and there are many Argentinans that come up to the beach areas in Uruguay because they don’t really have any nice beaches and it even seemed that in Punta Del Este there were more people from Argentina there than local Uruguayans. Most of the wealthy Argentinans buy their second homes in Punta Del Este and as a result there is an extraordinary amount of Argentinians there, and I think some of Uruguayans are bothered by that.
