day ? - montevideo

the past two days have been a bit of a whirlwind. in the morning, we were supposed to catch a ferry over to colonia. bossmat went for a brisk walk at around 7AM, that ended up being a marathon around buenos aires. we had previously thought that we were taking a 1 hour trip on buquebus to colonia, then a 2 hour bus to montevideo. however, it turns out that we were taking a whole other company´s servies (colonia express), with a 2.5 hour ferry ride and a 2.5 hour bus ride. it is also important to note that the bus smelled like stale urine, an upgrade from the bus tour that we had taken in buenos aires, which smelled like fresh urine. gross. or rather, muy gross.

anyway, we ended up getting into town at 3ish, and our first stop was at mcdonalds to get a sense of regional pricing. our base point is the cono con dulce de leche y vainilla, which is 2 argentinean pesos, or around 65 cents canadian. imagine our surprise when we got to the bus station, and it was actually $22! WHAT! twenty uruguayan pesos is equal to one canadian dollar. this was a surprise to cheryl, who took out 100 pesos from the bank machine, not realizing that it equalled $5. she has since spent that on her bank charges for that particular withdrawal.

we then took two cabs into town, which cost about $5 canadian, which is not too shabbo! (¨SHABBU!¨ adds cheryl) we then found our hotel, which when we walked in, was very dark, and the main reception area had very low carpeted ceilings. there was also a little doorway that resembled a hobbit hole. muy interessant. we were pleasantly surprised when we got our rooms, because they had 20 foot ceilings and adjoining door! talk about MUY GIRL TALK GOSSIP SESSIONS! pillow fights! braiding hair! and painting nails! girl guide singalongs (to-wit, to-wit, to-woo)!

it was also nice to get our own beds that were not part of a bunk bed. muy rolling! it was also nice not to have random people in our room, coming in in the middle of the night (cheryl adds, ¨WOOHOO! no random naked men!¨) we also got some heaters, which were a welcome addition given that the rooms were so cold that we wore about 4 layers. EEEK.

we ended up going to a diner called pasiva, which was very decently priced. i dont think that any of us spent over $5 on our meals. the waitress thought that we had scammed her and counted the money in front of us, and she was surprised to find that we had left her a nice tip. HA! the same cannot be said today with our rude waitress. eek.

afterwards, we ventured over to a grocery store called ¨ta-ta¨, which may or may not be affiliated with the indian conglomerate. (i am guessing not.) we stocked up on fruit and lots of cookies, and others picked up yogourt drinks, water and juice. i got some gross chunky soy milk by accident, which was muy gross.

for dinner, we ended up at cafe baccacay, which was a block over from our hotel, and was muy delicious. arti ordered an apple pancake with ice cream accompanied by a glass of white wine (she claims it was big and this is the reason why it took the evening to finish), bossmat ordered a salad and leche caliente, cheryl and kavitha ordered a cute meat/cheese/bread plate, as well as a 1/2 bottle of red wine (boozehounds!!!!!!!!), and i ordered some fish tidbits, which ended up being fish sticks. i was SO roped in by the tidbits. sigh. cheryl and i decided to go overboard and ordered some pear pie, which was a bit too heavy on the glaze, but had some good pear-ish moments. bossmat claimed there was some rum flavouring. lastly, we were quite impressed with our waiter, who had MUY GOOD english, and everytime we spoke to him in spanish/spanglish/sign language, he responded to us in english.

this morning, we all took showers (some colder than others) and then walked around town. we came across a store called ¨indian emporium¨ which was neither indian (and contained no indians save for arti and kavitha), nor an emporium. in fact, it was just a large clothing store. arti claims that some of the clothes were made in india, but no one can verify this. no one ended buying anything from the store.

something strange about montevideo is that you have to place all your bags in lockers before you enter stores. kavitha, arti, bossmat and cheryl found this very refreshing, meanwhile, i thought this was a bit of a nuisance and wondered if people could scam long term storage in the store.

we also walked along the rambla (the path beside the water) which was nice. bossmat and cheryl made full use of the rays while kavitha and i hid in our sweatshirts. arti was the perfect medium for sun exposure.

we stopped at a terrible restaurant for lunch (refer to previous note about no tip) and i had a terrible spaghetti bolognese that tasted like a leather wallet. muy gross. kavitha had a hot sandwich with MUY cheese, cheryl had a salad with hard boiled eggs, chicken, tomato, and cheese, and arti and bossmat shared a plate of papas fritas (french fries). the waitress was terribly brusque and as a result, we left her NO TIP. that is right, NO TIP. she literally asked us for one, but alas, NO TIP. we promptly left the scene while bossmat was left behind assembling her many bags (when we say many bags, we mean 2).

afterwards, we walked up to the mercado de puerto, which is where we should have had lunch, because it smelled MUY YUMMY. it was also super cute! it was essentially like a uruguayan st. lawrence market, but without all the produce.

right beside it was the tourist office, which was in a non-descript location. we wanted to come here to find out how to get to the airport, however the four ladies working there gave us that and BEYOND. they almost gave us a self-guided tour around the city. but we were clearly kindred spirits, because the ladies had a spreadsheet monitoring all the visitors that came to the centre. (our guess was that we were the only people on the spreadsheet).

after that, we attempted to go to a mall, but found it difficult. instead, we ended up going BOWLING!!!!!!!! when in uruguay, what do you do? bowl! uruguayan bowling does not require that you rent those gross smelly shoes. a girl in the adjacent lane was even wearing heels! the lanes were also very rough, and were not waxed in the slightest. arti was the top scorer, and you should have seen how gracefully she bowled. you could literally not hear the ball drop when she bowled. it must be her garba (indian dancing) training in full force!

on the way back, we stopped at ta-ta, and we all took photos of yerba mate and dulce de leche. as it turns out, they kicked us out of the store!!! MUY LOW POINT!

bossmat has been trying all day to get a photo of a uruguayan (perhaps a good looking one) drinking some mate in one of the special mate cups. even though there are many of these situations occurring throughout the day, it seems to be an elusive photo. the hunt continues.

now we are back to the hostel and will go to don peperone for dinner tonight. it better be muy good after that terrible meal today. cheryl and i have eaten a ton of dulce de leche wafers (i thought they were MUY bad) and me, cheryl and arti have inhaled all of cheryl´s vanilla arrowroot type cookies.


another thing we have noted in montevideo is that garbage collection occurs with horse-drawn carts. MUY STRANGE! some horses even wear straw hats for this endeavour! unfortunately we were unable to capture this on film (or rather, memory card)

below, we have detailed some of our expected vs. actual comparisons of south america thus far:

expected vs. actual comparisons (an ode to BO)

1) beans and rice - we were expecting a lot of beans and rice in the cuisine of south american countries, including burritos. instead, in brazil we found a lot of meat and deep fried meals. in argentina, it has been beef, chicken, and more beef, and a lot of pasta (who knew those italians were taking over?) in uruguay, there has been a lot of pasta, pizza, and oozy cheesy/meaty sandwiches.

2) squat and sit toilets - arti and i were fully expecting squat toilets, however, so far we have not come across one (to our excitement). showers, on the other hand, have been interesting in uruguay, following a somewhat ¨open concept¨ (aka the entire bathroom is flooded)

3) cold vs warm - being semi close to the equator, we expected south america to be relatively warm, i.e. mid 20s. yesterday night, we found ourselves wearing ski gear, including all our sweatshirts, gloves, hats, and (pashmina) scarves. we really blended in with the locals well. :S