Uruguay

Landed in Buenos Aires at 130am the morning of the 27th. Luckily I had made reservations online for a hostel while I was in Lima, so when I showed up at my hostel of choice at 3 in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they didn´t have a bed for me. What? Apparently they thought the reservation was for the NIGHT of the 27th, although I had specified that it was for 3am on the 27th. They graciously offered me the couch in the TV room of the hostel, which was nice, as a night of free accomodation, except that the TV room was connected to the hostel´s on site bar, which was pumping drum and bass music until 5am for all 4 patrons that were there. There are times that I wonder why I carry around my heavy sleeping bag liner, until a situation comes up that I am sleeping on a dirty couch in a bar, and I don´t mind the extra weight so much anymore. My visit to BA wasn´t much to write home about, I spent just about a complete day sick in bed, the next one not feeling so good but wandering around the city anyway. I left after two nights for Montevideo, Uruguay.


I really liked Montevideo. Quiet tree lined streets and a pleasant laid back atmosphere had me convinced I could live there. For as hot as it was in BA, it was definitely fall in Montevideo. The sycamore trees had started losing their leaves, and the constant breeze had a definite chill to it. Two days wandering Montevideo, and I headed off to Punta del Diablo with some American (actually, they grew up just a few miles from my house in MI, Dearborn, for you Michiganders) friends I had made. Punta del Diablo is described as a little visited fishing village in Lonely Planet. By little visited they meant NO ONE was there. I bet it´s pretty hopping in high season, but it was deserted when we showed up. Rented a cabana for a night and spent some time exploring the rocky coast, playing frisbee on the sandy bit, and swimming in the ocean.

After Punta del Diablo, I headed to a more populated beachfront town called Piriápolis. I was lucky enough to get some beautiful weather, just missing the overcast day yesterday which I heard about from my dormmates. It´s been an action packed day so far, I was up at 745 to go running, I was climbing the third highest peak in Uruguay (all 423m of it...not too impressive coming down from the 4750m hike in the Andes just a week ago) by 11, and on the beach by 2pm. The hike was awesome. The sign at the entrance said it takes approximately 3 hours to summit. Determined to make it in under 1, I set off at a quick pace. I made really good time, until I got lost. I ended up on some teeny little overgrown trail that I guess was a water runoff, because it started going downhill. Refusing to go downhill, I thought it would be a good idea to just scale the rocks to the top, which didn´t look THAT far away. So, I ended up bouldering/free climbing the last 50m or so of ascent. The areas that weren´t boulders were covered in a prickly cactus type plant, so I ended up jumping and scrambling my way along the tops of the boulders the whole way up. 45 minutes after I passed that sign on the way up claiming a 3 hour ascent I was standing at the bottom of the cross, sweaty, scratched up and bleeding, covered in bug bites, and quite happy.