Well actually, none of the above. More like Boats, Subways and Police Stations :) Mom, dad, don´t worry, the latter of the 3 was just bc i acted as the translator to my friend who was robbed in Montevideo - literally as we were entering the door to our hostel! And by a pack of 13 year old boys, such PUNKS. They are lucky it wasn´t me whose purse they tried to snatch cuz i would´ve gone medieval on their arses...anyway, it added a bit of excitement to our night nonetheless. Oh wait, but it was only 7PM when this happened! Ya, Montevideo, Uruguay gets immediately sketchy upon sunset. And we were like a block off of a main plaza. Thankfully the police recovered my friend´s wallet later that night, complete with her atm card, though lacking the cash of course :( So needless to say we didn´t leave the hostel Tuesday night! But the hostel staff was really nice and did what they could. Although that memory of Montevideo, my first stop in Uruguay after a quick 3 hour Buquebus (fast ferry thingy) from Buenos Aires, was not so fond, we (me and the 2 Irish lassies who i had met in Rosario - Rhona and Grainie - such irish names!) were able to take advantage of the sunshine earlier that day at the Mercardo del Puerto, enjoying the free "medio y medio" (uruguayan specialty of half champagne, half white wine) and Provolone appetizer that lured us to one of the great parillas, steakhouses. AFter we´d had our fill of entrecot steak, puré de papas (mash) and veggies (a rarity!), we walked around the town a bit. I think the bandit kids first spotted us then...grr...the girls clued me in on a place to get a cheap massage, which i did the following morning. THe one site i had been told to see, Teatro Solis, was not offering tours when i stopped by Wednesday. They wouldn´t even let me poke my head in to see it - i even tried name-dropping a guy I have met in my travels who used to work there, but that still did´t work!! I was ticked, but oh well. I was pretty ready to get outta there anyway, after the robbery and everything.
So yesterday afternoon I caught a bus to Colonia, just over the water from BA, and an even shorter ferry ride. A quick note about that...so this wasn´t a typical "cama" bus that i´ve come to get used to here in South America, replete with gross yet acceptable bathroom with a fold down toilet seat. No, this was for sure a "semi-cama" bus, pretty full, and if you think it´s hard to go to the bathroom on a plane, think again my friends! Try peeing whilst bouncing up and down, swerving back and forth, holding the toilet seat down with your knee while trying to cover it with toilet paper. It´s really fun, really. In the midst of my cursing and frustration, I looked in the mirror behind the toilet and just started laughing at myself. It´s nice that i can find some sort of amusement out of these small annoyances :)
So I knew th town of Colonia del Sacramento would be small and quaint, and indeed it is. As i walked into the hostel, i told a guy i was goig out for a walk and he said, "don´t go too far, you won´t have anything to see tomorrow. NO, seriously." Haha. He was kind of right, but i still managed to have a nice walk around today. Unfort. the weather is quite crappy, misty/foggy, so i can´t enjoy the waterfront as much as summertime probably is. Last night the hostel had an asado, and i enjoyed the sausage, but the beef was mediocre. I am becoming quite the critic of beef around these parts, esp since I have it at least once a day. Trying to cut back, and seriously i am going on an only white meat diet when I get back - i exactly 3 weeks i might add! all going by so quickly...anyway, Colonia was nice, relaxing, and i finished a great book this afternoon - Pilate´s Wife (about Pontius PIlate´s wife - a bit blasphemous at the end, but all in all a great story :).
So over the weekend I was in Rosario, a quick 4 hour busride from BA. I met up with a friend of CHarles´, named Ross, who hyas been living there 1.5 years. He was very courteous, and I felt a lady once again, not some washed up backpacker as I´ve come to see in the mirror. ha! We walked down the main street and found a great restaurant to enjoy dinner at. Unfort i had eaten a huge veggie buffet lunch in BA, so wasn´t able to take advantage of the many choice offerings for dinner. SHux. We grabbed a drikn at the newest club but called it an early night. The next morning he had to leave super early for work, so i clamored over to my hostel to try and check in, but since it was like 7:45am, they were´t quite ready for me yet. Th nice guy up front did let me go upstairs to the cafe adjoining to rest on the pillows and bean bags tehy had up there. I did do that and even though I felt homeless laying down up there and trying to catch some more shut eye, I was thankful for the chance to rest a bit more before setting out on my day.
Rosario is a pretty big city, and has TONS of shopping! I bought 2 new pairs of skinny jeans for like $33 each, i mean, talk about a deal! I stopped at a cafe for breakfast, looking like a hobo since all my stuff was locked up at the hostel whcih i still couldn´t check into. I didn´t mind the stares though, i was used to it ;) I will say that Rosario has some FANTASTIC coffee. I had it a few times in teh few days i was there too...so i did my share of walking around, checked out th Monument de la Bandera, and met some new friends - mostly all Irish (aside from the 2 chicas previously mentioned, i also met Owen, from Cork). Owen and i kind of did the same touristy thing on saturday, had lunch, and convinced one of the girls to go out with us that night to one of the biggest clubs in th country/South America - MDM (pronounced "madame"). It holds 6,000 people, but friday is th bigger night adn since th night before we didn´t make it out of our hostel bar just chatting, we went Saturday. It indeed was big, and filled up more an dmore after our arrival at 2am. I couldn´t last past 4am, but i will give you a funny image. So there were multiple floors of dancing, etc, and we were at one point on th e "rock n roll" floor. why they called it that i wasn´t sure. By this point Rhona and I had lost Owen to the sea of people, and decided to dance. So as they blared "GLORIAAAA" I was soon the only person so excited to hear one of my favorite 80s songs that i was bounching up and down dancing. No one else seemed as thrilled as i was - maybe bc Rhona and I were the only white people there, who knows...before I left, some guy walked up and called me "divina" and tried to sweep me off my feet, but I said, nice try buddy, and made me way to a taxi! Those Argentine men, so sneaky ;()
Okay, running off to the p0rt to catch my boat. I´ll post photos tonight or soon. I fly to Sao Paulo in the morning, whoopeee!
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