Ok, so Montevideo. What exactly is it about this city that draws so many positive reviews? Now, to be fair - I arrived on a Sunday, everything was closed, and I stayed in a hotel hosted by the Adams Family. But I was prepared to completely dig this city, hell it was described as a mini BA and my feelings on BA are quite clear. But in the end I just found that Montevideo lacked any sort of vibrance or character to put it on my map. And it was a bit sketchy too, in fact it was the first place since arriving in South America where I definitely did not feel comfortable walking either by myself or even with another person. A lot of very persistant bold beggers, to the point where you start to think that if you dont give them a few coins, they might just take them instead. So thats really all I have to say about Montevideo, I have zero reason to ever return. (But a little sidenote - I refuse to believe that no one could enjoy this city. Im only speaking from my personal experience. Perhaps there really is a cool little beat happening in the heart of Montevideo, I just never found it myself and dont have any interest attempting the search another time). Anways, one positive thing did come of the city and that would be me gaining a travel buddy. The Smiths friend Dave Forest, who came along with the family to the British Virgin Islands, had emailed me a while ago to let me know that he was wandering South America as well. I let him know I was headed for Uruguay and invited him to meet up if he was around. Fast forward a week or so later and we meet up in Montevideo (which Dave is equally unimpressed with, thank you very much) with plans to move farther north up the coast. The major plus of my new addition - venturing out of the "safe" (although awesome) countries of Chile and Argentina and into Bolivia and Peru, where I otherwise might not have gone solo. The scope of my trip just got much more interesting.
We skip out of Montevideo after 2ish days. Punta del Diablo is our next stop, a breath of fresh air/ hippy surf/small beachy town wonderfulness. We can tell right off that this is our kind of place. You can walk everywhere within 20 minutes, all dirt roads, there is no ATM, no bus station, no money exchange except for the 20% commission that they take at the one hostel in town (also one or two small hotels). That one hostel, an HI affiliate, is actually pretty awesome but even the dorms are too expensive for our liking. We stay one night and start hunting for a cheap cabana, little beach huts with varying degrees of accomodation that are readily available for rent all over town. We found ours through a small town market advertising a couple cabanas for rent by the owners, and for a little hut with 2 beds, bathroom, full kitchen, hot water and a little porchy front step, we pay just half of what we payed at the hostel (the extra character was no charge). Love that. And we spend the next 5 days or so loving Diablo more and more. In fact, its the silly annoying little things about a small beach town that make us like it so much. Like the tiny ass bed I slept on with a lumpy foam pad (for the record Dave offered to switch but Im a stubborn old bitch, set in my ways and principles), flies and mosquitoes buzzing around all night because we accidentally left the door open. And the refrigerator that stopped working, thus threatening to spoil all of the food that wed purchased (the owners hooked us up with a cooler, problem solved). Or the fact that we went broke halfway through and had to go to a bordertown by Brazil called Chuy 45 minutes away to get some cash out, and they wouldnt even let Dave take cash out because it claimed to be out of service after I did my transaction. Knowing that liquor was spendy in diablo and that we wouldnt have the dough to hit the bars anyways, we made sure to include alcohol in our Chuy purchases. In fact, we went on a mission that day for bloody marys. Literally, a mission. Bloody marys dont really exist in south america, except for in some english pubs here and there, and they especially dont exist in uruguay. But we had a craving. So we sought out each ingredient separately and with some difficullty. Worcestire sauce (called english sauce, whatever), check. Tabasco ($!), check. Tomato juice (more like sauce and super hard to find), check. Salt. Lime. Pepper. Ice. And yet, at the end, so damn worth it. Not to mention the meals we conjured up for ourselves out of very limited means, like the infamous egg noodle meal. We were very very cash-poor (ok broke) and worked with the few things wed bought. But we were pretty set on a 3-course meal. So as an app we had sardines (mistake purchase), chopped olives and mustard, stacked on a fork and straight into the mouth. Oddly brilliant. As an entree we made whole wheat pasta with sauteed onions and garlic and overeasy fried eggs on top, with hot sauce and parmesan to top it off. Again, brilliant. And for dessert we cut in half a little stacked cookie that we bought in the market for 40 cents. Damn fine. And that, along with a cheap no good bottle of red, was our meal. Weird and random but also ridiculously tasty, one of the best meals Ive had in SA thank you very much. In fact we ended up repeating our egg noodle meal another time or two, always with great success. All in all, while we could have stood for a bit less rain, Diablo was top notch good times, a definite highlight of my trip thus far (the end of January, beginning of February).
After Diablo, it was back to Buenos Aires with a few days at the Palermo House hostel (cheap stay but not recommended, dirtay dirtayness). Notable activities in BA - our two day search for an affordable pool, as in not the US$70 Hilton pool pass, to relieve us of the stifling summer heat (a success in the end, closeish to Club de Amigos and alto Palermo, cant remember the name), my walking shoe hunt that ended with buying a purple converse-like oddity of a pair, and an afternoon showing of Charlie Wilsons War (movies on lazy days in foreign countries are not to be underestimated). At this point BA is beginning to feel more like a homey recharge spot, and it feels good to spend a few days just hanging around.
Next up, Mendoza. The Napa of Argentina, Mendoza is known especially for churning out that fine wine that is the Malbec. Definitely a neat little town, with a lot of different ways to spend your time there. If I had to do it again, I might have tried to stay in a little hostel/B&B type thing further out of town and closer to the various vineyards. As it was, we ended up in a really nice place in town by the bus station called Hostel Lao, with a pool and good common areas. Most of the 3 days were spent wandering around town, exploring the huge city park, drinking wine, etc. We took one day to do a bike tour of the vineyards, hopped on a city bus across the street from Lao, took it about 30 minutes out and rented some bikes with a map for about 10 bucks. After touring a chocolate/liquor company and one or two vineyards, we stopped for a tabla lunch, basically a big board of cheeses, breads, prosciutto, olives, tapenade, etc. Yum. The last stop was a Frenchman who moved to Mendoza with his wife to start their own vineyard, without any prior knowledge, and there they were doing their thing. We enjoyed this stop the most, as the owner was very friendly, really informative and also quite generous with his pours :) As we sat there talking to him, we heard a bang on his roof. Odd. Then another. Before we knew it, hail up to the size of ping pong balls was raining down from the sky. As they raced to move their cars under cover, we stayed under the cover of the tasting room. After less than 5 minutes the hail stopped and the wife came back with a report - she estimated that 20% of the grape crop was lost to the hail. And while this seemed like a huge deal to all of us, the owner just shrugged his shoulders in a what-can-you-do motion. Amazing the damage just a few minutes can do. To sum it up, we learned that and also one more lesson in Mendoza - always double check the date, no matter what the computer says, when scheduling bus tickets online. We showed up for our bus to Salta one day early, and had to book one more night in another hostel (Chimbas hostel, very nice) before we could get out of town. Woops. Live and learn.
And then theres Salta, where we spent 2 nights. Now Salta is a very pretty town, great for walking, the HI Backpackers Soul hostel had a lot of activities and it certainly had potential day excursion wise, we were thinking paragliding. But all I can really relate about Salta is getting our visas together for Bolivia, and the big yellow fever do-we-have-it-or-not vaccination fiasco (both ended up getting ours, and free to top it off). The rest of the time I was sick in bed with a mystery stomachache, which I still havent really figured out, and then Dave had a bad reaction to his vaccine that laid him up with a fever towards the end of our time in Salta and into the night we spent at a hotel in Argentina at the border of Bolivia. So Salta my dear, I never knew ye. Sorry. Moving on.
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