URUGUAY

     Roman and I just returned from a week of real vacation in Uruguay.  I am in Argentina on a tourist visa, so I have to leave the country every three months to renew it before it expires.  Luckily, this is easy to do from Buenos Aires, since Uruguay is just an hour boat ride away across the river.  Roman's sister's boyfriend has an apartment in Montevideo that he let us use for the week, so we kept that as our home base and took a couple mini-excursions to cities on the coast.

     I was pleasantly surprised by Uruguay and would love to go back.  Besides being much more expensive than Buenos Aires, it has clean streets, it has fresh ocean air, and it has nice people.  We could not believe how great the bus drivers were or how people came up to us in the street and asked if we needed help when we looked lost.  We even found some items at the grocery store that we can't find in Argentina: namely, sweet potatoes and cashews without black spots all over them!

     We spent our first day in Uruguay exploring Montevideo.  The pictures below are from some the sights:

View of the city from where we stayed.

 Statue of San Martin, the liberator of Uruguay.

Cakes for Halloween!!

     After spending some time in the city, we decided to take a bus further up the coast to Piriapolis and then Punta del Este.  Punta del Este is a popular resort town, and according to Román, the rich and famous from Argentina head there to be seen.  Luckily, we were there before peak season, so there were no crowds and the weather was perfect!

Román stalking seagulls.

The smooth beaches and clear water of Punta del Este.

The hand sculpture in Punta del Este.

     When we returned to Montevideo in the evening we heard singing close to our apartment, so we had to find the source.  We came upon a group of guys practicing for Carnival.  I'm not sure if this is true, but I read that Uruguay has the largest Carnival celebration outside of Brazil.  As we watched, we almost got a contact high from the people in front of us, but it was a pretty awesome find at the end of a long day.  The group stayed practicing until two in the morning.  Below is the video.  It is a bit dark, but you can listen. 

     Finally, I leave this blog post with one more musical video.  On the way back to Buenos Aires, some fellow travelers broke out into song and gave an impromptu concert.  As Román says, it was 'super hippy,' but also super fun!  I have no idea what the guy with the bubbles is doing.  Video below: