Montevideo - Surprise Carnivale

The four hour bus ride back to Montevideo was definitely the perfect moment to grab a much needed rest as we were only staying in Montevideo for one night before heading back to Buenos Aires. Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay and has a port on the Atlantic Ocean. It contains about half of the population of Uruguay so we were excited to see what it had to offer, even if only for a night.

After getting picked up by a cab from the bus station, we utilised the Tourist 101 handbook to get some information out of our driver, who like most people we had met in Uruguay spoke good English. He was so excited that we had arrived that day, he started telling us about a big festival that would be on tonight and it was right near our hotel! When we eventually arrived at the Hotel Palacio, we decided we would be able to use the daytime tomorrow to have a look around the city and the best decision would be to steal a couple more hours of much needed sleep under the air conditioning. But first – Shower time! The sea lion stench is still there!!

Waking up a few hours later we go to the roof of the hotel to check out the view of Montevideo, and it just happened to be perfectly timed to see the sunset. In the other direction a couple of hundred metres from our hotel are a large crowd of people with huge banners, singing and dancing... Confirming with the staff from the hotel, it just so happens that the one night that we are in Montevideo happens to coincide with Uruguay’s biggest celebrative night – Carnivale! How lucky can you get?!

As soon as we get to street level the cheering has amplified dramatically and you can just feel the festive atmosphere in the air. Streets are closed, people are everywhere, and there is literally hundreds of police... And these are not your typical Australian police; they look like they are out to control riots – automatic weapon and 1 metre batons! Good reminder that we are not anymore at the safe Punta. So hands back in the pockets covering the wallets! Even though we are well tanned from the days on the beach, we still stand out like crazy (George maybe not so much) but yet again it is hard to find another obvious tourist in the crowd!

After walking through the thousands and thousands of people from one end to the other of the street parade, we end up finding a front row seat to the show. After seeing plenty of dancers, drummers and floats parading past, we decide that we need to get amongst it and try out our salsa dancing skills. We end up walking down the middle of the Carnivale parade!! Instead of being told to get out of the way, people looked more than happy for us to be celebrating with them! It’s hard not to get excited for the world famous Carnivale in Brazil in a few weeks!

The next morning we get up early, pack up our room (it’s amazing how easily you seem to spread your stuff when you have the room after living in a hostel) and go for an exploration of the town of Montevideo. Now all we have is a map that we picked up at the bus station on our arrival. We end up trekking to the beach, check out some markets, statues, museums, shops and end up having a 1 metre pizza for lunch before we are back onto the ferry back to our favourite Buenos Aires.

Maté

Huge statue in the middle of the city centre

Garbage cleaner - by hand and horse!

Navigating the streets

Punta Del Esta - The Final Swim,.

Our last night in Punta we basically decided had to go out with a ban. We organised to meet up with absolutely every person we had met during our time. Drinking, dancing and talking all night with everyone definitely was a great way to finish...and of course the night ended in true Punta style by trudging home around 8am via McDonald’s, which was packed with all the different groups of people that we knew.. Being the only non South American’s there, we stood out and everyone started cheering that we were there, we stayed here for a while getting out final goodbyes.. Man we will definitely miss this place! It’s hard to understand how this thriving pleasurable place completely shuts down over winter so that less than 1000 people remains living throughout the whole region...

After the last few days just lazy-ing around, it has already come to the unfortunate last day in Punta.. We decide that it is best to do something touristy before heading off to Montevideo, so we get the lady at the 1949 Hostel to call and book a sea lion tour for that morning... Which she tells us, if you can make it in 15 minutes, you can come. So we leave our packed bags at the hostel, and using Matt’s superior GPS tracking skills, make it in time only to be told it doesn’t leave for another hour.

After a quick breakfast, we enjoy a nice hour boat ride out into the Atlantic, and I don’t realise until now that we haven’t really seen that much of Punta. The beach and nightlife probably isn’t all it has to offer, but damn it was good enough for us... However this is a nice chance to admire the city and the vast amount of huge yachts floating around the harbour.

We eventually come up to an island known as Isla de los Lobos. Lobo being the Spanish word for lion, and at first glance it (maybe to me as I have terrible eyesight) it just look like a lot of rocks. But as you get closer these rocks start to move and then I understood why the island has been named after them... Seals and sea lions as far as the eye can see in the water and draped over the rocks to soak up the warmth of the sun. There are supposedly over 200,000 of the creatures on this small island. The sea lions are so huge it surprising that the lions can even find space among the seals for their bit of rock. However it soon becomes clear that they will fight for their space and the seals are forced to squander for their own space. The area completely reeks of the smell of seal shit, which usually would be as gross as it sounds, but it really adds to the atmosphere of just how many seals call this island home.

Now on our boat is just a Spanish family with small children and us three. So just after our guide had shared with us the level of aggressiveness and brutality of the sea lions (which we could see and hear), he told us to go for a swim... Which we just laughed at thinking that he was pulling our leg, when even the family encouraged us to jump.. George not wanting to get his man hair wet, left it up to Matt and I to prove our manhood...3 2 1...In we go!!
Now my first thought was “I am going to get eaten alive by sea lions” but then the terrible taste of seal shit overpowers and all you can think is “I am eating seal poo!” After a while we got used to it and the guide told us to start splashing our hands as that will attract the seals and we will get an amazing view... Still a bit hesitant of actually attracting attention to ourselves, we starting thrashing about and sure enough, seals were jumping around us from within 2 metres... Amazing! Thank god they were not Sea lions though!

Enough excitement for one day, we decide to take our stinky selves back to Punta to get the bus to Montevideo. The stench and taste of the seal waste seems to follow me around all day, and I definitely felt sorry for the people on the bus sitting around us! But all in all, Punta del Esta will definitely be a place where I will have to come back soon, and there will definitely be only hotels next time...
 

Punta Del Esta - Holiday thoughts..

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Falling in Love in Punta Del Este

Still struggling from our huge antics in Buenos Aires the night before, the ferry/bus trip to Punta Del Este in Uruguay was basically a great chance to catch up on some badly needed sleep. Punta Del Este is a small town on the coast of Uruguay about 2 hours drive from the capital Montevideo. All the rich and famous from Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil come here on holidays and weekends to relax and show off their vast amounts of money. We found that accommodation was very nice but more expensive than Australia, so naturally we booked the cheapest (better then saying the only) hostel there.

We first went for a quick walk downtown to get some lunch and have a quick scope on the town and the talent that it offered. Everywhere we were looking, we were seeing probably the most beautiful women I have seen in my life. Immediately, the difference to Buenos Aires is obvious. The streets were immaculately clean. The aroma of the surrounding ocean added to the fresh and relaxed atmosphere to the town and it feels super safe. It was here that I first noticed the vast gaps between the rich people in South America to the poverty areas we had already seen in on our trip.

The first thing we noticed here which confirmed that South Americans enjoyed life all around the clock, was the opening hours of the bank. It didnt open until 4pm and closed at 1am! We calculated it to nearly being the same trading hours as Sydney on the other side of the world!

Our first night out we started in typical Aussie style buying a bottle of vodka from a supermarket and drinking it before we went out, talking to passersby and other tourists from the hostel it was decided that we will get a short 20 minute bus trip to the small town of La Barra. On the bus a couple of 17 year old Argentinean boys started talking to us, they seemed really excited to talk to us and really loved showing us their English skills. We followed them to a bar (they all had fake ID’s) deciding to use the chance to meet some South American boys. After a while (around 2am) it started getting really obvious that the average age of people at this bar as around 15-16 years old and it wasn’t looking to improve in our favour. We mentioned it to them and they just laughed. If we went anywhere else it would have been very quiet until about 4am when people started going out! Ps this was a MONDAY night...

An hour or so later we all went to a club that was further up the road. The boys bought us a couple of jugs of their version of Sangria, and they openly joked with us that they would be able to use us to get themselves some women. Firstly because they were young and inexperienced, but also because we were obviously foreigners, and the girls would love us!

This theory was soon tested, I was approached by a group of young girls, and one of them asked me if they could pretend that I was the boyfriend of one of their friends who didn’t have a fake ID, and hence could not get inside the pub. Thinking that our younger companions would be able to succeed of this group of girls, I went against my moral standings and talked the bouncer into letting this girl into the pub. Once she was in, I found out that she was only 15! OMG!

Now after this I started talking to a really nice, amazingly beautiful 18 year old girl. I offered her my chair outside and that was enough for her to strike up a conversation lol. After a couple of hours of talking and dancing with her, it was obvious that we both liked each other, she told me a phrase in Spanish which translated roughly into “I love you.” Now me being the drunken tourist on a natural holiday high, I decided that I was in love also! Unfortunately for me, she was leaving the next day back to Montevideo. I didn’t have our only phone that we had that night to get her number or facebook details (Matt and George were following their own leads elsewhere). Being very plastered, I tried to remember her number/name (lol) but to no avail! So she will always be remembered as the one who got away.

Matt and George gave me some shit about this when I told them my story next morning, but that was fine, I was sure that something similar would have to happen to them sometime so I just had to bide my time!

Buenos Aires

After arriving in Buenos Aires, we decide it would be a good idea to explore the new city straight away… Pick up a map from the hostel and step out the door to find…… a socialist protest march!! Big shirtless guys with balaclavas and large sticks! Interesting… We safely weave our way through the protest and go searching for some real non-airplane food (preferably a local steak which is what Argentina is renowned for), a local beer and a sim card.

Around dinner time (8pm) we find a restaurant serving 7 dollar steaks, and as soon as it is served we realized why it was so cheap. It wasn’t burned, but looked overcooked and not very appetizing. It was served with only a slice of tomato and a plastic knife. But wow were we in for a treat, the most amazing steak I have ever had, and the plastic knife sliced through it like butter.

We decide that we need to make this first weekend count, so that we don’t regret not taking the later flight, so we ask a few of the guys in the hostel where to go, after a few beers down the road at Millhouse hostel, we get a cab to Pasha (nightclub) around 1am, pay 20 peso’s to get in and it is dead. We thought we had been stiffed good but were soon to learn a vital lesson about Buenos Aires life.

Being a 24 hour city we soon realized that they really do live life around the clock. We eventually got into the Buenos daily timetable which was – wake up around 12-1pm, have breakfast and look at different parts of the city during the day til about 8pm. Then have lunch, have a nap until midnight, where you then get up to have dinner, and THEN start drinking around 1-2am and then eventually hit the clubs at 3am, only to get home around 9am to do it all again! VERY different to Sydney! haha

Waking up at 5pm on the Saturday, we get a cab to la Boca. This is a place you do NOT go at nighttime as it is very dangerous, (apparently Mike Tyson got rolled there lol) but is a must do in Buenos during the day.. Aftertrying to show the cabbie where we wanted to go on the map, we ended up driving down afew‘wrong’ and unsafe looking roads we ended up getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Great, already starting to get dark and we are lost in the area tourists are not supposed to be! We obviously skipped travel 101. We found La boca soccer stadium and walked around this, and eventually found two guys who spoke English and told us where to go.

Now Argentineans are nuts for soccer over here, they literally breathe it. People are playing in any space of grass/cement/space available. It seems to be all just random people who join and leave the game as they wish.

We end up finding a market with tango dancers on the streets which were all lined with amazing colourful houses. We then get a bus back to the city, the tickets were 1.5 pesos or around 45 cents AUD (come on Sydney transport!). Bought a litre of vodka, a couple of beers and 5 litres of soft drink from a small supermarket for the equivalent of 8 or so Aussie dollars! Then went out to a club with a couple of American girls from the hostel and stumbled home around 8am. We were definitely making the most of this weekend.

For 15 million people and such an old city, Buenos Aires is very clean and everyone is so friendly, a lot of homeless people but even the locals don’t seem mind sparing a few coins to help them out. but we definitely seem to stick out like Andrew Bogut in the NBA as everyone just stares at us... not in a threatening way but just because we are different. Imagine what it would be like in the rural areas of Argentina! We spend the day walking around the city and go to an all you can eat steakhouse for lunch. We decide to try at least everything that was available – When in Rome! The steak and chorizo sausages were amazing, the intestine and some poo-ey looking sausage was not so much. But at least we can say we ate poo in Argentina! Lol

With an early morning ferry to Uruguay pending, our last night in Buenos Aires we decide to head out for a quiet coffee. We make a pit stop at the bank; get a cab to a ritzy suburb called Palermo. We try paying for the cab with a 100 peso note (only about 30 AUD but that goes along way over here!), the cabbie takes it, says he doesn’t accept it and gives it back to George. So we pay the bill with another note, and go enjoy our drinks. Afterwards, we try paying for the coffees with the 100 Peso from before, the waiter walks off, and then comes back and starts speaking to us loudly in Spanish. We pick up on words such as fake, no accept etc. Now being as stupid as him, we start explaining we got it from the bank in English thinking he will understand us. People around us start to look around and then we get shown that the money is a fake. Eventually we accepted that we got rorted somewhere along the line, so we pay the bill. On the way back to the hostel we try to figure out wtf had happened. Could it have been the cabbie, waiter or even the bank that gave us the wrong note??? No idea! So George cops it on the chin and we figure it’s not too bad, but at least definitely a valuable reminder that we are not in Australia!

So all this in less than 70 hours of our trip, lucky we didn’t stay in Sydney! This seems like it’s going to be an exciting ride over here! Is currently 5am local time again charging our iPods for our 6 hour bus and ferry combo trip to Punta Del Este in Uruguay at 8.30am. Looking forward to the amazing beaches, restaurants and beautiful people for the next couple of days!

Getting There...

The start of the trip was very interesting. Upon reading many reviews on our airline - Airlineas Argentina- during our last week of work before our trip, we were struggling to find a review which had something good to say about them - No individual entertainment units, cold food, no air conditioning, having to serve yourself drinks, delays etc.. Lets just say weren´t expecting a easy trip for the 14 hour trip from Sydney to Buenos Aires in Argentina via a short stop over in Auckland.

The 3 of us (Matt, George and me) met at the check-in gate at 10am on 22nd Feb about 2 hours before boarding, and even before checking in, we were approached by a worker of the airline asking if we wanted to delay our flight 24 hours and fly with Qantas, or even to delay it 48hours and fly business class on the Sunday.. Now we didn’t know this at the time, but apparently on the previous day, the same flight as us had an engine failure, and had to turn back nearly halfway to South America. Needless to say, it was tempting to get put up in a hotel, and travel in class to South America.. But we thought South America trumped it..


After a hour and a half delay in Auckland, we started thinking it might have been a good choice to change the flights, but we didn’t really find the flight too bad. Yeah it was a little squashy, food was hospital standard, and no entertainment. But i suppose you get that for going for the cheapest flights over there..

We arrived at Buenos Aires international around 4.30pm local time on the Fri. Tired from the trip, but then the feeling that we had actually were in Argentina started to hit us! Walking out of the airport we got approached by the usual tourist cabbies with inflated prices. We eventually arrived at our hostel in the heart of the city. A month of who knows what has begun!