Belmont House Hotel Montevideo

... suprisingly the British also invaded in 1806 and held onto Montevideo for a few years. Yet another small and forgotten venture of the British Empire. <br><br>Until the 1930´s, Uruguay was one of the richest parts of South America. With an educated population, mainly of Italian and Spanish descent, and farming and industrial ventures backed by British money, the place was a huge success story. You can see this in the buildings which remain from that period. Many are somewhat ...

... br><br>Unfortunately, due to weather,mechanical, and financial difficulties, my journey back will be a long one. I started out in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil yesterday. Due to weather, I had to spend the night in Montevideo, Uruguay. Then a ferry to Buenos Aires, Argentina this morning and hopped on a plane to Santiago, Chile. Tonight I board a redeye to Dallas for a connection flight which ...

... its´been over 25 the whole time. Today it dropped to 12. (boo) So our plans for tomorrow are up in the air as always. We´re debating if we should go and check out the coast, or just book it back to Argentina and check out Salta and the North. We have 3 weeks left as of today and it would be a shame to waste it couped up in a dorm room watching it rain on what would be a beautiful beach. A short flight to Rio de Janiero has sounded tempting though...

... and a holiday, the Plaza Independancia was desert so some people were shooting a car commercial there! The only problem was that I had to walk quite a long time to find a taxi, the whole area being blocked... Ultimately it's a pity I didn't have more time in Uruguay. I had enough other things to do in my trip no to stay there too long, and the travel guides weren't saying much about it. But sometimes the simplicity is better that all the noise and all the tricks in the world...

... back from work it was about 6pm cos he didn't have night classes so we got changed and headed over to the Shopping Centre as he was convince it was walking distance. He'd brought all the stuff with him from his house to make some "Mate" (pronounced Mat-ay) as its something everyone drinks here and I wanted to try it. Basically you have this official Mate cup thing made of a kind of hollowed plant pod of some sort, this is then wrapped in leather ...

... who are hunting for cardboard or plastic or other usable things in the trash. i especially enjoy when the horse has a porkpie hat, complete with earholes. *people walking around sipping out of a gourd with a metal straw and a thermos under their arm. they are drinking "mate" which is an infusion of leaves that i find to be similar to green tea. people go loco for it here and many don't leave home without it even, say, to go to the ...

... Damo running around in just a pair of red Y-fronts - don´t ask!!! After New year we travelled up to the very tip of North East Argentina to Puerto Iguazu to see the falls. There are about 300 waterfalls in one spot (it was used in an Indian Jones film). One of them - the Devil´s Throat is massive and the force of the water flowing through is crazy. The sight is situated on the border of Brazil and Argentina and the site is so large that it took us 8 hours the first day ...

... it and had several rounds of mate (whereas I could only handle a few)... it kept her up ALL night because of the caffein content...LOL. Accompanying the mate were also a lovely selection of small pastries, called bisqoche I think, which is a typical afterwork type of activity. Our last night in Montevideo found us attending our very first Couchsurfing Party! Oh yeah! What a great turnout..I would say about 50+ people showed up from in/around Uruguay and other ...

... next morning, we are awoken at 4.00am by the sound of the TV in the next room. It was unbelievably loud. Being Saturday night we thought that maybe it was some students that wanted to carry on partying after getting back from a nightclub so I banged on the door and got some shouting through the door in response. Not being able to understand what was being said (mainly because the TV was so deafeningly loud) I continued banging on the door until eventually it ...

I arrived into Montevideo´s bus terminal, "Tres Cruces" around 11am this morning. Since I had been told in Floripa, Brasil, that we´d arrive at 9am, my host apparently got here then, but then had to go to work... That kind of sucked.. I felt bad, but I was able to get in touch with him, and left my bags at the bus terminal while I walked around town. I walked the 3 Km ...