Los Angeles Montevideo

... Rambla which is the coastal road, dodging all the dog **** on the pavements, the place is loaded with it, its supposed to be quite a well to do country as well as far as South America goes. Stayed a couple of days in all then got a bus to Salto in the West of the country.

The bus journey again was a pleasure. Its a pleasant change not to have to worry about the stuff going walkabout or having touts blitzing you as soon as you get off the bus. We even got a ...

... i believe....only urban.

Everybody here drinks Yerba MAte and it appears at all hours ot he day and night. I think i can count on my hand the amount of people i have seen without either a thermos or gourd in their hands.

The city really hasn't begun to recycle it's older buildings which is a bummer because of the astouding archtecture. eh?

I got to go inside of Guisseppe Garibaldi's house and sit in his chair.

sweet!

... it was now about 7.30pm, we decided to go out and get some food. We went to a restaurant called Don Pepperone - the service was pants!! We got our meat at 9.25pm!! One of the waitresses came over at about 9pm and apologised for the delay (I actually think they had forgot the order), but then she amazed us! She said our dinner will just be another 10-15 minutes and would we like a pizza for free whilst we waited!!! What?! Firstly ...

... This time I was under on the luggage allowance as my bag was 22 kilos and your allowed up to 32 kilos but each piece can't be more than 23 kilos. Check was fine and then I spent the rest of my Chillean pesos on stuff I probably don't need lol. Bought a copper and ceramic ornament thing to go with the one I bought on the city tour and also got two stands for them. Needless to say the same ornament was much cheaper at the airport than it was at that ...

This was our second visit to Uruguay and this time Jim was feeling much better than the last time. We met up with Jeanie and Monroe for breakfast and spent most of the day with them. Casa Mario - the shop where we bought our cowhide rug last year was waiting outside of the ship with the store shuttle - so we hitched a ride with them and checked the store out - we didn't buy anything this time ...

... the hand of god shot against England, of course Damo thought this was fantastic (anything to bring down the English Football team - bloody Scots) and insisted on having his photo taken next to it! Here again there was tango in the streets ans restaurants, actually probably a little too much as they were trying to compete with each other for customers, one minute Tango blaring out of here, then stamp, stamp flamenco out of there, then and old guy with a beret and an accordion ...

... Danielle ended up getting back more money than he had stolen and the thief was in a pretty sorry state when we left. The locals were great and really helped us. They then took us to one of their shops where they gave us a drink to calm us down. Ed did a really good job and the support of the locals was brilliant. It did put a dampner on the day though I have to say. Our second day in Montevideo we spent walking through ...

so we arrive in montevideo, its cold. its dark and the bus men are on strike so we have to get dropped off at some road and then queue for taccos to take us to hotel. we had happy times having bag wars and eating you guessed it, cheese sandwiches whilst we waited. it doesnt look very pretty in montevideo but in its defense it rained and was overcast and we hardly explored the town at all, mainly cos our tour leader said not ...

... almost paralleled Libertador - less traffic, fewer pedestrians, and different scenery. When we spied a different Mercado (5 Hermanos), we did a little shopping and then went to lunch at the nearby restaurant that Pedro recommended 2 blocks away. There was no menu, just a few things written on a board, plus what we could see in the case. A veggie quiche caught my eye, as well as some empanadas. The woman-owner-cook tried to explain things in ...