A lot of friends
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2008
1
30
115
Trip End
Apr 19, 2009
Montevideo,
Uruguay
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
I got a recomendation of a hostel from the tourist office of a good hostel to stay in and took a taxi to the correct street. The taxi driver didn't seem to have much experience driving in Montevideo and he had to ask for directions twice and even then stopped in the wrong street so I had to walk round the corner
Building
. After checking into the hotel I found the lounge which had two sofas and a TV, friends was on so I settled down for some mindless comfort, I chatted to two english girls with really bad cheese crisps and a drunk frenchman with his second bottle of wine. After friends was 2 hand a half men, after that I headed to bed.The next day I got up late for breakfast and headed out about 11 to find food and internet. I did a lot of blog entry updates in Montevideo, my blog was actually up to date when I left there a rare thing as you know! After food and internet I walked into the centre, I was by this point quite tired of not having a camera so I bought a new one for the equivalent of 100 pounds. I tested it out on the city and got some cool photos of buildings in the centre. However, the third big south american capital city was too much for me and I was quite tired of seeing the tall buildings, churches and colonial houses so I headed back to the hostel after an hour or so and studied spanish in front of the tele (friends again and two and a hlaf men). After a while I was joined by an english couple that had lived for a lot of time in Spain. The guy had lived in Spain for a large part of his childhood and spoke fluent spanish, of which I was jealous, that he just has the language while I have to study. We talked about stuff to see in montevideo (particularly museums and the dock area which contains nice seafood restaurants and churrascos (barbeque restaurants). And because they were heading home (to england via two weeks in spain) we talked about what it will be like to return to england. They also told me about the possibility of teaching english as a means of earning money without going home and other career stuff. Quite interesting.
The next two days were quite similar.and involved visits to museums, an art museum of a local artist was small but interesting, also the national uruguyian hisory museum contain the entire story or Uruguay from prehistory through colonial times up to modern pollitics in 6 small rooms
Taxi & Cart
. Also a museum claiming to be 'decorative' was actually an old house right in the centre of the city, it had loads of rooms, wide corridors and secret passages and stuff reminded me of a film but I wasn't sure which. There is quite a fine park so I spent some time sitting in the sun and I also walked around the dock area which is a strange combination of the old and run down areas (which look like they may be done up soon) and the brand new tower blocks. I also spent a lot of time studying, updating the net and watching the TV (usually friends). On the eve of my last day I met a nice american girl who was born in Japan, we went to a churrasco bar and talked about my travel in mexico, america, japan and china (all of which she has visited). She warned me that asains are not tourist or english speaker friendly but I don't mind. The conversation helped to remind me how much I am looking forward to the next bit of my journey. I think I am just about ready to leave South America now. Back at the hostel I tried to watch 7 samurai but it was a choice of japonese with spanish dub or subtitles and I was not going to try to understand a japonese film in spanish. So I settled for watching friends.
The next morning I went to buy treats to eat on the bus and walked to the bus station. Quite a mission with my big backpack. On check in with the bus company the bloke behind the counter insisted on keeping my passport. This worried me a lot but it turns out that it was so he could do our imigration without waking us up during the night. I am not sure if that is legal and my passport definately says never let it out of your possesion let alone out of your sight for 8 hours. I had a delicious pizza and chips at the bus station cafe and then borded the bus to Sao Paulo.
