Uruguay beach town
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2009
1
17
20
Trip End
Ongoing
Punta del Diablo,
Uruguay
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The town is very non descript. No paved roads, small houses, not particularly nice or special looking. Half the town is little cabanas for rent for tourists. It does have three beaches, separated by some rocky shoreline. There is a small boardwalk with the usual tourists junk for sale. And in the evennings, dozens of dirty hippies crawl out from the camp areas and try to sell teir little bracelets, anklets etc.
The beach was nice though, and the water very warm. On the second day we rented a surf board from a smaller hostel, and it came with lessons from a Diego, a 16 year old kid from Montevideo, who learned how to surf from his step dad, Fabio (owner of the hostel) who has been surfing all over the world and won some competitions.
Diego set our expectations very low. "Isss, no eeezzy. Chou weeel not be able to stand up." He was right. After trying for a few hours each, we were not able to stand up. We math managed to catch one or two waves on our bellies, but even sitting on the boad is hard. You see all those surfers out there just bobing up and down, like it is the easiest thing in the world, waiting for a wave, but it actually quite hard.
And padling around, trying to gain speed for a wave, etc is very tiring. We tried a bit, on and off all day, but with no success. It was great fun, and we very much enjoyed some local Chivitos (little steaks with fries and salds) in the evening.
Uruguayans seem similar to Argentinians so far. They have long siestas in the afternoon, eat good meat really late at night, and drink lots of Matte. Probably even more than Argentinians. Matte is this tea like thing. You have alittle special cup, absolutely stuffed with the leaves of Matte. You walk around with a big thermos, full of hot water, and add about a shot of water at a time (that is all that will fit into the cup after all the matte is stuffed in). And you drink it through a straw. Tases ok, but seems incredibly uncomfortable to walk around with the cup in one hand, and the
