Uruguay...check that one off the list

Well, last weekend I experienced my first traveling expedition within South America as a group of friends and I decided to venture across the Rio de la Plata and explore the land of our friendly neighbors to the north, Uruguay.  Don't ask me why we chose to do such a thing, for I feel it was a combination of anticipation to travel, a last minute premonition, and most likely a rash decision.  That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the trip, it's just that it was a lot of traveling for a short stay that wasn't anything all that special.  Don't get me wrong, we had fun and made the most of the situation, but not without a handful of obstacles along the way.  Observe...

The journey started in Buenos Aires, at the subway station right by our school's casa.  We were about to get on a train that would take us to another subway line we needed to connect to in order to get to the port where our ferry was waiting to take us up to Uruguay (the ferry was cool, by the way, a glorified airplane if you will) when our friend Danielle somehow managed to let her cell phone slip out of her hand, onto the floor, off the ledge of the platform and under the oncoming subway.  When the train passed and picked our jaws off of the floor, we found her phone safely nestled away from the tracks, yet out of our reach.  Thankfully a worker helped us retrieve the phone and we were shortly on our way (a little late, might I mention).

So we arrive in Colonia, Uruguay at about 10:00pm, and hope to catch a bus to Punta del Este, a hopping beach resort up the coast about 5 hours, but are disappointed to hear that the next bus doesn't come till 6am, so we pass on that offer, purchase tickets for a bus to Montevideo, the capital city, at 8am the next morning, and find a hostel just up the street for the night.  It was my first hosteling experience, probably won't be my last, and I don't know what to think about it.  Here's our room.

Fast forward to the next day as we wake at the crack of dawn to catch our bus to Montevideo.  The ride lasts about 2-3 hours, due to countless stops in the middle-of-nowhere-Uruguay, and we're finally there.  The bus station was in the ghetto, and our first impression of Montevideo was surely suspect.  My friend Zack, shown in this picture, put his feelings into his own words, but they don't merit repeating on this family-rated blog.  Anywhoo, we got a taxi to the beach, where they said there were nice hotels, and after an extensive search for hotels, we finally found the right one.  This is us at lunch, which has nothing to do with what I just said. 

Here's me and Danielle outside of our lunch spot on the beach, a place that seemed like a good place to eat, but was a bit more pricey than we had hoped.  Figuring out the check took a good 20 minutes, as we constantly came up short on the final amount, for as we would come to find out, paying for things in a large group is a nightmare.  That grew to be the theme of this trip.  Zack would always remind us that it doesn't really matter, for the money down here, whether it be the Argentine peso or the Uruguayan peso, is just "monopoly money" anyway.  

A view of the beach area where we were at.  Don't let the picture deceive you, for the weather was really nice for us most of the day.  In Uruguay the rain comes and goes like you wouldn't believe.  After we finished eating, we went back to the hotel, got our suits on, and ventured to the beach, where we were met by our dearly beloved friend, the sun.

View from our hotel room...not much more to it.

Zack in from of our hotel, the sight of yet another money blunder, as it took about 30 minutes to settle the 2 room bills.  For starters, the minibar in one room got cleaned out completely (3 cokes, 2 bottles of water, a beer, and a sprite or something), which caused problems with money flow, and a phone bill was also racked up on top of that, so we ended up paying the last part of the bill with coins, I kid you not.  The receptionist at the counter was laughing at us, as he should have been.

The beach was definitely the highlight of our trip. We all had a blast swimming in the scummy, opaque, and probably toxic ocean water that was surprisingly warm (another warning sign we utterly disregarded).  Nevertheless, despite the inherent risk that we signed ourselves off to by setting foot in the water, we had a good time and stayed there most of the afternoon.  I was digging this guy's suit.  Great pattern.

Another view of the beach...definitely not a white sandy beach like you'd find in Mexico or something, but it sufficed.  It wasn't crowed either, probably because the sand was coarse, the ground rock hard, and the water dirty.  Just throwing that out there.