Beaches and Thermal Springs and Colonial Cities... oh my!

Chris and I are still trucking along through Uruguay. I must say I am very impressed with both of the ‘guays… Uru and Para. Uruguay is a small country of only 3 million people and its clean and seems pretty safe and the people are nice. There are a lot of cattle ranches, it’s green, and the coast line is pretty with sand dunes and forests. Currently, we’re in Punta Del Este.

Punta is the beach resort to end all beach resorts in Uruguay. This is where the pretty and rich people from Argentina (and some from Brazil) come to have their summer holidays. This place is packed and expensive in the summer months (January and February) and then clears out for the rest of the year. There are loads of empty hotels and restaurants and shops that are currently shut down, it’s a little weird. But the weather is still fine and we’re in shorts and pretty much have the place to ourselves.

In Montevideo, we went to a travel agent who booked our hotel and bus tickets here. He also booked the same thing for a town called Salto in the western part of the country that has thermal pools. After that, we’re going back down south to a town called Colonia that is a good restored colonial city. Our bus tickets and hotels (we have a total of seven nights in all of these places) cost $288 each. That’s over our budget, but I don’t know what hasn’t been over our budget in the trip. We are staying in places nicer than we normally get, so that’s good. Plus, we can stock up on tiny bars of soap and shampoos so we don’t have to buy more for awhile… it’s the little things.

Tomorrow we return to Montevideo and head to Salto early Friday morning. We have another appointment with a travel agent to try and book some flights while we’re in Peru to get to Macchu Picchu. And maybe the Nazca Lines, we’ll see.

So yeah, yay Uruguay. While at dinner last night, we met some old Polish guy that was here, possibly on the run. At least that’s what we think he was explaining through broken English/Spanish. Uruguay is not that big on extradition.

Chris and I are getting better at our Spanish and can piece together conversations with people much better. We try and study Spanish a bit each day, and that seems to be going OK. I also tried to run for the first time in months yesterday and only made it for twenty minutes. I’m so sore it takes two hands to sit on the toilet seat. Good times.