Cocoon III or El Hombre de Mimbroso

We’ve been in Uruguay for about a week now and so far it has been great. We were going to be in Bolivia at this time, but I found out that their president was a pedophile and a fecalphiliac. We really didn’t want to go there after we found out about this. So, we changed our flight and came to Uruguay instead. We spent some time in Montevideo and then bought some tour packages from a travel agent to see the rest of the country before we head to Buenos Aires on our way to Peru.

Our first stop on the prepaid tour package was Punta del Este. This is the French Riviera of Uruguay where everyone goes in January and February. This time of year, though, it is a ghost town. It is also a lot cheaper this time of year. We really enjoyed our time there, but only had the hotel for two nights and had to return to Montevideo so we could catch a bus to Salto.

Well, almost Salto. We are actually in Dayman, which is just south of Salto. This is a town where there are hot springs that you can swim in or just relax in. These springs make the town a sort of tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere. There is something unsettling about this town. It is small and ominously quiet. It is filled with old people that wander around in their bathrobes. Everyone seems to know each other and they all appear to be hiding something. I feel like either I’m about to witness the long overdue filming of Cocoon III or that I have found my way onto the set of the South American version of The Wicker Man (El Hombre de Mimbroso). On our first night here, we went out to get some dinner and there was a large group of senior citizens dancing around in a circle on the other side of our hotel complex. They were wearing crazy masks and singing, chanting and clapping. It was obviously some sort of pagan ritual where they most likely sacrificed a child in an effort to steal its youth. There are very few children around here other than the ones that seem to be passing through with their tourist parents. It is likely that the sacrificial children used in the youth preservation ceremony are conceived in some other ritual and then raised on the outskirts of this town for the sole purpose of perpetuating the life of the elders here. None of this is found in our guidebooks, but what other explanation could there be?

Beyond the creepiness of the whole place, this town has very little going for it other than Acuamania. Acuamania is a water park that is closed until September. There are no ATMs and one and a half convenient stores. There are lots of “hotels” that kind of seem to form a sort of trailer park atmosphere with plenty of “Artesan” booths set up that all sell the same crappy stuff for the most part. I have seen some interesting items like a stack of Buffalo Bills Superbowl T-shirts that looked old enough to be authentic, but clearly weren’t. There are also several restaurants to choose from, but they all serve the same thing: Milanesas (breaded chicken, pork or beef sandwich), pizza ( with ham or without), ravioli, meat.

Tomorrow we are off to Colonia. Hopefully that will be a more interesting town.