Sunday, May 23, 2010

I'm 12 years old


So I took another trip outside Buenos Aires, this time heading to Uruguay with folks from my program. Friday morning I woke up at exactly 7:30 am (we had to be at the port at 7:45), threw a few things in my backpack, and took the subway downtown at a full sprint. After waiting for train delays, getting lost and receiving several frantic phone calls from Gaby (our site director, I just barely managed to get through customs and catch the ferry for the hour and 1/2 ride to Colonia del Sacramento, a lovely old tourist town across the Rio de la Plata. Colonia was nice: we walked along the coast on cobblestone streets and looked at old buildings and enjoyed beautiful weather, but honestly, you can see the whole town in about 2 hours, then call it a day. There's nothing to do, so I acted up a bit out of boredom. I fell asleep on our bus tour, and goofed off during the walking part, throwing oranges and wrestling stray dogs and cracking up and being a little shit. Eventually we ditched the rest of the group and spent the better part of the afternoon taking stupid pictures and watching Family Guy in Spanish. And Uruguay's really expensive. Lunch, a sandwich called a chivito (a steak, cheese, egg, bacon, heartattack on a bun), fries, and a Coke was 200 Uruguayan pesos, about 50 Argentinean pesos. And we went out that night to a little restaurant/karaoke bar called "Colonia Rock," where we suffered through middle-aged tourists from BsAs belting out Enrique Iglesias. Gross. And again I opted to eat like a 12-year-old boy to save money (and did so all weekend: pizza and fries and hotdogs and soda, mmm!).

Colonia was quiet and very pretty, aka impossible to take a bad photo anywhere in the town. I did enjoy sitting on the terrace of our hotel for a bit, watching the sun set over the old church, listening to pigeons coo, and eating eucalyptus candy and cookies.
Obviously I was anxious to get to Mondevideo, and so thankfully the next morning we left early and bussed it down to the capital. Montevideo seemed happening enough, but oddly downtown was dead quiet. We wandered around the old part of the city and ate in an old market and battled mosquitoes, then basically called it a night. There were apparently elections that weekend and it's illegal to sell alcohol before, so all the bars and clubs were closed. We drank Cokes at dinner then retreated to our rooms to watch bad American television. The next day I slept during the entire bus tour of Montevideo-so dull. The ferry home was about 4 hours, during which my friend Austin and I had way too much mate and giggled the whole time.

So that was Uruguay...and I'm sure you can tell it was pretty boring. It was like I was a kid on one of those school trips, or family vacations to see historical things: unappreciative and sullen, looking for distractions and goofing off the whole time. But I'm not complaining. I mean, I've been to 3 countries in the past 4 months (and got my visa renewed until August!), and I got to hang out with my ASA friends and eat junk food. So looking back now I'm glad I went, and I least I got some rad pictures.

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