The trouble with buses

"How long does it take to get to Punta del Diablo?" Josh asked the lady who we bought our bus tickets from.

"Una hora o algo," she replied. One hour or something.

We were moving on from La Paloma, a small beach town which had not stopped raining for the two days we were there. Punta del Diablo was forecast to have better weather, and it was going to be Lucas and Eliana's last weekend in Uruguay before heading back to London, so we decided to see what a new place had to offer.

Obviously, we were expecting to get there after about an hour, as directed by the lady at the bus terminal. Unfortunately, 'one hour or something' doesn't mean what we had expected. In fact, the journey took just under 3 hours in the end!

This was not the first, and by no means the last, in a series of bus company representatives having no clue of what was going on. Josh had asked one woman how long it took to get from one town to the next, having just bought the tickets from her, and she cheerfully told him, "I have no idea!"

We had a nice, if uneventful, weekend Punta del D, and decided to extend our trip there by a few more days after Lucas and Eliana left. We moved to a different, cheaper (but way better) hostel, and decided to take a walk round the huge National Park about 10 mins up the road on Monday. Ten mins by bus that is.

We set out at 10.30am, having asked the driver if this was the bus that went to La Fortaleza (the fort, a big landmark in the park). He nodded, we climbed aboard and waited for him to shout out the destination once we stopped, as is custom in Uruguay. Sadly, our driver was a grumpy old man, and although he stopped in many, many places, he didnt shout out where we were. We'd been looking out for a fort, and so far had not seen one, but aftrr about 25 mins Josh asked the driver when we'd get there, having been assured by our hostel owner that it was no further than a 10 minute drive.

The driver said something in very fast Spanish, and refused to speak any slower when asked. I specifically asked him if this was the stop for la fortaleza and he said yes, pointed at a shop on the side of the road, kicked us off the bus and sped off.

We were 16km north of where he said we were.

After waiting just under an hour, another bus driver took pity on us and let us ride with him for free, as far as the National Park entrance. The fort itself was a 5km walk from the entrance, and it was sweltering, but we decided to brave the burning heat and set off. When we finally got there, after a nearly 3.5 hour journey altogether, we were told that the fort is closed on Mondays, and that we had to turn around and walk back again. Fantastic.

That was our last day in Uruguay. Much as I'd loved it, I was very ready to move on! We bought our bus tickets to Porto Alegre in Southern
Brazil through our hostel, and the instructions were simple: get a local bus to the border town, wait at immigration for the bus from Montevideo to stop, get on that and go to Brazil.

The local bus took us right to the border, even though we'd asked to be dropped at the immigration building (when will we learn?!). We had to get a taxi back to immigration and passport control, where we were told to sit and wait outside because 'we are not a bus ticket agency'. Our hostel owner hadnt actually given us the tickets himself, telling us a woman would meet us at passport control with them. It all sounded very dodgy but eventually the woman showed, and gave us our tickets. She then happily informed us that the bus would be coming through at 'about 12' and left. It was 10pm, we'd been there since just after 9. The bus actually came at 1.15am, four hours after we had arrived!

All in all, it was a bloody nightmare. Border towns are notoriously dangerous anyway, and we weren't even allowed to sit inside the building with all our stuff. The temperature had dropped to about 15○C so it was quite chilly, and all we could do was wait.

Thankfully we are now at our friend Fernanda's house, a Brazilian girl we met on our year abroad in New Mexico. We're staying with her and her family for about a week, then heading north with her and her friends for Carnival next weekend, so excited!

Urugusy was lovely, but definitely got the feel we'd outstayed our welcome.

Uruguay

It's raining.

This is my second week in Uruguay, and so far it has been lovely. Our first stop, after the freezing cold night bus from Rosario, was the capital city of Montevideo. The city has a population of about 1.5million, and is right on the coast, with a huge beach just metres from the offices and restaurants. We stayed in an apartment for a few days, then moved to a hostel for one more night before heading out.

We pretty much went to the beach everyday; the sun is ridiculously intense here and I'm having to reapply my factor 30 suncream very frequently but have somehow avoided burning (except my scalp which is very pink). Josh's friend Lucas from London is here, with his sister, as their dad lives in Uruguay, so we've been seeing a lot of them.

After Montevideo, we went to the small town of Colonia Sacramento. It has cobbled streets, and claims to have the oldest church in the country, so we had a look around at the old ruins and few sights it had to offer, but it only took us half a day! It was a really pretty place though, and our hostel was a nice place to spend the evenings meeting other travellers.

We are now in Punta del Este, the most popular beach resort in South American. Obviously it's currently Summer here, so the normally quiet town is overflowing with visitors from all over Latin America; our hostel is full of Brazilians and Argentinians. Lucas and his family are here too, so we've all been going to the beach together in the day, and drinking together at night!

Today is potentially our last day here though; it's an expensive place, even if you buy food from the supermarket and cook at the hostel, so we might move further along the coast to one of the smaller, less touristy resorts like Cabo Polonio or Barra de Valizas. Then we're spending the weekend in Punta del Diablo which is meant to be a fun party town, before heading to Brazil next week! Very excited!

Un poco mas...

Josh is sleeping so I thought I'd take advantage of the time and write a quick update.

On Tuesday, we took a trip to the hospital to see what the Argentinean healthcare system is like. I've had a kidney infection of sorts for about 10 days but kept ignoring it (very sensible) until it was actually giving me backpain, and Josh insisted we see a doctor as my method of 'pretend it's not there and drink lots of water' was pretty ineffective. Healthcare is free for all in Argentina, whether you are a citizen or just a visitor, but they don't take appointments, so you just show up at the hospital and it's a first come first served system.

The nearest hospital was only a ten minute walk from our hostal in Rosario, so we headed over early Tuesday morn. Josh spoke to the guy on reception and we were directed to the clinic for non-emergency patients, only to find there had been a 'fault' (their word) and there were no doctors there. All day. Yep, no doctors at the doctors surgery! They told us to come back the next day, but I was feeling pretty crappy by this point so we went to another hospital a bit further away.

We only had to wait about 20 minutes, which is really good for a walk-in clinic, and the doctor was really excited to practise her English. I was poked and prodded and asked questions, and then she gave me the sacred prescription for antibiotics! I was very excited by this point as I felt awful. We walked over to the pharmacy and handed over the prescription.

You know how normally when you go to get a prescription, they take about 5-10 mins to prepare it etc? Not in Argentina apparently! The woman at the front desk literally just reached under her table, pulled out the antibiotics and handed them over, not even in a box or bag! Feeling much better already, have to take them for a week though to be sure.

Last night (Wednesday) we left our wonderful hostel in Rosario to head to Uruguay. The bus to Montevideo was 10 hours, but we had the semi-cama seats again so we were expecting to just sleep most of the night.

That was the plan anyway.

It was freezing. Not chilly, not cold, but freezing. I sat there shivering uncontrollably and feeling pretty miserable, until we got to the border at about 5am. We got off the bus and asked the driver to turn the temperature up, which he did, but just by 1 degree. I hadn't managed to sleep at all at this point, and josh had only managed a few hours, so we had to beg to be allowed access to our bags in the hold, so we could get towels out to use as blankets. The woman who was the equivalent of an air hostess had a go at Josh for holding up the journey! He was like, it's freezing upstairs, I don't care how long it takes, I need a hoody!

We were allowed to our bags, and I got some socks and a towel to cover me, and thankfully managed to get an hour or two of sleep before we arrived in Montevideo, but it was a really miserable journey overall. I'd worn jeans and a hoody cos I was expecting it to be cool, but this took the A.C. to a new level!

We're now staying in a little apartment in Montevideo until Monday, then we might go to the beach resorts, or to another city. Who knows! It's lovely and sunny, about 28 degrees (which is 84 fahrenheit I think) so we''ll probably go for a walk along the beach this afternoon! Such a hard life :)

More from Argentina

I'm already getting bad about writing this!

We left our hostel in Buenos Aires on the 2nd and moved up the road to an apartment belonging to a friend called Nico, who we met on a night out. Nico is from a suburb of BA, and really kindly offered us a place to stay for a few more days in the city for free, so he coukd show us around some more, with another friend we made called Martina, who goes to uni with Nico.

We dropped off our enormous backpacks at his place, then headed north to San Isidro which is the town Nico grew up in. It was quite a small place, and obviously a very wealthy area, all the houses were huge and the restaurants looked super posh! We sat on the riverfront and drank maté, Argentina's favourite beverage. I'm growing to really like it!

We stayed for two nights at Nico's, then headed 4.5 hours north to a city called Rosario. Our bus was an hour late to arrive, but we'd bought tickets for 'semi-cama' seats which means they recline really far back and are pretty comfy, so at least the journey wasn't too bad.

Our hostel here is really nice. Everyone gets introduced to everyone else by the owner when you first arrive, and there's a huge garden where everyone congregates in the evenings. There are a few English couples here, as well as many other nationalities, and it's a very social place. We had a huge BBQ on the second night, with the best steak we could buy at the butchers. Argentina is a pretty expensive place to travel but there are two things you can buy here for very cheap: wine and beef. Could be a lot worse!

Yesterday we took a boat across the river to a beach on an island, and spent the afternoon sunbathing, but it wasn't that nice a beach and we probably wont bother going back. The river water is technically clean enough to swim in but its quite grey/brown, and it doesn't look particularly appealing!

We're planning to stay at this hostel for another few days, then get on a 12 hour overnight bus to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Not so excited about the long journey, but we're getting semi-cama again so it hopefully won't be too bad! 

New Year

Our first day of this new year was disappointing to say the least.

Feeling fairly rough around the edges, we struggled out of bed at about 2pm and set off to find something to eat, namely Macdonalds. Josh was feeling particularly fragile, and needed food fast. Unfortunately, fate was against us because it was closed! Closed on new years day, we were outraged; this would never happen in London! In fact, it turned out most places were shut for the day, so we kept walking until we came across a little cafe that was open.

I wish we hadn't gone.

We sat down and the waiter took his sweet time bringing us a menu. We ordered some drinks which were brought to us fairly promptly, although Josh ordered his with ice which was apparently too much to ask for. We then ordered our food, milanesa de pollo, and mashed potatoes. For those of you that don't know, milanesa de pollo is a chicken breast bashed til it's really thin, breaded and fried, basically a chicken escalope. It really shouldn't take too long to prepare.

We waited for over 30 minutes for our food. Most of the restaurant were given their lunch before us, even if they had arrived after us. Josh eventually asked the guy where our food was and it became very clear that he hadn't put our order in. It eventually came after about 40 minutes, with no apologies or anything. The damn food was lukewarm! It had clearly been microwaved, and not well. I couldn't finish mine, it would not have tasted good even if it had been hot.

Feeling very disappointed considering it had cost us $20, we headed back to our hostel, and discovered on our way that MacDonalds had opened in the mean time!

This evening, we tried a different place (obviously) and it was yet another let down. Note to travellers: Chinese food in Argentina is gross. Instead of noodles, they had used spaghetti! The meat was disgusting, the spring rolls were actually filled with beef that tasted similar to a Cornish pasty, and everything was so greasy. I don't really like Chinese at the best of times, but this may have put me off for life. The best bit of the meal was the salad!

So we have been thoroughly underwhelmed on this first day of 2013. Our night last night was ok; we watched fireworks over the harbour with some girls from Ireland, Brazil and Germany, then went to meet Josh's Swedish friend and his sister at an outdoor street party. We left pretty early though, and got lost on our walk home too.

All in all, it's been a bit of an anticlimax. We're seeing two friends we made last week tomorrow, who are both from Buenos Aires, so that should be fun. The girl, Martina, took us to a suburb of BA on Sunday called Tigre, which was really pretty. We sat by the river and drank maté, a popular drink in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, kind of like really strong green tea. It was a lovely day, so hopefully tomorrow will be too, and will make up for our crap day today!