Foz Do Iguacu - February 25th

We have had quite a bit of waterfalls the past two days, so instead of going to the Brazilian side of the falls today, we go to the Itaipu Dam to the north of the town.  We have booked the Special Tour, which not only shows the outside of the dam, but also the inside.  It is a bit pricey, but this is quite an amazing place. 

The first interesting thing is that the area around the dam is sort of neither in Brazil or Paraguay but both countries.  There are tonnes of facts about the size of it, it is 8km long, 200m high, the concrete poured into it every hour during construction would build a 22 story building, it generates nearly all of Paraguay’s electricity, and still it leaves it some to export to Brazil.  It generates 20% of Brazils, and Brazil is a big place.  Basically it holds the world record for generating electricity in a year, even though the Three Gorges Dam in China is bigger.

Once you leave the visitor centre you are on a bus through a sort of border post.  The bus is necessary because the distances are great, but they have great roads around the dam so we are soon at the first viewing point, that of the spillway that diverts the excess water.  Today it is only operating at about 1/3 capacity, but it is still channelling a greater volume than the Iguacu falls.  So much for not seeing any waterfalls today.  After that there are two more viewing points, closer to the dam itself, and then up on top of the dam, before we get to go into the dam.  As a working power plant we need hard hats, and it is hot and sticky, but it is cool.

After that we head back to town and hang around for the rest of the day.  It has to be said that Foz Do Iguacu is not the prettiest of towns, and it is a bit dead.  But we do figure out how to eat for a lot less than the previous night, go to a pay per kilo place.  Simply load up your plate from the buffet, get it weighed, and pay per kilo.  I had a full plate of food for about £2.50 (only 336g, a kilo would cost about £8).  A far better way to eat in Brazil.

Foz Do Iguacu - February 24th

Igaucu was so good yesterday that we are going back to the Argentinian side again before we go to Brazil.  By getting our tickets stamped on exit yesterday we are able to get in for half price.  This time we do it a bit in reverse, with the trip on the slow train to Garganta Del Diablo first thing.  This is even better this time because the weather is better (with sunshine we can see rainbows) and because we walked fast from the first train of the day we get there ahead of most of the crowds.

The one thing we didn’t do the previous day was take a boat trip up to the falls.  The trip over to the island didn’t count because the water was quite calm.  But after coming back from Garganta we buy tickets for a boat ride.  It is just as well that we didn’t leave the island for today as it is closed due to rising water levels making docking unsafe.   But our boat is running.  It is basically a fast speedboat, and it does two circuits, one in front of Garganta and San Martin allowing for good photos, and then you put away the cameras into waterproof bags as the boat then rides into the waterfalls.  First you go right up to the base of San Martin which is a little scary as it is quite rough.  It is like a roller coaster ride.  Then we go to three waterfalls which we are able to practically sail right under.  Needless to say we get drenched.  Now I know how clothes in a washing machine feel.

After that there is little left to do.  The sunny weather disappears again, so as it is as overcast as the previous day there is little point in taking more photos, so we decide to call it a day (or half-day) and head back to town.  There we change out of our wet clothes, have a bite to eat, and say goodbye to Argentina as we get a local bus to Foz Do Iguacu in Brazil.  This time we know the score on the buses leaving us at the borders, although the wait is longer than in Paraguay.  First impressions of Brazil aren’t great, but that is mostly because Foz is not a pretty historic town, it is just a tourist trap.

An example of that greets us as we get off the bus in Foz, we are met by an ‘official’ tourist information guide who tells us that our booked hostel is bad, but he has a list of other good ones.  We ignore him, and go to our hostel which of course turns out to be quite nice.  In the evening we go to a churrascaria.  This is an all you can eat grilled meat restaurant.  You get a buffet of salad on a plate (a mound), as much chips, rice and pasta as you can fit on the plate as well, and then you sit and wait for the meat to come.  Each waiter brings you a type of meat, and you can have as much or as little as you want.  I had roast beef, lamb, pork, two types of sausage (spicy and non-spicy), two types of ribs (beef and pork), chicken wings, and four different cuts of steak.  And also some grilled cheese, onion and pineapple.  There was probably more but by then you can’t remember it all.  And there was a server yourself dessert buffet as well.  As I was pretty full by then I only had about 7 items.  A decent start to Brazil.

Puerto Iguazu - February 23rd

Today is not going to be an easy day to write about, because it is hard to put the awesome spectacle of the Iguazu falls into words.  The pictures aren’t really going to do it justice as well, because the visual spectacle is just one thing, there is the sound, the feel of the spray and just the enormity of the whole thing that makes it one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the world.

The day begins early; we are up and out of the hostel by 07.30 to get the bus (the 07.40 bus which we make by skin of our teeth after buying a picnic lunch).  After getting off the bus at the other end and buying our tickets, we walk with the crowds to the station for the internal train they have to shuttle people about the park.  However here we deviate from the crowd and follow the advice of our hostel, and Lonely Planet, and instead of taking the train we walk to the beginning of the waterfalls trails.

There are four trails, the first two of which are called the Upper Trail and the Lower Trail.  The Upper Trail is a set of walkways that walks you across the top of the falls.  Literally right out to where they drop 80m into the river below. One guide book said it is not that spectacular but is a good appetiser for the rest of the day, but I’ll say it is wrong.  On its own this circuit would be worth the entrance fee.  In fact the first view of the falls you get from this is so good, with them stretching off into the distance, that you would be happy paying the entrance fee for that one view alone.

But it is not alone.  After spending an hour up above the falls, it is time to get down and meet them from below.  Thus we start on the Lower Circuit.  I actually wasn’t as impressed by this one as the Upper Circuit, but that could be because by now the crowds were filling up and we were battling to get good views in a few locations.  This time you are standing right in front of some of the waterfalls as they cascade down.  Needless to say there is a lot of spray and you get soaked.

After this we start the third trail, on San Martin Island.  This is an island in the middle of the river that you have to get a free ferry across to.  Once there it is a steep climb up a flight of stairs to some more view points, including one that is right in front of the San Martin Waterfall (each of the individual waterfalls in the whole set has its own name).  This waterfall is quite spectacular, and wet.  But the beauty of the island is a little beach which we can sit on and have our picnic lunch.  You can even wade out slightly into the river to get some good photos.

Partially through rushing to beat the crowds, and partially because we didn’t queue for dinner, we have not spent that much time in the park when we get back to the mainland and finish the Lower Circuit.  Because we have this time on our hands we decide to go on a jungle hike 7kms through the forest to another waterfall.  Unlike all the other pathways this one is not constructed and it doesn’t get that much traffic.  Therefore the chances of seeing wildlife on the path are much greater.  Which is just as well because the waterfall at the end was not great.  On any other day it might have been, but today it isn’t.  And we didn’t see any wildlife on the way, other than some giant ants.  But on the way back we did see some monkeys so it wasn’t a total loss.

When we got back from the jungle trek it was time to do the final walk, that to Garganta Del Diablo, the Devil’s Throat.  This is the big one, the biggest drop and biggest volume of all the falls.  To get to it you have to take the train around the park, and then walk 1km across the river.  It’s only when you see the volume of water on this side of the falls that you can understand their power.  The platform at the top of the falls is amazingly positioned, and is some feat of engineering.  You are literally standing over the top of the waterfall.  You feel like an ant on the rim of a toilet bowl.   The power of the water is amazing, as is the noise and the mist.  The only thing that ruined it was some rain, a lot of tourists, and the fact that we were at the end of the day so had limited time before the last train back.

After that we left the park, by the train (which is a frustratingly slow train at only 7kph, you could almost walk as fast), and we got the bus back to town for our last night in Argentina.

Puerto Iguazu - February 22nd

Because of the rain the previous day we didn’t get to see the San Ignacio ruins, but luckily we haven’t been booked on an early bus so we have time to see them this morning.  After breakfast and checking out we walk over to the ruins where there appears to be a large bus tour pulling in.  We hurry to get ahead of them so we have clearer pictures.  The ruins themselves are not as good as the ones in Paraguay.  They do have more of a jungle feel than the Paraguayan ones, which were in grassy fields, but these ones are more run down.  They do have the same basic layout though; the big square, the church, the college, and so on.  The site also has more of a feel of a school tour because there are interactive exhibits set up amongst them.  We get through the ruins as the big group comes in, they went to the little museum first, so we go back there to finish.  That is actually quite good, meaning it is worth doing both the Paraguayan and Argentinian sides of the river (we are actually only 20km from the Paraguayan ruins as the parrot flies).

We leave the museum, go back to the hostel, collect our bags, and walk back to the bus stop on the edge of town.  We get there early which is just as well because we discover the bus we have been booked on is not stopping at our stop, and we have to get an earlier bus and change in a town called Puerto Rico.  So luckily we got there early.  The change did go without a hitch, but it was a slightly annoying way to end our long distance bus journeys in Argentina which otherwise have gone perfectly well.

After we get to Puerto Iguazu and check in, we walk to the town’s only interesting sight (the waterfalls being in the national park).  This is the three border point, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet.  It is at the confluence of the rivers Parana and Iguazu, with one country on each bank.  They each have an obelisk painted in their national colours to mark the spot.

But besides that, the only point of the town is to get people into and out of the national park.  Unlike all the other Argentine towns it is not based on a grid pattern either, so it is a bit messy looking, more like the frontier town that it is.  We join the hordes for a beer, and then we have dinner, before getting to bed early so we can get out to the waterfalls ahead of the crowd.

San Ignacio - February 21st

Today we leave Paraguay and go back to Argentina.  The original plan had been to stay a night in Posadas across the river, but the fact that it is booked out for Carnival (the final night of which is tonight) and the fact that there doesn’t appear to be much there has changed our plans.  We were going to Posadas to be a base for a visit to more Jesuit ruins, but now we are going to go to a little town call San Ignacio, and hour north of Posadas, where the Jesuit ruins actually are.  The best part of his plan is it gains us a day to use in Brazil.

The journey across the border is one of the strangest I’ve ever done.  It is done by bus, but unlike other international buses we have booked which need passport details for booking, this is a local bus.  And not only that, but it has a frequency greater than the DLR service that used to run outside my apartment in London.  As we walk up to the main square from our hotel we see one going past, we missed by a minute or so, but then we only have to wait another minute for the next one.  When we get to the Paraguayan border as we are the only people with passports, the locals all having ID cards, we have to get off to get them stamped.  Our bus pulls off without us, but another is along in a few minutes to pick us up and continue across a very cool bridge to the Argentinean border, where again we have to get off, and wait for the next bus, which is actually there as we get out of customs.

Three buses to get us across the border, and then we end up in Posadas bus terminal.  After a bit of organisation we sort out our tickets for the next two days, and we are off for the one hour trip up the road to San Ignacio.  When we get there we discover that in the lunch time heat it is a small sleepy town, with nothing open for lunch, so all we can do is check into our hostel, and get ready to go see the ruins when it cools off a bit.

However before it does the heavens open and we get a downpour of biblical proportions which lasts for three hours.  This has two effects, first it traps us in our hostel, and secondly when we do get out at 6pm, we find it is too dark to take photos of the ruins, and it is too wet for them to put on the sound and light show in the evening.  This is a bit disappointing, so we go for a pizza in a nice place across the road, and this turns out to be one of the best pizzas I’ve had again.  I think most of my top 5 pizzas ever have been on this trip.

Encarnation - February 20th

The main reason we are in Paraguay, other than to have another country ticked off the list of countries visited, is to visit the only UNESCO world heritage sites in this country, the ruins of the Jesuit missions of La Santisima Trinidad de Parana and Jesus de Tavarangue.  These are said to be some of the least visited UNESCO world heritage sites, and amazingly there are no tours to them from Encarnation.  However for 30 quid the evening receptionist in our hotel will drive us there and back this morning.  It is probably a little steep, but it’s too hot to be standing around waiting for local buses, which is our only alternative.

After breakfast, which in terms of quantity and choice, if not quality, is the best we have had so far on our journey, we set of at 08:00.  The ruins are only 25km away from town, and as the road is far better than I expected (in fact it is better than most we have been on) we get to Trinidad at about 09:00. Basically this is a village set on top of a hill that was set up by the Jesuits in the 17^th century to bring ‘civilisation’ to the native Guarani people.  In fairness they did better than most other attempts in South America, and in doing so they annoyed the Spanish crown because eventually the Jesuits were kicked out of these settlements.  And afterwards they were left to decay.  However they have recently been cleaned up and are now available for viewing.

And they are pretty good viewing.  The basic structure of the town is that you enter a main square, around which were the houses built for the locals, and facing you is the big church.  And it is big, it would be the size of a lot of Cathedrals were it still standing.  The off to the right are the priest’s houses, the college, and a farm.  A small bell tower, the only intact ruin left, gives you a good overview, and then you can take an hour or so exploring the ruins.  There are about 12 other people doing the same, but the area is quite big, a few hectares, so you can see why they can be ranked up as the least visited ruins.

After this we go to the ruins of Jesus (all included on the one ticket, which was foreigner priced but who can blame them).  These are less preserved, except for the church, although ironically it was never completed because of the expulsion, so it is still not complete.  This time we get a guide who explains more about the history of the sites, and also shows us a reconstruction of what the garden would have been like with various native foods growing in it, including the infamous yerba mate trees for the drink.

Looking around that site takes less time, and then we go back to Encarnation, arriving back at midday.  There isn’t really much more to see in the surrounding area, there are other Jesuit ruins but they are a bit distant (and I think a little too similar).  We walk the town looking at the sights, of which there are really only two, the Cathedral and the main square, and look for somewhere open for lunch, again a challenge.  But we find a restaurant with a set menu del dia, which gives us a main course for £2 each.  Still there is little else to do afterwards excet siesta, and then in the evening we go out when there is a little more life and try again for shopping, a beer and some food.  We have some success this time, but also some failures, the Irish pub (which I never expected to see) remains closed again, denying my chance to add Paraguay to the list of countries we’ve been in an Irish pub in.

Encarnation - February 19th

The good news was that our 18 hour journey turned out to only be 15½ hours long.  The bas news is that this meant we ended up at the bus station in Encarnation at 04:30 in the morning, not 07:00. Being in a bus station at that hour is bad anywhere, but here we see people sleeping in the bus station, something we haven’t seen since India, and which would not have been tolerated in any other place we have been in South America.  But now we are in Paraguay, one of South America’s two landlocked counties, and one of its two poorest (coincidentally the other is Bolivia, the other landlocked country).  The other reason why it doesn’t feel safe here is that the Carnival parade has just ended and there are a lot of drunk people walking the streets.

After a taxi to our hotel (at a rip off price) we then sit in the lobby for 3 hours until they have a room for us.  The funny thing is that we see all the other guests coming in from their carnival exertions, and can watch highlights of it all on TV, so we even feel part of it.  It’s a lot like the Rio carnival here, and we can even compare because that one is still going on live on TV as well.  I think we made a good choice with doing carnival in Montevideo, as that one finished earlier, and we just aren’t adjusting to the late nights like the locals.  It is a nice lobby to sit in, actually we are in the nicest hotel in town, with views out to a now deserted riverfront where the carnival was earlier.  Due to the prices here we can stay in the nicest place in town for the same price as decent hostels cost in Argentina (or average ones cost in the more expensive Uruguay).

We have adjusted to siestas though.  A combination of the lack of sleep from the bus journey, and the heat (it is 38, or 100 if you are old fashioned, degrees), and a good aircon unit in the room, means we take a long one today.  When we wake up there is a change in the town.  While before when we went looking for breakfast we found a very sleepy town with nobody around, now we find a very sleepy town with everyone down on the beach.  The presence of a beach in landlocked Paraguay needs some explaining.  A recently built dam on the river Parana meant that a large part of Encarnation got submerged.  The local government has taken this opportunity to build a whole man-made beach along the river, complete with views across to Posadas in Argentina.  It only opened 3 weeks ago, and now it is packed with people, stands selling soft drinks, beer, and various other crap.  It looks like it will be a great boost to the local economy.  So amazingly after a week on the beaches of Uruguay we have ended up in Paraguay’s premier beach destination, although this beach was so packed it was standing room only so we didn’t actually go onto it.

In the evening we go out for a walk and to look for somewhere for dinner.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds, it seems like a lot of places are closed, whether this is a regular Sunday thing or it is a post-carnival thing, we can’t be sure, but we end up having to eat in the same place in which we bought breakfast.  The food is surprisingly good and cheap, especially the beer which costs £1 a litre.

Montevideo to Encarnation Bus - February 18th

Today we leave Uruguay, and head to Paraguay.  When trying to book a bus out of Montevideo to somewhere in Argentina last week, we noticed that a bus went to Asuncion, and when we asked would they be able to drop us off in Encarnation, a city in Southern Paraguay which was our ultimate destination, they said they could.  So we are booked on an 18 hour bus ride this morning.

First we get a local bus back the 100km from Piriapolis to Montevideo, which is a nice little journey, and gets us to the big bus station for 10:30.  Which gives us a bit of time to do some shopping in the big shopping centre above, and eat a McDonald’s lunch.  Despite assurances we will get fed on the trip we aren’t too confident about it.  Still we set off at 13:00 and head north to Salto, the second biggest city in Uruguay and the site of a border crossing to Argentina across a big dam on the river Uruguay which is cool to cross.  One strange thing happens at the border, we don’t get our passports back, they get taken into safekeeping by the bus conductor so the Argentinians don’t have to stamp us in.  As usual on this journey we get the dulce de leche biscuits and films, Avatar and one of the Harry Potters.  But the food was probably the worst thing ever presented to me as a meal, so it was just as well we went to McDonalds first.  It’s a bad day when McDonald’s is the best meal you have had (but not as good as the one in Argentina).

Because we are leaving Uruguay I’ll do a little summary of the country.  We ended up staying 12 days when our original plan had seen us here for just 4 days.  It is not because it is cheap though, it is as dear as Argentina, if not a little more so.  It is slightly less developed than Argentina, but it is not undeveloped or expensive enough that it would be a struggle to live there if you were on a western salary.

The one thing which Uruguay has in excess of Argentina is mate, the local tea drink.  I am actually a bit worried about it, because the locals here show signs of being addicted to it.  They walk around all day with a flask of hot water under their arms (although you can buy bags to hold the flasks, nobody seems to use them) and they drink it at every occasion and at every hour of the day.  Seeing them drinking it on the beach or in the park is one thing, but you can see them drinking it in the bus station, on the bus, on the street, in their gardens and in work.  It is not unusual for you to interrupt someone drinking it if you need service in a shop.  But the scary thing is that when they are sitting around drinking it they aren’t talking, often they look as if they are in a trance.

I don’t know if there are any studies into the economic output losses of mate drinking, but maybe it is why their economy is a bit sluggish.  Although having said that there is very low unemployment figures here, with job ads in a lot of restaurants and shops.  One of the most interesting people we met in Uruguay was a guy from Barcelona who was over here working in a bar.  Beating the 25% unemployment over there.  Maybe a few more should do that.

Piriapolis - February 17th

The thing about the beach names here is that they tend to be quite descriptive.  Playa Grande is big, and therefore we assume Playa Hermosa is beautiful.  So we decide to walk the extra few kilometres to this Playa.  It is a nice walk because today the sun is behind clouds, making it cooler, and there is even a little rain.  We also realised that our little hill that we have to walk up to get to our hotel, does actually provide us with a little wind to make it cooler at night.

When we get to Playa Hermosa though it is not quite as beautiful as we had imagined.  It was never going to be Cabo Polonia, but it wasn’t even as good as Playa Grande from yesterday.  Worst of all was the smell as we approached it, because we had to pass some old tied up fishing boats which really stank.  But once past them the smell did disappear, and in fairness it wasn’t a bad beach, it just didn’t live up to the billing.

Again we stayed on the beach for a large part of the day, before heading back to town for ice cream and the walk up the hill to the showers.  The humidity once in the town, one block from the coast, is amazing compared to being on the coast (it is still hard to think of this as a river bank given the opposite one is over 100km away).  Also at the hotel we try to use the wifi, but the hotel has some serious connection issues which mean the service is very intermittent.

In the evening we head down town for some very disappointing pasta, and some proper wifi.  We also discovered that our quest for Café Picasso was founded on a wrong premise last night, the chef, Carlos Nunez, is so famous around town that we should have been asking for directions to him, not his café.  It’s a pity, because all other food joints in this tourist town have been quite bland.  Lonely Planet described Piriapolis as the closest Uruguay had to a Mediterranean beach resort, because of the long seafront and hills behind, but if they meant having nothing but sub-standard restaurants they would have been correct. 

Piriapolis - February 16th

Again on the beach the day starts early.  But this is because we are leaving for our third and final Uruguayan beach resort, Piriapolis.  To get there we have a multi bus trip, beginning with the truck back to the ‘mainland’.  We could have waited for a pick up at our hotel, but for some reason we felt that we needed the exercise so we walked the 1km up the beach with our full backpacks on to get to the village.  Luckily at 08:00 it is still not too warm to do this.  The fun part is the transfer again, this time we are able to sit up top and at the front of the truck, and going over the dunes it is like a roller-coaster.  There was nearly some travel sickness from both of us.  Still it was fun.

After a bus journey which has a slightly baffling route (and therefore takes 3 hours to do about 120km) we get dropped in the town of Pan De Azucar, which is Spanish for SugarLoaf.  This town is overlooked by a SugarLoaf like mountain, hence the name.  This ‘mountain’ is Uruguay’s third highest point, at 423m!  This is one of the flattest countries in the world.  The drop here is so we can pick up a local bus and get it the last 8km to the coast, which we do with some ease.  We only had a minute to wait which was good because the heat inland was unbearable.

However the dry heat of the interior is far preferable to the humidity of the coast.  Of course I say the coast but now we are back on the Rio Plata coast, not the Atlantic.  So there is less wind leading to the humid conditions.  Our short walk to our hotel is entirely uphill with our backpacks on, so this time we are covered in sweat by the time we get there.

After that we are back to our usual beach resort pattern, eat, beach, shower, eat, sleep.  The beach in Piriapolis itself is not great, and is quite crowded.  This is a much bigger resort than the other two we have been to, although smaller than the more famous Punta Del Este which we have skipped because on MTV it looks like Benidorm.  This is more of a family resort, founded in 1930 by the building of a large hotel by an Argentine, Francisco Piria, hence the name.  We move slightly upstream to Playa Grande, on the basis that it is bigger and might be emptier, which it is.  So that is where we spend the day.  Our evening search for a restaurant, the top one in town, is interesting in that nobody seems to know where Café Picasso is, so we end up in an average pizza place.  But the ice cream in this town is good.

Cabo Polonia - February 15th

Like when camping, these beach huts tend to force you into an early to bed, early to rise pattern (because of the light streaming in the semi-transparent roof).  So we get up early this morning at 8am, but we have to occupy ourselves as our hotel doesn’t serve breakfast until 9.30am.  I think they have to wait for deliveries from the ‘mainland’ as we have come to call the rest of the world outside our little unelectrified island.

So we walk up to the village again, and this time we decide to see if we can find the sea lions we were told are present behind the lighthouse.  And we do get to see them.  It’s quite fun watching them, especially as the males fight for dominance.  Dorota did go a bit mad taking loads of photos of them.  To calm down after this we also decide to go up the lighthouse itself to get a better view of the area.

All this is just a prelude to heading back to our hotel, which is in an empty part of the beach (that's it in the distance in this photo over the town taken from the lighthouse), and the rest of the day which is just eat (breakfast), beach, eat (lunch), beach, eat (dinner).  Well actually there was also a walk along the beach, this time instead of back to the village, away from the village, to a point where we are the only people on the beach for a kilometre.  It’s a tough life.  And the food in our hotel is pretty good given the conditions they have to cook it in.  There are only two problems with it, a lot of things get cancelled from the menu as they run out of ingredients quickly, and it takes a long time to get food delivered to the table, presumably because the kitchen is fairly small.

One other advantage of being in such splendid isolation is that in the evening the stars are amazing.  The Southern Hemisphere sky is so much more interesting than the Northern one.  The Milky Way is the main reason, stretching as a band across the sky.  My only problem is that I’ve forgotten almost everything about astronomy that I knew when I was younger, so I can’t identify more than a couple of the constellations.

Cabo Polonio - February 14th

Despite the good beach yesterday we are not disappointed to be leaving Punta Del Diablo as it has turned out to be more commercialised than we were led to believe.  And our hostel has not helped; the staff here just seem to be bored.  The only blessing is that we were the only ones there, so it was like having a private house instead of being in a shared bathroom hostel. 

Today we are going to Cabo Polonio.  This is about 50km back towards Montevideo, and was picked partially because of the name (Dorota having to write Polonia on all our hotel registration cards).   But it was mostly picked because everyone here raves about it, and Lonely Planet tells of a little village with no electricity on a cape overlooking a colony of sea lions.  It seems too good to be true but we will give it a go.  Our bus journey is a bit slow, taking over two hours to travel over 50km, mostly because the main road runs a few miles inland so each little seaside town we visit requires us to turn off, drive 3 or 4 km, drop off or pick up a few passengers, and then return.

That is except our stop.  Along with no electricity we are in a no car zone, so we get dropped off on the main road and we have to continue to our hotel by means of a truck travelling 7km over sand dunes.  It’s a great start and it gets better.  The little village is as we would have pictured it, maybe slightly bigger, but our hotel is at the end of the beach, probably 1km away from the next one.  Luckily the trucks pass by so we get dropped off saving us a scorching walk along the beach. It’s an amazing location for a hotel, looking over the sea, 20m from where massive waves are breaking.  I say a hotel, we are really staying in someone’s house, but they have a bar and the cooking is excellent.  Dorota immediately compares it to her favourite beach in Goa, Mandrem, and the comparison seems appropriate as we even have cows on the beach.

So the afternoon is again spent on the beach and in the cold water. The only thing that makes it less than perfect is the wind.  But other than that it is idyllic. In the evening we walk into the town and see the sights, including the lighthouse, but we didn’t go to see the sea lions, because the Lonely Planet says they aren’t there in February (the only month).  Although when we get back to our hotel for dinner our host tells us this is wrong, and they are there, so in future we must stop relying on Lonely Planet so much.  Dinner is amazing, and our romantic Valentine ’s Day finishes with us looking at the stars, only to find that clouds have come in and covered the magnificent sky we saw the previous night.

Punta Del Diablo - February 13th

Today we get the beach experience we are looking for.  The man who owns the hostel turns up and offers us a lift to the beach.  Given the walk and the heat we accept, and on the way we ask which is the best beach and he delivers us to Playa Grande.  When you think about it this should always be the best beach with a name like that.  We just didn’t know where it was. 

We didn’t actually get delivered to the beach, because to get to it you have to walk over a kilometre through dunes.  So we haven’t gotten out of the walk, but it is a far nicer walk than along the main road.  When we get to the end of the dunes we see the beach spread out in front of us, a beautiful bay of over a kilometre of white sand backed by trees and dunes.  This is what we were looking for.  There were still quite a few people on the beach, but it was nowhere near as crowded as the other beach.  This is the advantage of not having a direct road to a beach.

And after that it was just lie on the beach and swim in the water.  The water is far colder than you would expect given the almost tropical feel of the place, but there is the full Atlantic Ocean behind it so it’s not really that unusual.  It is still a shock when you go in for the first time.

Walking back from the beach was a bit of a challenge, as there are few signs or names on the streets, and they all look the same.  However we make it, and after changing decide to go out to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  Again the lack of street signs makes it hard to find and we end up walking into the village centre past every other restaurant before finding it.  It was an OK meal, but the most expensive we have had in Uruguay, justifying our decision to self-cater all other meals from the big supermarket across the road.  This includes breakfast, because this hostel with no soul provides an even worse breakfast than the normal ones we get in South America.

Punta Del Diablo - February 12th

Today begins our revised schedule of travel in Uruguay.  Originally we planned only a quick trip to Colonia and Montevideo before moving back to Argentina, but since being here everyone has been telling us we have to see the beaches of Eastern Uruguay, so we are taking them up on this.  There is a second less happy reason; because of police strikes in Brazil we are thinking we might spend less time there (only in the areas with no strikes) so we are taking time from beaches there to spend on beaches here, 3 different beach resorts for 2 days each, doubling our time in Uruguay.

Our first beach resort is the furthest away from Montevideo, a place called Punta Del Diablo.  This is a small fishing town only 50km from the Brazilian border, which has recently become one of the top beach resorts.  After a four hour bus journey (made four and a half hours by a wait to change a bus just outside Montevideo, we arrive at our hostel.  To say it is basic is an understatement, but it will do us for two days.  After checking in we walk down to the town, a bit of a walk, we are about a kilometre away from the beach, but close to the bus terminal, so at least our big walk was without backpacks.

The town is a bit chaotic, sort of like a town where uncontrolled development has taken place.  It is a mixture of beach houses, bars and supermarkets, but there is no real soul to the place.  As there is a road right to the beach when we get there we find it is not the deserted beach we were promised, but a packed throng of people.  It is a Sunday, so there might be day trippers, but a lot of them are here for the week.  Our beach is made less pleasant by the smell of rotting fish from the fishing boats, but what can you expect from Playa de los Pescadores.  It is easy to see how it would have been pretty before the development.

In the evening we decide to self-cater in our hostel and sort out our photos from the Montevideo Carnival, no easy task as due to the movement and darkness there are a lot of blurry photos.  We find out we are the only residents in the hostel, other than the dog who lives there.  It is a bit of depressing place.

Montevideo - February 11th

I begin the day watching Manchester United v Liverpool on the TV.  With Luis Suarez playing it is a big match in Uruguay as well as everywhere.  The handshake incident got glossed over, and when he scored they went wild, but other than that I was happy with the Man Utd win.  However I can’t let this trip to Uruguay pass without mentioning the whole Suarez-Evra affair.  Since being here it has been obvious that one part of his defence, that negro is a commonly accepted term here, is correct.  There is no stigma attached to the word, and in fact the whole carnival seems to be a celebration of negro culture.  So he may have been right on that fact but he still knew what he was doing using it in the UK.  One other point, pride of place in the football museum yesterday was the football he handled in the Ghana match at the world cup.

Today is our final day in Montevideo so we try to get all the things we have missed done.  First on that list is going back to the restaurant which we missed yesterday, but when we get there we find that it doesn’t open for lunch on a Saturday.  Luckily Lonely Planet has a recommended restaurant which does open on a Saturday nearby, via a walk along a beach where it seems half of Montevideo is hanging out, so we go there and have a really nice lunch (steak of course).

Our second failed thing is shopping in the local craft market (I could take or leave this one) so we go there, but it isn’t open after lunch.  So that is a fail as well.  We then walk to the Theatro Solis, the main theatre in town, to get a tour, but when we get there it is closed just for this Saturday because they are preforming a Wagner Opera, so they need more time than usual.  As it is now coming up to kick off in the France Ireland rugby match we go to the Irish pub to view it (Dorota could take or leave this one), only to find it too is closed (until 8pm, after the final whistle).

So with that success record our day seems like a bit of a failure but then it improves.  First Dorota finds a cut down craft market in a plaza in town, and I find a pub (not Irish).  Then the Irish pub opens early so we catch a pint there, but not the game which was abandoned minutes before kick-off due to bad weather (so that’s another country ticked off then) before we head to our final destination, the Museum of Carnival (again).

This time we are going to a carnival show, so we have seats.  Unfortunately we have to deal with Uruguayan timekeeping, the tickets say 8.30pm, but we are pretty much the only ones there at that time.  It is over an hour before it starts.  Again I’ll leave the explanations to Dorota’s blog, but the extra parts we see here (besides candombes) are murgas and paradistas which are basically forms of satirical comedy.  While I’m sure they are good if you understand Spanish, they weren’t great, and in fact reminded me of a cross between a British pantomime (down to having a pantomime dame) and the old Irish Tops of the Towns competition (amateur).  I’m not sure it’s very unique to Uruguay as they claim, and may explain why only the candombes have UNESCO listing as a unique cultural heritage.

Montevideo - February 10th

Our second day in Montevideo started with a trip to the football museum.  It was supposed to be a trip to the bus station first to sort out some travel arrangements, but we missed the bus stop and so ended up at the stadium instead.  The stadium is an old concrete bowl of a building, but is very impressive, and as I’ve never been to Wembly (new or old) it is the only world cup final stadium I’ve been in.  The seats however are not impressive, being concrete as well, so I’ll never complain  about the seats in a premiership stadium again. 

The museum was equally impressive, given Uruguay have won two world cups, and two Olympic titles, an amazing achievement for such a small country, but it reminds you how rich a country it was in those days.  Having said that it is still impressive these days with a 4^th in the World Cup and a win in the 2011 South American Cup, both of which are also highlighted.  Given Uruguay is smaller than Ireland in population terms, the FAI could learn something here.

After seeing all the trophies, and making it back to the bus station to sort out travel, we travel on to the top rated restaurant in Montevideo as listed by TripAdvisor.  Unfortunately when we get there it is 15:05 and it has closed for siesta.  In fact finding food outside of regular hours (for Uruguayans) is much harder here than in BA which was much more accommodating to the needs of tourists.  It is also more accommodating to the needs of vegetarians, we are eating much more meat here than before.

The half lunch half dinner is because we are again going to the carnival parade.  Last night it was amateur night at the parade, with local community groups from each of the suburbs performing; tonight it is a more professional parade.  Unlike last night we are standing on the streets all night, and this time after the main section where the parade is filmed for TV.  And we soon learn that being before the TV section is the only place to be, there are now big gaps between each group, leaving the space to be filled by vendors selling things (mostly spray foam) and people walking in the way of your photos.

All in all it wasn’t a great night compared to the previous one, there was one advantage of the professional groups, the women were better looking.  Still we got bored (and tired of standing) even more quickly this time and ended up going back to our hostel and watching the parade on TV in the bar with a beer, sort of like how we prefer to watch the St Patrick’s Day parade. I mention this because I do have to say that compared to that I felt this parade was quite amateurish in its organisation, which for some is part of its charm, but somehow I expected carnival in South America to feel more polished.

Montevideo - February 9th

Our first full day in Montevideo begins with a walk along the Rambalas.   This is a long coastal road that follows the Rio Plata.  However you would really struggle to identify that you were on a river, there is no sign of land on the other side (it’s almost 100km wide here) and the waves are pretty large.  But it is a nice way to walk to the old part of town.

When we get there we find that everything is shut.  It’s hard to tell whether this is a shut permanently because it’s gone out of business type of closure, a closed for the holiday type (although all of those in BA did have signs saying they were closed until some date), or they are closed because we are there too early.  There are a few shops open, including one in the tourist information office, but not that many.  So we walk towards the main commercial centre of town instead, still taking snaps of all the landmarks.  As Uruguay was a rich country between the wars there are a lot of grand 1930 style buildings around.

After all the sightseeing it is time for lunch, so we go to the old port market, Puerto Mercado, which has been turned into a load of trendy parrillas (barbeques) which have their meat on displaying competing displays.  It is quite interesting. Because it is a bit busy at lunch time, we give it time to quiet down by going to the museum of carnival next door.

Not many people outside of Uruguay know that Montevideo has actually one of the biggest carnivals in the world.  It lasts much longer than Rio’s and it is the reason why we are here at this point in time.  Tonight is the Desfile de las Llamadas, one of the main parades in the whole 40 day carnival.  We ate early to get back to our hotel early so we can walk up the parade route to a house which overlooks the parade route.  Our hostel has arranged for us to get tickets from the owner to use the roof to view the parade.  It’s an interesting viewpoint, but we actually ended up going down to street level for a better look later on. 

I’m going to leave Dorota’s blog to explain all the bits of the carnival, all I’ll say is that it did get a bit repetitive towards the end, but the candombe drumming was very spectacular and unique.

Montevideo - February 8th

Like always the overnight rain has cleared by the time we wake up.  After breakfast and checking out we walk the short distance to the bus station to get our bus to Montevideo.  I am a bit sad to be leaving Colonia, although we have seen and done everything, it is such a picturesque place that you could easily hang around for a few more days.  I’ve been to many places in South America, on this and my previous trip, and I don’t think I’ve been to a prettier place.

The bus journey itself is a simple two and a half hour affair, one of the advantages of Uruguay is that it is a lot smaller than Argentina, it is just over half the size of Poland, or 3/4s the size of the UK, so most places are within 6 hours of each other.   As we drive we see a number of yards filled with old classic cars, being used for spare parts.  As we had seen in Colonia there are a number of old cars still in use in Uruguay, which we are told is because of the high costs to import new cars, and the relatively short distances mean less wear and tear.

After checking into the hostel in Montevideo we go for lunch, a local specialty, the Chevito.  This is just a steak sandwich, but the meat and cheese are pretty good.  At first glance Montevideo is a lot poorer looking than BA, but there are no slums on the outskirts.  In fact the drive into town reminded me more of driving into Dublin about 25 years ago than anything else.  The city just looks like it has less money now than it had then (so maybe like Dublin 25 years from now as well).

In the evening we go to the cinema.  Finally we get to see the Iron Lady.  As this is not a film review blog I’ll leave reviewing it, one thing I will say though is that the audience did seem a lot more engaged when it got to the part about the Falklands War.  The cinema was located in an area with a lot of local restaurants so when the film was over we had dinner in a local restaurant watching as a local team Nacional, beat Vasco De Gama from Brazil, in the Copa Libertadores (South America Champions League) in Rio.

Colonia - February 7th

We probably saw all the main sights in Colonia in our little walk around town yesterday, because it isn’t all that big.  The historic quarter on the peninsula is only about 5 blocks by 5 blocks.  Still we begin today by taking a walking tour of the town with a local guide.  Here we learn a lot about the history of the town.  It is unique in South America because it was founded by the Portuguese, and then it changed hands in battles between them and the Spanish 5 times, before ending up in Uruguay, so it has a mixture of both Portuguese and Spanish architectures.  This, and the fact that it is the oldest town in Uruguay, means it is a UNESCO world heritage site (the only one in Uruguay in fact).

During the tour we learn the difference between the two architectural styles, how to tell roads and buildings built by both countries apart, and lots of other trivia about the country.  It is a fairly good tour, and the guide is quite pleasant.  We finish at the main church in town, which is the oldest in the country (and seems to be a basilica, they hand that award out a lot easier here in South America than in Europe).

After the tour it is time for lunch, where Dorota finally finds a restaurant which allows foreigners to experience the Mate culture (I’m sure she will explain in her blog), and then we head back to the hotel for an air conditioned siesta, and another amazingly good ice cream (we are getting slightly addicted), because it is boiling hot. 

Later we go back towards the coast and in expectation of another great sunset, we plan to climb the lighthouse to get an even better view of it.  But during our siesta it has clouded over and we won’t get a good sunset this time (and in fact it was so good yesterday that our tour guide even raved about it, and he lives here).  So instead we climb it anyway to take pictures of the town, then we look around the shops, have dinner in a nice open air restaurant in the main plaza, and head back to the hotel.  Not long after we get there the wind picks up, and the heavens open, and the clouds that blocked our sunset unleash their fury in another massive thunderstorm.