Montevideo, Uruguay

I have a couple of colleagues from Montevideo, and the last time I came to Buenos Aires, each of them asked, "Did you go to Uruguay?"

So, after our little side trip to Rosario, Mark and I decided to go to Montevideo.

We took an hour long ferry ride and a 2.5 hour bus ride from Colonia to Montevideo. It is freezing cold, and considering that we´re right on the River, it's especially freezing. Right now, I´m wearing three long sleeve shirts, two pairs of socks, the hat Johanna made me in Brazil, and my leather coat. It's not quite cutting it.

The hostel faces Plaza Independencia, in the center of town. The hostel is also freezing cold. It's in an old building, no insulation (although we're starting to think that there is no insulation here at all, anyway). There's a space heater which warms the space immediately in front of it. But the hostel is cheap and clean, and that's all that really matters.

We have to change our money to Uruguayan Pesos, totally different from Argentine Pesos. When we arrived at the bus station, there was only one ATM machine, and it didn't operate on any of the cash systems our money cards use. They primarily have a system called RED or Banelco, where we use Cirrus, or Star.

So Mark changes USD$60 to Uruguayan pesos just to get us in a taxi, and perhaps some dinner. The conversion rate is not an easily calculable 2:1 like in Brazil, or 3:1 in Argentina. It's 23:1. 23 pesos to the dollar. I'm not quite good at dividing by 23, nad dividing by 25 I can do, but I hate estimating.

We are tickled by the big McDonald's sign that says "Delicious and with low prices" and right underneath it it says, "Extra crispy sandwich, $40". The fact that the Uruguayan peso uses the same exact symbol for the USD makes everything look very expensive. Our dinner last night came to $700 and it was all we could do to stop ourselves from cracking up.

It turns out that it is exceptionally difficult to use an American ATM card here. We had to go to 10 different banks to find one that would give us money. And yet, there are 10 money exchange places on every block. And, most of the ATM machines give you the option of taking out USD, whether you use an American bank card or not. Many of the stores, not even touristy ones, give quotes in USD as well as in Uruguayan pesos. We can't quite figure this out.

There is a small pedestrian boulevard. There is not much of note. Actually, there´s not much going on in town at all. We went out last night, and the only stuff that seemed to be open was a couple of obars, pizza places, and strip clubs.

Oh, and the casino. Right around the corner form the hostel.

I'm not a gambler. I actually hate it. I know I'm going to lose, so what's the point. Mark isn't either, it turns out. But there was nothing else to do.

The casino was tiny, NON-SMOKING (awesome), and most importnatly, WARM. We get $100 (uruguayan, about USD$4) in tokens. We shared a machine, playing video poker and video roulette, and worked out strategies on every coin, just for entertainment's sake. It was strangely enough, hilarious. Every time we won, I demanded it cash out, just to hear the sound of the tokens. We played for an hour before we were bored. I really don't know how people do this all night. We turned our $100 into $400, laughing so hard because it looked like so much money, but it was only about $13.

To celebrate our big winnings, we went on a search for hard cider (about all I like to drink), walking for what felt like forever before we found something that was open. The cider cost about USD$2. We had to sneak it back to the hostel, hard to do because we can't seem to figure out how to open the large, old, big, wooden door to the hostel that you have to pull, then push (we got yelled at for shoving it open with the force we thought it required). The cider tasted like it was apple juice and vinegar strained through pantyhose.

We did manage to get a good dinner that night, at a parilla called "El fogón"... an order of pulpo a la gallego (octopus) and an entrecote, a banana liquado and the most delicious and large piece of dulce de leche semifreddo, drowned in hot chocolate sauce we couldn't finish between us. The meat portions are smaller here, just as tasty as in BA, and more expensive but still very reasonable.

We also shared a "Pamplona de cerdo," a cheese and bacon stuffed pork roll on the grill at the mercado del puerto, kind of a small south street seaport. The best part was that we were sitting right in front of the parilla dude, and we just watched him fling meat around while we were eating. It was like watching a sushi chef in action.

Interesting was the trip to the Manos del Uruguay store. It's my favorite wool brand. It's made in a cooperative in Uruguay, and the yarn is thick and thin, very soft for wool, and it comes in the most beautiful variegated colors. In the US, it's USD$13 a hank. There are a number of Manos stores in Montevideo, and they only sell wool in one of them. The stores are dedicated to sweaters and handicrafts made from their awesome yarn. We get to the store that sells the yarn, and all they have is a huge bin with whatever leftover yarn they have from making the sweaters. There was a Uruguyan woman there, and when she heard us speak english, she went on a rampage. She ranted about how much it costs in the US, and how it's totally ridiculous that they don't sell the actual yarn in the stores, but whenever she comes to visit, she buys a ton of it anyway, at U$400 per KILO, about USD$17. You can get a kilo for a little more than you would pay for a hank, which is about 200 grams. I bought 2 kilos.

All in all, not much going on in Montevideo. We'll be happy to leave first thing in the morning.